Thrifty Thursday is a meme started by my friend Sal over at Motion Sick Lit, which is a great book blog.
The idea of Thrifty Thursday: each week you link up a used book you get for (preferably) under $5. Grabbing a book you've never heard of is encouraged. It's a cool way to support local shops and maybe find a new favorite book. Since I love judging books by their covers, this is just the activity for me.
THE BOOKSTORE: Magers & Quinn
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Is this cheating? It feels like cheating talking about the bookstore where I work. But it's where I found the book!! And where I find most of my books at this point, considering I get to look at them as they come in before civilians do. Lately I've been cutting way way back on how many books I bring home with me, but every once in a while I see a weird little mass market paperback I need to use my employee discount on.
If you've never been to Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis, it's SO BIG. The picture above is only the back half of the store. It's pretty glorious and I'm still charmed by it.
THE BOOK:
The Children of Llyr by Evangeline Walton
In stark, gaunt prose, it chronicles the years of Bran the Blessed - he who was so vast a man that no house could hold him nor ship bear his bulk - and of the tale of his beloved sister Branwen, his brother Manawyddan, and of his half-brothers Nissyen and the ghastly Evnissten. It is a tale of change and storm, of love beyond death, of high courage, of the end of an era - and the beginning of another. It is epic fantasy in its purest form - marvellous in its compass and power.
Technically, this book is the second in a series of four. But it sounds like the books are only related in that they're retelling stories from Welsh book of mythology, Mabinogion. I've never heard of this. I don't know aaaanything about Welsh mythology/folklore. All of the reviews on Goodreads that I've read, but one, are 4 or 5 stars. They praise her writing, several referred to it as a feminist retelling, and someone called it "disturbing." So I'm pretty much sold. Plus it looks like a ship is coming out of the big guy's butt, which is kind of funny.
TOTAL PRICE: $1.80
It was already cheap, but my employee discount definitely helped.
Thanks for hosting this, Sal!
Would you have picked this book up?
What cheap books have you found recently?
What cheap books have you found recently?