My sister gave me a gift certificate to Elliott Bay Books for Christmas which I just got around to using. Unfortunately this coincided with me wandering into Interesting Stuff, which sadly is going out of business, but happily (for me) has %25 off everything. What’s stupid about this is that I could have waited a week and a half, because I’m moving to a new place. Now I have to lug even more books. Sigh.

Okay, I can’t even try to pretend that’s a bad thing. More books! More AWESOME books!

So here they are, no particular order:

Memory and the Mediterranean,  Fernand Braudel. History of the Middle Sea from the late Paleolithic to the rise of Rome. I’m a sucker for books that take the long view.

The Horse, The Wheel, And Language, David W. Anthony. Someone attempting (again) to pin down the origin of the Indo-Europeans. J.P. Mallory gave a blurb on the back, and since this is also a subject I’m a sucker for, I got it. It beat out the other two I was considering, one of which was a pretty thorough translation of Gilgamesh, and the other a translation of the Shahnameh.

A History of Inner Asia, Svat Soucek. This was a total impulse buy. We’ll see if it was worth the six bucks.

Cooking with Love and Paprika, Joseph Pasternak. I like paprika and Central European cuisine. Also, Pasternak was a Hollywood producer who, rumor had it, would go into the commisary, order spaghetti, and shovel it into his mouth with his hands. I admire this.

Warriors of the Steppe, Erik Hildinger. Military history of Central Asia. Mongols!

Early Ottoman Art, various scholars. Lovely pictures! Scholarly explication! Diagrams! Footnotes!

I declare April a month of walks in the park and reading while lounging on my veranda.