Incoming Books: 17 December

I went out to my favorite book store (the Montclair Book Center) to buy a Christmas present, as part of a long day of running around on various errands (the Things were with me for half the day, until their grandparents came to whisk them off to their first Christmas, one with the wife's extended family off in the wilds of New York State).

Sadly, the book I wanted to buy as a present was sold out, so I had to console myself by instead buying a lot of books for me:

• Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer
  I already read this when one of the SFBC's sister clubs did it last year, but all of my personal copies are Penguin trade paperbacks, so I needed this one to match.
  
• With All Disrespect by Calvin Trillin
  A somewhat nicer second-hand hardcover to replace my ratty second-hand paperback.
  
• The Mammoth Book of Illustrated Erotic Women edited by Maxim Jakubowski
  Even the non-lurid "Mammoth" books have ungainly titles, but this one is particularly oddly phrased.
  
• Gone to New York by Ian Frazier
  Frazier is the author of one of the funniest short essays ever, "Coyote V. Acme." I think the pieces collected here are somewhat more serious, but they're all about New York, which I nearly always find fascinating.
  
• Flashman on the March by George MacDonald Fraser
  
• Private Wars by Greg Rucka
  
• Dilbert: Thriving on Vague Objectives by Scott Adams
  
• a book titled Dahmane, of works by the photographer of the same name
  
• Frazz: Life at Bryson Elementary by Jef Mallett
  Frazz isn't in my local paper, but I've liked it whenever I've seen it, and I like strip cartoons in general. On the other hand, I just realized, typing this, that the author spells his first name with one 'f'. Oh dear.
  
• Black Hole by Charles Burns
  I could have sworn I already had this, but that wasn't the case. Now I do.
  
• Pornoland, photographs by Stefano De Luigi with a text by Martin Amis
  OK, I am something of a Martin Amis fan, which helps to explain why I bought this. However, I did have to be browsing the "erotica" section to find it in the first place, but let's skip over that quickly, shall we?

And, just arrived in the mail today, from the Library of America, is Letters & Speeches by Theodore Roosevelt. I wish there was some way I could get the LoA to send me specific books (such as the Ezra Pound volume, which I've wanted for a couple of years now), but this is definitely a book I want to own, and someday I even hope to read it.