Incoming Books: first half of December

These have been piling up on the scanner (which I now need for today's Book-A-Day), so let's see what I've picked up recently:

• Gallimaufry, a book of obsolete words by Michael Quinion
• several mysteries: Parker's Hundred-Dollar Baby, Mosely's Fear of the Dark, Mortimer's Rumpole and the Reign of Terror, and Hiaasen's Nature Girl
• the PostSecret book
• The Fabulous Women of Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell, which I bought for the SFBC quite some time ago, but -- as is usual with art books -- wasn't fully designed at that point, so I bought it from seeing a few sample spreads
• Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg, a biography of a guy who got about as famous as any editor ever does
• Path of the Assassin, Volume 3 by Koike and Kojima, more ninja goodness
• Why Things Break: Understanding the World by the Way it Comes Apart, a non-fiction book by Mark E. Eberhart that reminds me of Henry Petroski's To Engineer Is Human (a fine book on design and errror)
  
• and Schott's Almanac 2007, which probably will be honored by being the first new downstairs bathroom book in the Hornswoggler household for 2007.

Will you folks hate me if I admit that I didn't pay a penny for any of these? They all came home from work with me, one way or another.