Incoming Books, Week of 5/13

A whole bunch of new stuff in the last week, mostly from my trip to the Strand yesterday:

• PvP, Vol. 4: Goes Bananas by Scott Kurtz
  I had a list of about thirty books I was specifically looking for at the Strand (and at the top of the list of Murakami's After Dark), most of which I had no luck with. But I was surprised to find this, which wasn't on the list because I had no reason to think they'd have it...
  
• How's the Squid? by Jack Ziegler
  Abrams has been doing a series of nice hardcover books of cartoons -- all by a single cartoonist, and mostly on a single subject. At $20 for about 120 cartoons (roughly one a page in a 128-page book), they seem slightly pricey, but the paper is nice, and, if you can find them at discounted prices, they're great. This is one of them: the theme is food.
  
• The Diary of a Chambermaid by Octave Mirbeau
  Somewhat famous racy French novel (from 1900) in an eye-catching new edition.
  
• Horseradish by Lemony Snicket
  A small, cheap book with one thought in large type on each page. I think those two things even out, so it's about what it should be. I do hope Daniel Handler does something else substantial under the Snicket name in the YA field (or under his own name, for that matter -- though the Snicket voice is distinctive, and I'd like to see more of it).
  
• The Trouble With Tom by Paul Collins
  I'd read Collins's Sixpence House about a year and a half ago, and had been looking for more of his books. This book is, if the blurb is accurate, the history of Thomas Paine's remains after he died.
  
• The Neddiad by Daniel Pinkwater
  The new YA novel by the master. He writes it, I read it; it's that simple.
  
• Edmund and Rosemary Go to Hell by Bruce Eric Kaplan
  A book-length story, in words and pictures, by the New Yorker cartoonist. I hadn't even known this existed before I saw it.
  
• HARM by Brian W. Aldiss
  Picked it up as a freebie at the Nebulas.
  
• 5 People Who Died During Sex: and 100 Other Terrible Tasteless Lists by Karl Shaw
  Found it on the giveaway shelf at work, and it's a kind of book that's irresistible to me.
  
• What Were They Thinking?: Really Bad Ideas Throughout History by Bruce Felton
  Another book I found on the giveaway pile, and something else that I expect will be fun, undemanding reading.
  
• Powers, Vol. 6: Sellouts by Brian Michael Bendis
  Got this last week at Free Comic Book Day; I feel it's a good idea to also spend money when I'm getting free comics...

And that's what I got this week. It's not as bad as it looks; most of them are pretty short. Of course, I haven't finished a book in over a week since I'm still in the middle of The Bonehunters, but Real Soon Now I'll be back to reading books that don't take ten days each...