One thing to know about me is this: I read books. A lot of them. Some I buy and some are sent to me for free, but the end result is that every month ten to twenty new books turn up in the house. Which, you know, is a nice thing—a house full of unread books is a happy place.

Anyway, I thought I’d start a regular feature here in which I reveal that month’s book haul and comment on the acquisitions. And then later, perhaps I’ll comment on my reactions to what I’ve read—sort of like a mix of what some teens do on YouTube and Nick Hornby’s column at The Believer.

Here is my inaugural book haul for August: The top two titles, by Etgar Keret and Connor Franta I am reading for a memoir project I’ve been working on off and on for the past decade or so. The third, Steering the Craft, is a revised book about writing by the great, great Ursula K. LeGuin, whose Earthsea Trilogy I still count among my all-time favorites. (Even though it is now six books.) Fourth is a novel nominated for this year’s Man-Booker Prize in England, and then we have three books for middle-grade readers: Mac Barnett’s bestselling The Terrible Two, Bruce Coville’s twenty-years-in-the-making sequel to his hilarious Goblins in the Castle (among my top two or three of his novels), and the newest novel by Rebecca Stead, who won the Newbery Award a few years ago. Her writing has an easy genius to it that makes storytelling look simpler than it is. Finally, there is Traitor’s Blade, a swashbuckling adventure with swordfighting—recommended to me by a friend who knows that I love that sort of thing. Missing from the stack (because it is in my satchel) is last year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, All the Light We Cannot See.

Have you read any of these books? Interested in any of them? Would love to know people’s thoughts before I dive into these.