In My Mailbox

This week's post for The Story Siren's weekly meme "In My Mailbox" covers the past three weeks for me. Two weeks ago I realized that I had more than 120 books waiting to be read on my book shelves and in my kindle. I took a big decision to stop buying books till Turkey's biggest book fair, which will be held in Istanbul in November. Then what am I doing right now? Why am I posting for in my mailbox? Here comes my excuses:

Before I took my decision, I had asked a coworker to get George R.R. Martins's A Game of Thrones series. By the way, here I'd like to state one more thing we are deprived of in Turkey. Maybe someone in charge reads this and does something: Although there are many kindle owners in Turkey, we cannot buy and download e-books from amazon. We cannot make use of kindle deals. We don't have access to books even if we buy them. There are regional restrictions. There are 3 options to deal with it:
1. You need to go abroad with your kindle and enjoy what any other regular kindle user enjoys every day. We were on vacation in Spain last April and I was amazed by playing with my kindle and visiting amazon store.
2. You need to have a friend who will get the books for you and will send them as gifts to you. That's how I got the A Game of Thrones books. My coworker's husband is in the States now so I get books thanks to them.
3. You have to find e-books elsewhere on the web, which is something I really don't like.
Anyway, I got my gorgeous set by George R.R. Martin and hope to start reading some time this year.

My second (actually fifth but I count A Game of Thrones set as a single book) book reached my thanks to the author, herself. It is "Waiting for Daybreak" by Amanda McNeil. It was kind of interesting for me as it was the first time a non-Turkish author contacted me. I know such things are common in Europe and Northern America but definitely not in Turkey. Well, I'll read and review Amanda's book before the end of August so stay tuned :)

My last book was my swear-breaker. I swore I wouldn't buy a single book till November. Do I like torturing myself or what? Anyway, after visiting the gorgeous book stores of Amsterdam (I was there visiting my sister), I ended up buying a book: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I have to confess that if I found, I was going to get the last two books of Julie Kagawa's The Iron Fey series and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein but they were not available. Why do I want to get these books? None of them were translated into Turkish. I don't know if they will be ever translated.

I just realized that I complained too much about my pretty country, Turkey in this blog post but when it comes to books, it is kind of sad to see how much we miss. I see myself lucky though. I travel abroad at times and I can afford to order books online.

What was in your mailbox this week?