I thought about making a "new books" thread, and I still will if that's better than posting in this thread, but woohoo! New books! I got Ghibli Best Stories last year when I started piano knowing full well I wouldn't be playing out of it soon.
About a week ago, I found these four books - two "elementary" and two marked "intermediate," and I bought them all. I'm a big fan of Hayao Miyazaki and Joe Hisaishi, and I'm stinkin' happy right now.
I'm going to haul one of the elementary ones to my lesson and ask for confirmation of my ability to start learning one of the pieces. I'm still doing pieces out of Alfred, and I'm not bored with them, but it certainly would be nice to start working on a piece that gives me such joy as these do. Whee!
I think it's going to be really interesting to compare three levels of arrangements for the same piece, to see exactly what skills are needed for each higher level. Fun stuff.