Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

I really, really enjoyed The Corrections. I thought it might be a struggle at first, but it turned into a real pleasure.

Dropped in on Portobello Road Oxfam Shop over lunch. Zoom by Simon Armitage, Earthquake Weather by August Kleinzahler.

Sold a bunch and bough for Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales (plus half a pint's worth of beer money), which sounds way more appealing than Gulag Archipelago, although yes I'll probably end up reading a volume and hating myself...

hating myself...

It goes with the territory, amirite?

I enjoyed The Gulag Archipelago, though it had turned into a bit of a slog by about page 500. Persevered, and then couldn't believe it when I got to the end only to find out it was the first part of a trilogy.

Office haul of free books: We, Three Tales by Flaubert, Essays of Elia (awful feeling I have two copies of this already, but this is a prettyish Hesperus thing), Pushkin's Tales of Belkin, a small biography of Pushkin and Kitty Hauser's Bloody Old Britain, about pioneer of aerial photography.

Popular Fallacies was excellent, off that, I should get Essays of Elia out of the library again.

I went in the LRB bookshop and saw lots of NYRB titles at 20% off, so I got Platonov's The Foundation Pit : the ed has a detailed intro, an appendix with translated passages deleted by the author and 10-15 pages of extensive notes. Love the cover.

Georgics, Virgil, translated by David Ferry, bilingual edition, new (remaindered) paperback, $7.

Office haul of free books: We, Three Tales by Flaubert, Essays of Elia (awful feeling I have two copies of this already, but this is a prettyish Hesperus thing), Pushkin's Tales of Belkin, a small biography of Pushkin and Kitty Hauser's Bloody Old Britain, about pioneer of aerial photography.

What wonderful office is this? At mine the free book table is an old Dan Brown and 'Moonwalk: the Michael Jackson Story'.

What wonderful office is this? At mine the free book table is an old Dan Brown and 'Moonwalk: the Michael Jackson Story'.

I do the sub-editing for (job-keeping circumlocution time) the customer magazine of a major British bookshop chain. Lots of books come in, but they're mostly of the Brown/Moonwalk variety. This was a good batch.

(I've been tempted to start an ILB thread where I post extracts of unedited shit from the magazine, but professional principle wins out against office boredom & cheap lols.)

Probably wise, but if you ever give in, I look forward to those cheap lols.

Bght a Kindle! I think I'll order all the books by Dostoyevski first. For about 4 dollars. :-)))

Allow me to crow a bit. A year ago I bought a copy of Infinite Jest for $1. It was pretty banged up, so by the time I finished reading it, it was quite literally falling apart in my hands. Today I bought a replacement copy that is in good shape... for $1!

latest ones (prolley a month ago):

Balzac, The History of the Thirteen
Balzac, A Murky Business

I'm facsinated by Richard Nixon: Alone In The White House (by Richard Reeves). I'm at the part where, in 1969, Pres. Nixon begins to aggressively woo "the politically powerful white middle class" by attacking those "who oppress( ) them with high taxes, spiraling inflation and enforced integration, while rewarding the very poor and very rich." I'm sure this strategy isn't unique, but Nixon -- by actively pursuing George Wallace's constituency -- seemed to raise these wedge-issues into an art form (in ways the GOP has successfully exploited over the next 30 years):

Three days later on October 19, at a $100-a-plate Repulican fund-raiser in New Orleans, Vice President Agnew, delegated by the President but reading words he has mostly written himself, began the hard-hitting rhetorical phase of Nixon's dividing of America, saying "The recent Vietnam Moratorium is a reflection of the confusion that exists in America today . . . A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."

* * * *

The next night, at another $100-a-plate dinner that drew twenty-four hundred guests in Jackson, Mississippi, (Agnew) continued, this time with help from Safire and Buchanan back in the White House: "For too long the South has been punching the bag for those who characterize themselves as liberal intellectuals . . . We have among us a glib, activist element . . . nattering nabobs of negativism . . . snobs for most of them disdain to mingle with the masses who work for a living . . . . Americans cannot afford to divide over their demagoguery -- or be deceived by their duplicity -- or to let their license destroy liberty. We can, however, afford to separate them from our society -- with no more regret than we should feel over discarding rotten apples from a barrel."

I imagine Agnew meant to say "For too long the South has been a punching bag . . .," but what's quoted above is the way his words appear in the text. The book is a cold look into policial expediency and calculation.

For my kindle: Dostoyevski (entire oeuvre), Chesterton (same),... Oh and Charlaine Harris

Getting an e-reader looked quite tempting when I was browsing Amazon for Chesterton books and got a damn "lol on kindle u can get his complete works for a buck o_O" message. Of course, it'd be free on other readers.

Err, anyways, my most recent purchases:
Thomas Berger - Who is Teddy Villanova?
Christopher Benfey - American Audacity: Essays North and South
Leonardo Sciascia - Equal Danger

Free on Kindle too if you go to manybooks.net.

i bought books for myself today! i never do anymore cuz i'm always just buying stuff for my store. but the used bookstore around the corner is having a three day sale (50% off everything!) and i thought i'd load up on some sci-fi. their sci-fi section is really big.

here's what i got. a mix of hardcovers and paperbacks:

the ice people - rene barjavel (hardcover)

an alien heat - michael moorcock (hardcover)

the hollow lands - michael moorcock (hardcover)

masters of atlantis - charles portis (hardcover. really wanted this! don't think i would have thought to look in the sci-fi section for it.)

earthworks - brian w. aldiss (hardcover)

satan's world - poul anderson (hardcover)

2 big fat softcover phil k. dick short story collections - the eye of the sibyl and second variety

space tug - murray leinster (paperback)

talents, incorporated - murray leinster (paperback)

the man who ate the world - frederik pohl (paperback)

destiny doll - clifford d. simak (paperback)

and two penelope fitzgerald trade paperbacks that i haven't read: innocence and the beginning of spring

35 bucks for everything. i was happy.

man, if you are ever looking for some andre norton paperbacks that store is the place for you. they must have over 50 norton paperbacks. pretty crazy.

love the aldiss cover

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3444/3370635777_a1010506b4_m.jpg

Everyone I know who loves Charles Portis hated Masters Of Atlantis but maybe you will lead the way to a new appreciation, skot.

hmmm, we will see. i just never see it anywhere and i'm always looking for his books.

Haha, I have a copy of that Aldiss book, but with THIS unfortunate cover: http://i27.tinypic.com/33f5no8.jpg
Hoo-boy. I haven't read it yet. Come to think of it, all my Aldiss books have dreadful covers. Most ludicrous must be Who Can Replace a Man?. And then there's Greybeard! (Notice that the bird has a MOUTH! Cuzza atomic testing, y'see)

Oh, but that's certainly large enough.

Holy cats! 'Who Can Replace...' has at least a certain demented style to it, but that 'Greybeard' cover is woeful. Although mine just has a generic hover car flying through a desert on the front.

awesome charity book sale at my university saw me score 18 v. high quality books (only one with any kind of annotations inside, for example) in the general area of continental philosophy for £23. Total new Amazon price: £450. Shit yeah. Choice cuts include Lyotard's 'Signed, Malraux' (hardcover), Eric Blondel's 'Nietzsche: The Body and Culture' (also hardcover, and a 7100% saving on Amazon's price), and, more sentimentally less value-wise, nice old Penguin classics editions of 'Beyond Good and Evil' and Augustine's 'Confessions' and a cutely shaped Stanford University Press edition of Derrida's 'Of Hospitality'.

Ha, I had that same edition of Earthworks as a lad. For some reason English sf paperbacks were plentiful in my city at the time.

finally bought wise blood!!!

dickens - great expectations (for the winter, which around here is = 50 degrees)
alan furst - red gold
jg farrell - troubles (read halfway through a library copy, it felt like a keeper, so i bought a copy for myself)

Elsa Morante - History: A Novel (de-fucking-lighted to get hold of this one)
Dave Hickey - Air Guitar
Jocelyn Brooke - The Orchid Trilogy
Genet - Querelle of Brest (have read this, but who could resist the novel in the Panther ed. cover in really good condition?)

Come to think of it, all my Aldiss books have dreadful covers.

I believe it was the NEL edition of The Airs of Earth that had a cover that I liked. I can't find it on the web though.

Ah yes here it is.

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/ciu/65/8a/2d55c27a02a0daf65e135110.L._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber
Thank you Library of America for giving me an alternative to brutally priced copies of Negative Space.

I thought Negative space was available for, like, 10 quid or so?

But I read about that collection and it seemed way more comprehensive.

Hey! London! And especially SOuth East London! Which may mean only xyzzz and me at the moment but WHATEVS: I dunno if I can make this because I have to be at a GAME OF FOOTBALL in ESSEX but this has been good before and I see no reason for it not to be good again and with all that goodness sloshing about it's a good cause too: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/events_details.asp?ID=1402 (Blackheath Amnesty Book clearance, this coming Saturday, for those of you who are click-averse).

Oh that sounds excellent, Tim! In case you can make it let me know and we can meet up.

Thanks for the tip.

Oh, that does sound good. I need to figure out what my Saturday looks like, but I might be able to make that. If so, a drink def a possibility Xyzzzz, if not earlier in the week. Gamaliel, you about?

Negative Space used to be about £10, but went oop & has been £30-50 2nd hand on Amazon/ABE for the last year at least. May have been searching badly, and never got lucky in a bookshop. But yes, the new volume is a more-than-adequate replacement.

Bloody working again innit, otherwise I'd be along like a shot. Also, got to recruit myself for The Fall in Oxford on Sunday. A book binge might have proved too much for my frail constitution.

So I went and saw woof there.

Picked up:

A volume of classical Russian poetry
Henry Green - Living
Richard Hughes - A High Wind in Jamaica
William Empson - Seven Types of Ambiguity

Elsewhere:

Junichiro Tanizaki - The Makioka Sisters
Walter Abish - In the future Perfect
Germaine Greer - Shakespeare
Janet Malcolm - Two Lives

The Green, Hughes and Tanizaki are great; haven't read the others (though from all accounts the Greer is completely bonkers)

Why would the Greer be 'bonkers'?!

My internet connection has been very spotty for a couple of weeks now, during which time I bought some books - exactly which ones I am now a bit weak on recalling. I do know I bought this:

The Athenian Agora, a guide published by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 1990 (the specific authors are unattributed), a used paperback for $4. It still has the Greek tax stamp affixed to the back cover.

This is the ultimate sort of guidebook for an ancient Athens wonk (such as myself). It describes, and often reconstructs, every ancient structure built in the agora from about 800 BC onwards, with aerial photos, floor plans, architectural details, contemporary references, and various artifacts found during excavation.

That book sounds rad.

more charity shop fun, god knows when i am actually going to read all of this (reading 1 book for every 3 i buy atm):

Nietzsche- Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Chekhov- A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire (best 25p I've ever spent)
Twain- Can-cans, Cats & Cities of Ash
Steinbeck- Grapes of Wrath

all together cost £2.50 - only read 1 of them though.

Why would the Greer be 'bonkers'?!

Isn't that the one full of completely made-up biographical information about Anne Hathaway? Massive amounts of detail drawn from the tiniest scraps of ambiguous information?

Ah, no, ignore me, I'm thinking of Greer's 'Shakespeare's Wife', it seems.

Buying things I can't afford and don't have time to read. Recently.

Roberto Bolaño - 2666
Roberto Bolaño - Nazi Literature in the Americas
Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

among others. Still have an entire shelf of 20 + books that I have yet to read/am partway through.

I paid my sad farewells to Borders today. I was not alone - the place was stuffed. They are offering 20% off everything for three days, presumably as a way of running down stock before closing for good.

Sadly, I was in a rush and had only a few minutes to spare, which I used for a surgical strike on the Philip Roth section, yielding:
Zuckerman Unbound
The Anatomy Lesson
My Life As A Man
The Facts
Not bad going.

Less wise was my impulse snatching of The Cambridge Companion to Roth as I left the area, which was unpriced and came in at a hefty £16 (less discount) when I reached the till. I feel like I undid a lot of good work there.

Sold a bunch for:

Ignzaio Silone - Bread and Wine
Erich Auerbach - Literary Language and its Public