Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

What's On Boxing?

"On Boxing" is an extended essay (about 100 pages) on the sport of boxing and it's really great. Apparently, Norman Mailer liked it so much he said something like "It was so good, I thought I wrote it myself."

Roberto Bolano - Distant Star
Simenon - The Engagement
Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World
Michel De Montaigne - An Apology for Raymond Sebond (bought this as much for the intro by supa dupa scholar M A Screech)
Edward Buscombe - Stagecoach (its the BFI classics essay on the film)

Ernst Junger - The Glass Bees
Victor Serge - The Case of Comrade Tulayev
Boris Vian - Heartsnatcher
Harry Mathews - The Human Country
John Dos Passos - Manhattan Transfer

JD Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye (this is a present)

Oh, and Ariel Dormfman - Some Write to the Future (bunch of essays on Latin American fiction)

a 900 page isaac asimov sf collection
coatzee - disgrace
saunders - in persuasion nation
a collection of 3 james m. cain novels

Just bought this guy's memoirs on Amazon, don't see how that can be a mistake.

More 2nd hand goodness:

Gunter Grass - Tin Drum
Rene Crevel - Babylon
Boccaccio - The Decameron
Robert Musil - Tonka and Other Stories
Chateaubriand - The Memoirs
Roland Barthes - Mythologies

John Dos Passos - Manhattan Transfer

am slowly creeping through this atm. general fiction fatigue means i might not even finish it, but am definitely enjoying the sense of crowds, smells and everything else people say about j.d.p.'s books

I drunkenly ordered The Arabian Nightmare by Robert Irwin the other day, thinking from the blurb that it sounded rather good (hah! idiot!). Anybody know anything about it? Like whether it's actually any good.

And some more:

William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury (I know most local libraries in the west have this but its a really nice Picador cover)

Proust - Against Sainte-Beuve and Other Essays
Marguerite Duras - The Vice-Counsul
Thomas M. Disch - The Genocides and Echo Round his Bones (can't wait to get round to reading these)

GR - dunno, but I've been meaning to read it for ages. Read Satan Wants Me last year & that was pretty great, half-read Exquisite Corpse & keep meaning to finish it sometime, always enjoy his non-fiction - oh and Night, Horses and the Desert is a really impressive anthology, works really hard to help you get your head round an unfamiliar literature.

Probably one of my favourite figures in the British literary world if I sit and think about it. I don't think you made a drunken mistake.

I really must finish Exquisite Corpse.

Jasper Fforde - Shades of Grey
Oliver Bulloughs - Let Our Fame be Great
Bukowski - Women
Mark Mazower - Hitler's Empire
Andrew Hussey - Paris
Eduardo Galeano - Open Veins of Latin America
Edward Hollis - The Secret Lives of Buildings

Over the last cpl of weeks:

Alberto Moravia - The Conformist (so pleased to get hold of a copy, the film is gd)
Harlan Ellison - All the Sounds of Fear/Over the Edge (short story collections)
Frank Herbert - The Heaven Makers
Philip Jose Farmer - The Gate of Time
Robert Silverberg - Hawksbill Station
Charles Lamb - The Adventures of Ulysses (his Homer adaptation aimed at children -- which is the one Joyce grew up with! -- based on Chapman's rendering...)

Harold Nicolson, Journey to Java, Doubleday 1958, still with its "With the compliments of" note from the publisher. Slightly uncanny since both the Javanese culture of the time and Nicolson's have changed unrecognizably. $2.50.

Clockers by Richard Price, ordered on basis of a throwaway mention on a Wire thread. I can never usually get into crime things, but it seemed interesting.

Selected Poems by Douglas Dunn - read him at 22 and found it unimaginably depressing; at 40 I seem to have grown into him.

Broonland: the last days of Gordon Brown by Chris Harvey - bought on the basis of an LRB review.

The John McPhee reader, finally got round to buying after about it spending about five years in my Amazon basket.

Ok so I was walking past the bookshop and saw The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, with a lovely cover and title font, and thought 'I want that. I want to read it, and I want to read it now.' So I went in and bought it, and I've read a couple of chapters and I don't regret it, even though I feel slightly bad, because I still haven't read Black Swan Green. I still kind of feel Mason & Dixon sets some kind of wow-benchmark for historical novel immersion, but I'm already getting a really good feel from this book (better, in truth, than the historical sections of Cloud Atlas).

I did exactly the same thing!

Hi fives! It really is a nice object - it's the sort of thing that I'd be delighted to have come across on a bookshelf, the title piquing my curiosity, and then reading and feeling that the slight aura of magic surrounding it was completely justified.

It happened a few times with books from my parents' bookcase (MR James maybe? I probably felt that way about Camus + The Myth of Sisyphus as well) Moments where you look at the title and the appearance (or sometimes the lack of appearance, faded boards, illegible spine) and the curiosity is completely rewarded, you find something imaginative and interesting.

Still happens even with books I've read before actually, I've just realised. I get the same feeling every time I open up my hardback, Mervyn Peake illustrated Treasure Island and read, always without being able to stop, the first half.

just cashed in a ten-dollar credit at a local used book place, picking up excellent-condition copies of:
- Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
- Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture
- Norbert Weiner, Cybernetics

Heinrich Boll - The Lost of Honour of Katharina Blum
Leonardo Sciascia - Sicilian Uncles
Denton Welch - Maiden Voyage
Ariel Dorfman - Hard Rain
Gyula Krudy - The Adventures of Sinbad
Raymond Radiguet - Devil in the Flesh

Heinrich Boll - The Lost of Honour of Katharina Blum
Gyula Krudy - The Adventures of Sinbad
Raymond Radiguet - Devil in the Flesh

Don't know about the others, but these 3 are a treat, the Krudy especially

Yes I first heard of the Krudy in the Translators thread so am quite excited to read it.

Also picked up a copy of a Penguin Edition of three Stanislaw Lem novels - Solaris/The Chain of Chance/A Perfect Vacuum

Haven't read the 3rd of those, but the other two are wonderful. I need to read more Lem.

Ah, Krudy . . If you don't like Sindbad, I don't even want to hear about it.

Haven't read the 3rd of those

Lem channeling Borges. A collection of reviews of imaginary books (including a hostile review of the book itself). Don't have it at hand - appropriately enough - but recall it was fun.

Browsing in Skoob. Picked up The Poetic Image by Cecil Day Lewis and Selected Writings of Leigh Hunt - a very attractive, easy-going writer & poet from what I've read before.

I expect I will eventually sell this, but I just bought:

Novels 1930-1942, Dawn Powell, in the Library of America hardcover edition. Five of her early novels are included in it. Ever since I read Gore Vidal's extended gush over Dawn Powell a couple of years back, I've been curious about her work. Now I can find out whenever the urge hits.

Finally visited the one independent bookstore in my newly adopted city and fell in love. I bought Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, the first physical copy I have ever seen for sale anywhere.

haven't bought books in a while so i just got:
celine - death on the installment plan
dickens - bleak house
joyce carol oates - garden of earthly delights
nabokov - invitation to a beheading
gogol short stories collection

Yesterday's Amazon order:
* Fleeting Things: English Poets and Poems, 1616-60 - G Hammond (on a recommendation from my old pal Steve Burt)
* Levels of the Game - John McPhee (on a McPhee jag recently)
* The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems: 1972-2007 - Albert Goldbarth (have loved everything I've read by Goldbarth and a recent Poetry Daily entry tipped me over into actually buying some)
* Bing the Bunny box: includes Make Music, Something For Daddy, Bed Time, Get Dressed, Go Picnic and Paint Day - Ted Dewan (to feed our one year old's sudden booklust)

Philip Jose Farmer - Strange Relations
Edmund Wilson - Axel's Castle
J. M. Coetzee - Stranger Shores: Essays 1886 - 1999

Exchanged, sold and haggled for:

Stawomir Mrozek - The Elephant. The cover doesn't feel as bad it looks.
Comte de Lautreamont - Maldoror and the Complete Works
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Autumn of the Patriarch
Franz Kafka - The Transformation ('Metamorphosis') and Other stories. The translation is by Malcolm Paisley, who, post-Brod, edited a text-critical edition of Kafka's works.
Raymond Radiguet - Count D'Orgel's Ball

Girlfriend inherited 80 boxes of books from an aunt, & I spent the weekend helping her sort through them for stuff she wanted to keep + individually valuable items. Unbelievable number of biographies, snob diaries, etc, but lots of p cool stuff. Nice library, deceased aunt of girlfriend - respect to you.

Anyhow, my rewards, from what I can remember (we reboxed the keepers, now I must wait for them):

5-vol Greek Anthology (old Loeb)
Philosophy of Solitude - John Cowper Powys
Geography III - Elizabeth Bishop (faber pb)
Mercian Hymns - Geoffrey Hill
On the way to Electro-War - Kurt Doberer (couldn't resist the title)
Annals of Chile - Muldoon
Autobiographies - Yeats (nice hb to replace my pb)

Some other bits too. Found myself with a strong urge to rescue single volumes of poetry (she was a Poetry Book Society member from what I could work out), even if I had them in a larger collection; also to replace things I have and like. Maybe this ties in to the ageing & conservative taste thread.

A few things in there that I really enjoyed holding for a bit - a beautiful 1912 Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by MR James, Auden's Epistle to a Godson inscribed to a couple of his collaborators (felt a bit giddy when I opened that and realised - he's more or less my favourite poet and it was a trip to see his autograph, then figure out whose copy it was).

Nice haul. Slavering over the MR James here.

My turn -

Bobo's Book of Coin Magic.

Used to take it out of the local library on a more or less permanent basis as a teenager, practicing endlessly to get to the standard Not Very Good.

Later bought it then sold it with a load of other conjuring books when I was desperately poor.

Came through yesterday and I sat down excitedly to practice a couple of my old legerdemainic chops, realised a) they're really difficult b) I absolutely can't be arsed.

Might practice a couple of the easier ones to impress nephews or something.

Makes me wonder who's going to inherit my stuff. No kids, nephews or nieces. I guess the sidewalk.

My Life In CIA by Harry Mathews
The Conversions also by Harry Mathews, autographed at that, a pleasant detail I discovered afterwards.
Remainder by Tom McCarthy - a very good sign, when you're compelled to actually buy a book after reading it for free.
In Hazard by Richard Hughes - ditto
W or The Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec
Little Kingdoms by Steven Millhauser - whose work I either find brilliant or precious. It's certainly a gamble and, with the world "Little" in the title, you know I'm a man who loves to gamble.

Feel these should almost be polled -

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/books/weird/index.shtml

Some of them are a bit meh, but there are lolz to be had, only recognise a few of the titles (The English, Are They Human is a known because it prompted Wyndham Lewis' horribly titled but more-sympathetic-than-it-sounds-wouldn't-be-bloody-hard The Jews, Are they Human).

Oh @ that link.

Juan Rulfo - Pedro Paramo
Yasunari Kawabata - Snow Country
Murakami - What I Talk About when I Talk About Running (for a friend)
Mario Vargas Llosa - The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta
Casare Pavese - The Political Prisoner

(Llosa and Pavese => Can't resist books about failed revolutionaries)

Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst

I just bought an old William Sleator novel for a dollar. Never tire of that dude.

I bought used copies of Edward Dahlberg's "Alms for Oblivion" and Thomas Browne's "Religio Medici".
Also new copies of Marilynne Robinson's recent collections of lectures and Robert D Richardson's William James bio.

Forgot to update my address on Amazon, so they were all sent to the wrong place. Augh!
The Dahlberg I finally received thanks to the seller re-shipping it after getting it in return. The Browne + new books apparently are well lost.

So, what I'm saying is that I got a copy of Edward Dahlberg's essay collection "Alms for Oblivion". Yay.

Would be interested to hear about the Marilynne Robinson lectures - as a card-carrying irreligious sceptic I'm not sure they would appeal. I adored Gilead, and I've just picked up Home but it is not the immediate delight that the former was.

Just got a bunch of Le Guin - all the Earthsea (have read the first three but not for some time) and Left Hand of Darkness.

Found cheap but new over the weekend...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0374516316.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
Never read anything by her, but this looks promisng

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0141182199.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
Have read a couple of novellas by him, which I remember liking, but not any details

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0571207154.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
Can't go wrong here

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/1847442692.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
Sadly, the actual book has the Guy N Smith cover changed to something less sue-able

Ian Macdonald - Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties (introduction ended with an "end of society" rant but the actual song-by-song content is good)
John Sladek - Black Aura (mystery; almost a parody of john carr)

Be interested to see how you get on with the Firbank (which novels? Valmouth presumably? Vainglory?). I've tried reading him a couple of times, but really struggled. Nothing against high-falutin artificiality in novels, positively favour heavy stylisation in fact, but it just never clicked. (Didn't find what I read at all funny for a start).

Dropped by Judd 2 yesterday, picked up Robert Darnton - The Case for Books. Decent collection of articles on academic libraries, Google books, digitisation, etc. Respect & admire Bob Darnton (never met the man. Not sure why I insist on calling him Bob), but it's a bit repetitive. Also keep looking at the title and thinking 'The Bookcase'.

V similar feelings to GR on Firbank: I've read two or three, but don't find him especially funny or engaging. Technically & historically interesting, f'sure, but a bit lacking when compared to those who were later to plunder his dialogue chops (ie Waugh).