Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

in my amazon cart (which i never order EVERYTHING from but mostly use as to-buy reminder list, select a few at a time:

Matter - Iain M Banks; Hardcover
20th Century Selected Poems - Osip Mandelshtam; Paperback
My Last Sigh - Luis Bunuel; Paperback
Vertigo - W Sebald; Paperback
Selected Stories of Robert Walser - Susan Sontag; Paperback
Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York - Luc Sante; Paperback
I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 - Victor Klemperer; Paperback
I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942-1945 - Victor Klemperer; Paperback
Chess Story - Stefan Zweig; Paperback
Notes on the Cinematographer - Robert Bresson; Paperback
H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life - Michel Houellebecq; Paperback

ok i just ordered the banks, the bunuel and the mandelshtam... somewhat at random.

Fantagraphics had a 1/2 off spring cleaning warehouse sale and I got 3 Krazy Kat & Ignatz compilations, 5 Love & Rockets collections, Ellen Forney's I Love Led-Zeppelin and the graphic adaptation of Paul Auster's City of Glass.

Score!

I am trying not to buy books, sadly.

just bought Lush Life and the Savage Detectives, started the latter.

the ol' bookshelf is getting a little crowded, i think it's time to part with some things.

Always picking them up on the cheap. Only way to live.

Friederich Durrenmatt - The Execution of Justice
Germaine Greer - The Female Enuch
Durgnat on film
William Empson - Some Versions of Pastoral
Robert E.Howard - Conan The Usurper
Nietzche - The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner
Trotsky - The Young Lenin and A Life
Andrea Dworkin - Letters from a Warzone
William Vollmann - The Rainbow Stories
A copy of the I Ching
Three Negro Plays

A week ago I visited my favorite charity bookshop and picked up:

Poems of William Cullen Bryant, a used hardcover 'blue-cloth with gilt decorations, printed on superfine India paper' edition, issued in the Oxford Standard Authors series, for 50 cents. (I'm not a big fan of Bryant, but at that price I'll bite, especially since it takes almost no shelf space.)

A Homeric Dictionary, used paperback. It covers a lot of the specialized or archaic words Homer used, such as ones describing the ship's tackle. 50 cents.

Mr. Sammler's Planet, Saul Bellow. Used paperback in good shape, 50 cents. Reading material for a camping/hiking trip.

Six volumes of Robert Browning's poetry. Parts of the Ohio edition are stupidly cheap (£5 a throw) at the moment & I've only ever had the eye-bleed double-column collected before now. Almost feels wrong to be reading him on a decent page.

Waiting on these from Bookmooch:

Edward Abbey - Desert Solitaire
Michel Houllebecq - Elementary Particles

love finding older hardcover sci-fi books at the thrift store for some reason. though i don't know when i'll get around to reading them all. anyway, found really cool stuff last week (mostly book club editions, but what the hell, for a dollar i'm not picky) got some non-sci-fi stuff too:

element 79 - fred hoyle (this looks CRAZY)

freezing down - anders bodelsen (great cover! danish writer. never heard of him. don't think he was specifically a sci-fi writer)

74 annual world's best sci-fi (DAW)

no one belongs here more than you - miranda july (i know people hate her and love her and hate her? i don't know much about her. the dave eggars quote on the back where he says that lorrie moore fans will want to rub this book all over themselves almost kept me from buying it. eww!)

the werewolf principle - clifford d. simak

ursula k. leguin - the lathe of heaven (such a nice copy! dust jacket and everything)

one step from earth - harry harrison

chocky - john wyndham

a collection from 1959 called *science fiction showcase* with phil k. dick and richard matheson and lots of other biggies

the worlds of clifford d. simak

the ophiuchi hotline - john varley

brothers of earth - c.j. cherryh

in the ocean of night - gregory benford

the persistence of vision - john varley

all the traps of earth - clifford d. simak

the ice people - rene barjavel

nova - samuel r. delany

up the walls of the world - james tiptree jr.

the ring of charon - roger macbride allen

beasts - john crowley

also a larry brown book i've never read. but he ain't sci-fi he's downhome cookin'.

I just ordered The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, trade paperbound, from Amazon for $18.15.

the new one, right? i have the old collection with the larry rivers cover. the new one has lots more stuff in it, i think.

right, the new one.

There's a new collected? I heard about a new selected, but... hunh!

My mistake. The publication date for the Collected Poems in paperbound is Mar 31, 1995, Not "new" by any sensible measure. The Selected Poems has a pub date in 2007.

I enjoyed Lytle Shaw's book on Frank O'Hara, "The Poetics of Coterie", although the last few chapters (on his art writing) didn't do much for me.

Scott's got some good ones in that haul: I loved Crowley's 'Beasts', Wyndham's 'Chocky', Le Guin's 'Lathe of Heaven' and Varley's 'Opiuchi Hotline'.

i will start with those then!

(after i finish the larry brown book i'm reading. shouldn't take me long.)

I rarely post on this thread, but buy way way too much, so it would just be embarrassing.
Today's purchase was too cool not to share though:

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c133/OysteinietsyO/04062008.jpg
(sorry about the poor picture, I only have a camera on my phone)

It claims to be unabridged, but there's no word on who translated the stories. Also, the introduction is simply signed "the editors".
The book is "a volcanic force of world significance" according to famed sexologist (and blurber) Havelock Ellis.

I want more classic with trashy pulp covers plz k thx. This one is part of the "Avon Red & Gold Edition" series. I gather Avon mostly did pulp novels and comics, and are currently a romance imprint for Harpercollins.

That is great.

Then and now...
http://bp0.blogger.com/_hvV0JHPYX_I/SDZWZ3QdB9I/AAAAAAAAAqM/i_0g4i-Xiho/s1600/orwells.jpg

used book haul:

pocket-sized copy of SPEAK MEMORY by Vlad Nabokov w/pictures!

MAFIA USA early 70s anthology of articles about the mob, edited by Nicholas Gage

Friederich Durrenmatt - The Novels (um, more novella size)
AJP Taylor - The Origins of the Second World War
Christopher Hill - The Century of Revolution 1603-1714
Michel Butor - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ape
Robert Pinget - Mahu or The Material
Kathy Acker - Young Lust (its a collection of three novellas)
Marshall McLuhan - Understanding Media

Son of a bitch. My picture vanished. I'll try again... then and now...
http://bp0.blogger.com/_hvV0JHPYX_I/SDZWZ3QdB9I/AAAAAAAAAqM/i_0g4i-Xiho/s1600/orwells.jpg

Fuck, now it vanished again... I meant this.
http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com/2008/05/1984-then-now.html

hemingway - in our time
faulkner - three famous short novels
katherine anne porter - collected short stories
dagoberto gilb - 10 woodcuts of women
toni morrison - sula
mccarthy - cities on the plain

Ford Madox Ford - first 2 of Parades end
Don Marquis - Archy and Mehitabel (6 bucks for awesome 30's edition!!!)

Went to Sydney, had a book binge:

Collis: The Worm Forgives the Plough
Hanley: The Furys
Nell Dunn: Up the Junction (disappointing)
Saroyan: The Amazing Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (also disappointing)
Sartre: Huis Clos & Other Plays
Martin Boyd: Outbreak of Love
Maugham: Christmas Holiday
Highsmith: Two Faces of January
HE Bates: The Something-or-other Girl (can't remember)
SY Agnon (sp?): Two Tales
Violet Trefusis: Hunt the Slipper
Helen Garner: Honour & Other People's Children
Judy Johnson: Jack (enjoyable "verse" novel--really just a novella with big margins and erratic line-breaks, if we're being honest)

plus other stuff I now forget...

I finally found time to take a jaunt to my fave thrift shops and came away with some cheap used books for summer reading material:

Fermat's Enigma, Simon Singh, paperback for $4. A math geek solves Fermat's Last Theorem and the math geek world is agog.

Krakatoa, Simon Winchester, paperback for $4. A spectacular one-day event becomes the excuse for a 400 pp book.

Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel, paperback for 50 cents. The gripping human story that takes you behind the headlines!

Egil's Saga, as a Penguin paperback for $2. I already have this in a larger compendium of Icelandic sagas, but this is a small format, lightweight book I can take on a backcountry hike.

The Royal Game and Other Stories, Stephan Zweig, paperack for 50 cents.

Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, Robert Coram, paperback for $1. I already mentioned this one on the 'what are you reading in summer 2008' thread.

I liked 'Galileo's Daughter' well enough as I recall.

I read Longitude by the same author, last summer. Based on that, I can see that she understands how to write a clear historic narrative that is both popular and not overly shallow or sentimentalized. She's no Barbara Tuchman, in that she seems more a biographer than a historian, but I expect I'll enjoy it well enough also.

I liked Longitude a LOT but Galileo's Daughter was a little dull. The Planets, her latest, is better, informative rambling and eccentric riffs on the solor system. she's got her own style.

'The Royal Game' is ace, and 'Egil's Saga' is good neck-hewing, mighty-thewed drama, too.

today was the last day of the big four day west tisbury book sale. first day, full price. 2nd day, half price. 3rd day, half of that. 4th day, FREE. an entire school gymnasium filled with books. man, i tell you, if i owned a used book store on cape cod, i would be down here with a u-haul truck on free day. people were bringing in dollies and carts and you name it. anyway, i'm getting pickier in my old age, but i still found good stuff to take home. this was the first year that i didn't go early on the first day all breathless like i used to. i went yesterday with the kids and let them grab as many books as they could fit into shopping bags and i perused the cheap videos and got some of them.

here's what i bagged today for FREE!!!!!!:

curtis white - the middle mind (looks like it's right up my cranky alley.)

sylvia townsend warner - selected stories

alfred kazin - starting out in the thirties (always wanted to read this. still need a copy of a walker in the city.)

angela carter - shaking a leg - collected writing (i always pick up angela carter paperbacks and someday i will read them! i think i just like the idea of angela carter.)

hrold brodkey - the world is the home of love & death - stories (i was a big fan of stories in an almost classical mode. his stories can kinda tire you out though. the intensity and feverishness never really lets up.)

angela carter - burning your boats - collected short stories

alice munro - the progress of love (nice 1st ed. hardcover)

theodore sturgeon - god body

john cheever - the stories (super-clean hardcover copy of the massive 1978 collection.)

women of wonder - the contemporary years - science fiction by women from the 1970's to the 1990's (very cool collection! and now i want the previous 40's to 70's volume.)

klaus kinski - kinski uncut

marianne wiggins - bet they'll miss us when we're gone - stories

harlan ellison - an edge in my voice (huge collection of his newspaper/magazine column writing. WAY more harlan ranting than ANYONE would ever need, but i couldn't resist it. good for dipping into the mind of a lunatic.)

mavis gallant - in transit - stories

alfred kazin - an american procession (american writers 1830-1930)

john le carre - a perfect spy (i've never read any le carre. philip roth calls this book "the best english novel since the war" on the back cover. so, i figured it was a good place to start.)

jincy willett - jenny & the jaws of life - stories (reissue of the 80's collection with a forward by david sedaris who calls it "the funniest collection of stories i've ever read." so, there you go.)

stella gibbons - cold comfort farm (julie burchill calls it "very probably the funniest book ever written." so, there you go. love the movie. never read the book. looking forward to it. was it m.coleman who nominated it on the funny book thread?)

gary soto - buried onions

elizabeth bowen - the last september

dorothy allison - cavedweller

brian moore - the great victorian collection

ann beattie - perfect recall - stories

jonathan cott - conversations with glenn gould

edmund wilson - axel's castle (i've read it, but i couldn't remember if i owned a copy.)

richard bausch - the fireman's wife - stories

elizabeth hardwick - a view of my own - essays

e.b. white - writings from the new yorker 1925-1976

claire messud - the emperor's children (i remember hearing this was good. it's in large print though! have you ever read a book in large print? i never have. i guess you get used to it.)

peter devries - let me count the ways (started reading this a month ago and i got a hundred pages in and there were 20 pages missing from the book! a printing error. so, it just so happens that the only devries book at this sale happened to be the same book WITH the missing pages. now i can finish it.)

bill hicks - love all the people - letters, lyrics, routines

richard yates - young hearts crying

kate atkinson - behind the scenes at the museum

paula fox - desperate characters (i've read it, but i'd like to read it again.)

wow!

recently purchased from dudes selling books in front of library (where i do about 95% of my book shopping):

balzac - pere goriot
zola - therese rayquin
wharton - summer
gide - the counterfeiters

I just ordered "The Conquest of the Incas" by John Hemming.

Holy fuck, Scott, I can't believe you got those free. Some amazing stuff in there--the Jincy Willett is one of the best books of short stories I've ever read.

it's a circle game. it's a library sale and on the last day all the other libraries on the island get first dibs and they cart off loads of books for THEIR sales, and the people like me, dragging home all these books, end up giving them to the thrift store (well, i don't that much, but most people do) or donating them later for next year's sale!

i should actually get some stuff together for the thrift store. stuff i won't read again or will never read.

this woman i work with brought two big boxes of books in to work to make room for all the books she knew she would end up getting at the sale. she just put them out for people to take. i ended up taking home, like, 20 of her books a couple of weeks ago!

(it's a bookish place)

people are still sad about the bunch of grapes bookstore here burning up. people loved it. i never buy new books, so my feelings aren't as strong. i'm just glad nobody was hurt. it was a handsome book store though. if i weren't so cash-deprived i'm sure i would have bought stuff there.

you can watch it burn if you happen to be a bibliofirebug:

http://vineyard.plumtv.com/videos/main_street_fire_vineyard_haven

http://www.mvgazette.com/images/photocache/gallery_photo/2284.jpg

http://www.mvgazette.com/images/photocache/gallery_photo/2282.jpg

I went to Value Village and got 2 Poirot books, an old mm ppbck of Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward, and Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay. Awesome.

Those photos are sad.

yeah. they are.

I found the used bookstore near campus that has the nice scholarly titles.

R.L. Ullman, Ancient Writing and its Influence
Marie de France, Fables
Mitchen and Robinson, A Guide To Old English
various, Medieval Literary Criticism
George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things

Swamp Thing Vol 2: Love and Death, Alan Moore/Stephen Bissette

first edition hardcovers of raymond carver's cathedral, where i'm calling from and what we talk about when we talk about love

two alice munro collections

descent of man by t.c. boyle

ultramarine by raymond carver

got that new george pelecanos and junot diaz's 'drown' through my hookup

If anyone likes the Sopranos, go buy "Close" by Martina Cole. I got it as a gift and it's mesmerizing.

Edward Dahlberg - Because I Was Flesh
Mark Crispin Miller - Boxed In: The Culture of TV
Basil Bunting - On Poetry
Harry Mathews & Alastair Brotchie - Oulipo Compendium
Egil Skallagrimsson's Saga
Gilgamesh & Atrahasis (single volume)

I've been book-shopping at my usual cheap bookstores. It's time to 'fess up.

The Spoils of Poynton, Henry James, in a used Penguin Modern Classics paperback, for 50 cents.

On the Shortness of Life, Seneca, in a used Penguin 'Great Ideas' paperback (prob. just one of his many published letters) for 50 cents.

Short Stories: volume 1; A Shahib's War and Other Stories, Rudyard Kipling, in a Penguin Modern Classics used paperback, for $1.99.

The Collosus of Maroussi, Henry Miller, a Penguin used paperback for $1.99. Purchased more for the Greek content than for the Henry Miller authorship.

What is Poetry, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, good condition used paperback for 50 cents. Might be a dud. Too cheap to refuse.