Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

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.

"Edward Dahlberg - Because I Was Flesh"

Yay!! My Hero!

er, dahlberg is. but you too!

becoming a writer - dorothea brande
empire falls - richard russo
mind of clover: zen buddhist ethics - robert aitken

Yay!! My Hero!
Woohoo!

er, dahlberg is.
Oh...

but you too!
Woohoo!

Bought a used 5-volume collection of Norse sagas.
Shame I bought Egil's saga just a couple of days ago, as this contains the same translation.
Also got Carmen Laforet's "Nada".

I went to Powell's Books where I traded in some books I didn't want to keep - and came home with:

Complete Novels of Flann O'Brien, in the new Everyman hardcover edition, $25. This purchase was just an upgrade, from some fusty old paperbacks I already owned to a new hard cover.

Collected Poems: 1943-2004, Richard Wilbur, a new (remaindered) paperback edition for $8.98. A middling good poet. He doesn't get too far from the concrete, which I like about him. He is pleasant, too, but that only gets you so far. Passion is unfortunately rare in his work. Wit does make some appearances.

christina stead - the man who loved children
tom mccarthy - remainder
jason lutes - berlin: city of stones
woody allen - without feathers
chris adrian - the children's hospital

I bought the set of six for $15 at the book festival today
http://www.postmodernlibrary.com/

I liked the concept (even though I could probably just use the internet to the same effect) and the aesthetic, and I was impressed with the guy's idea in an entrepreneurial way as well.

Notting Hill Comic and Book Exchange made me happy. Compact OEDII for £30. Eyebleed city! Also Wedekind's Lulu plays (trans Stephen Spender) & Journey to a War by Auden/Isherwood for a couple of pounds each.

Just had to put all my books into storage because I am currently of no fixed abode. The only solution was... to buy more books, cheap as possible.

The Fashion in Shrouds - Margery Allingham (one of the supposed queens of '30s and onward detective story fiction, for those who don't know)

Very strange style. Remarkably stilted. Something about the way psychological observations keep on intruding into the dialogue. Also contains things like 'mental' used in a sort of modern way -
'My dear girl, forgive me. I was thinking aloud. I forgot you were in this. I'm mental.'

And this advice to an upset woman, from Albert Campion himself:
'What you need, my girl, is a good cry or a nice rape— either, I should think.'

Makes your eyes water don't it.

Also

Mere Christianity by CS Lewis, from a series of wartime lectures on the radio. A sort of step by step guide as to why you should believe in God. Of historical interest mainly. Some of the presuppositions sound odd to the modern ear, certainly not for cultural relativists.

Got a volume of selected Keats and became mildly obsessed with Ode to a Nightingale. Contains both the rather silly 'blushful Hippocrene' (sounds like a pompous twerp at a dinner party - 'Spot of the blushful Hippocrene, Ratsey? Not bad if I do say so myself), and also 'Bacchus and his pards' - I say, you ARE a poet, Keats old chap aren't you?

But also the beautiful 'tender is the night', 'Now more than ever seems it rich to die,/To cease upon the midnight with no pain.'

So I kept on reading it over and over like a moonstruck victim of calf love.

Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace, in a well-used paperback edition that was printed in Great Britain (Abacus) and somehow found its way to my local thrift book shop, for 50 cents. I think this copy could survive one more reading before starting to shed random leaves.

Practising History: Selected Essays, Barbara Tuchman, in a used paperback, for $1. I like her approach to history at least half the time.

The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins, in a used Penguin paperback edition, for 50 cents. There is an off chance I will read this and like it. I am willing to give it a try.

C'mon, Wilbur is front-rank, a master of restraint.

Robert Lyons Danly, ed., In the Shade of Spring Leaves, the Life and Writings of Higuchi Ichiyo, A Woman of Letters in Meiji Japan. Completely unknown to me, but it won a translation award.
Edward P. Jones, The Known World.
Pio Baroja, The Restlessness of Shanti Andia. Also completely unknown to me.

That last one was, uh, "free", never mind why.

Mishima - After the Banquet
Kobo Abe - The Face of Another
A nice looking comp of Hart Crane's poetry
Cortazar - The Blow-up and Other stories
Nathalie Saurrate - Childhood
George Steiner - On difficulty and other essays
Kenneth Tynan - A view of the English Stage
Harry Matthews - Cigarettes
Marguerite Duras - The Sailor from Gibraltar
Thomas M.Disch - 334
Before the Golden Age 2 (ed. Asimov)

Pity I can't read as fast as I find.

'The Moonstone' is great, but Collins' 'The Woman in White' is even better.

I got my bookstore fix today at Powell's City of Books and Goodwill. I came home with:

Collected Poems, Mary Barnard, with an introduction by William Stafford, in a used hard cover, first (& possibly the only) printing, published in 1979 by Breitenbush Books. She's a local poet who achieved a minor national reputation. Her best known work was a translation of Sappho. This was in very good shape at $6.95.

White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946-2006, Donald Hall. Used paperback in nice condition for $8.95. He was Poet Laureate of the USA for a couple of years. (These days they hand that title around pretty rapidly, which is a nice bit of publicity for the recipient and helps them sell a few more books of poetry.)

The Great Influenza, John M. Barry, used paperback for $3.99. A history of the 1919-20 epidemic that killed 20,000,000 people. The blurbs made it sound very promising.

Picked up Louis MacNeice's Collected Poems (the nice hardback edition from last year) for half price in a second hand bookshop, good as new! Ha cha cha! (Gamaliel Ratsey does an ill-advices jig).

Also picked up for a friend's birthday Hag's Nook by John Dickson Carr - the first of the Gideon Fell mysteries, and picked up The Mad Hatter Mystery and Poison in Jest by him for myself at the same time.

I did some book shopping today as a birthday self-indulgence. I brought home:

Notes From the Air: Selected Later Poems, by John Ashberry in a new (remaindered) hardcover edition, for a mere $12.95. I've been eyeing this for months, but was unwilling to splurge $35 for it. I didn't have to, after all.

Collected Poems, by Patrick Kavanagh, used paperback in very good condition for $6.50.

Poems & Other Writings, by Henry W. Longfellow, used in excellent condition, in the Library of America hard cover edition for $9.95. This is a beautifully printed and designed book that makes it much easier to read L's poetry, which is a needlessly difficult chore in cheap editions.

in the Library of America hard cover edition for $9.95. This is a beautifully printed and designed book that makes it much easier to read L's poetry, which is a needlessly difficult chore in cheap editions.

what's the deal with library of america editions? whenever i read philip roth, there's that foreword about how his work is being published in definitive library editions etc etc. i looked through some once, and it was like three-books-in-one with really tiny print. is this appealing? is this the same thing?

i am just about to finish the new roth, anyway, and am otherwise trucking through non fiction like manifesta etc

Meridon, Phillipa Gregory

Novel 11, Book 18 (Dag Solstad)

Edition 69 (Vitezslav Nezval)

The Book of Other People (Zadie Smith, ed.)

Life: A User's Manual (Georges Perec)

A new translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin by Stanley Mitchell (see how this measure up to the Charles Johnston one I love)
England under the Norman and Anvengin kings 1075-1225, Robert Bartlett
The closing of the western mind, Charles Freeman

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
The Book Of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

(20% off at Waterstones, so I splurged)

got orhan pamuk's "snow" at a hospital book fair for $1