Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

As part of my continuing quest to fill the gaping hole in my life with Stuff (and fill in gaps in my education):
Alasdair Gray, Lanark
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (Read this ages ago and loved it, but I lost my copy and I'm not sure which translation it was. This is the Vintage Burgin/O'Connor translation. I'll probably end up picking up the Pevear/Volokhonsky on Penguin soon enough, since it looks like it was received fairly well)
Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch

i keep forgetting to email you the name of that oulipo compendium, gah! i will try to remember tonight!

No hurry- I'm guessing it's the Mathews/Brotchie Oulipo Compendium.

(It's worth checking out the rest of Atlas's catalog if you don't know them already; they've got some great stuff from Jarry, Bataille, etc, and a Satie book that I really wish was still in print...)

yes that's the one (the special edition)!

nyrb is reprinting bruce duffy's the world as i found it! (a novelized version of wittgenstein's life and thus also the lives of bertrand russell and g.e. moore.)

i'm taking out my old copy now—i had never made time to read it before because it repeated so much of the actual biography that i knew (though it was written before the monk or mcguinness biographies)—and it's a very weird sensation. anyplace the narrative doesn't delve too much into a novelistic perspective on characters or on a dramatic scene, it's very hard to distinguish from the received versions of the intellectual history of the period that fill out nine tenths of any work in philosophy about these guys.

Very little in the last couple of months:

Mishima - The Sound of Waves
Celine - Guignol's Band

About it I think

Was up in Buxton, wandering the Peaks. There's an amazing second-hand bookshop there, Scriveners, five floors.

http://theidiotandthedog.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/img_0158.jpg

Anyway, picked up two Barry Malzbergs (I enjoyed Underlay so much) -

The Falling Astronauts

from the blurb -

Martin is effectively put under wraps, until the pilot of a moon capsule, loaded with nuclear weaponry, goes beserk (sic) and a nightmare developes, threatening to engulf the world - a nightmare that only Martin could end

and

The Men Inside

Earth's Elit - Or Its Outcasts?

For a selected, genetically-fitted few among the teeming millions of the twenty-first century, to become a Messenger for the Hulm Institute is to escape the prison that is life, that is earth

A MESSENGER IS NOBLE!

A MESSENGER IS ONE OF THE CHOSEN!

A MESSENGER IS A FORERUNNER OF A TIME IN WHICH FEAR AND DISEASE WILL DISAPPEAR FOR EVER

And inside a Messenger's head is murder, impotence and despair.

Some lolz to be had switching out 'messenger' for 'ilxor' there.

Also a small volume of Browning's poetry (i've only got large volumes, and an Italian facing page translation edition) and the first part of AJ Ayer's autobiography for g/f, but it looked interesting, so I might nab it.

Elit Elite

just the instructions, which is keeping me going, due to being the same size as a rabbit -

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4088/5096923270_36ae057793.jpg

:-D

Great photo!

my nyrb 'the world as i found it' has arrived. it has a new intro by some dude but has dropped the old post-face/interview by the author.

it has a new intro by some dude

!

not that dude. just some other dude.

specifically, david leavitt.

Great photo!

― buildings with goats on the roof (James Morrison), Friday, 22 October 2010 00:15 (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not mine sadly, i just stole it from the internet

Mentioned infinite jest upthread: found the size daunting but as a read it's thus far a joy and not a tough slog at all. About 150p in.Not that I'm averse to a slog on occasion, if the hard work is rewarded.

<3 infinite jest so much + agree that it's not a slog at all

Lions Club Book Shed haul...

Evgenia Tur - Antonia
Yury Trifonov - Disappearance --- a couple of interesting-looking Russian novels
Stephen Benatar - Recovery - 2 novellas
Raymond Williams - Loyalties
Geoffrey Household - Rough Shoot

Snorri Sturluson - Eddas
A couple of the Collins New Naturalist series - plants and insects. (Cheap on amazon, sort of information I like, & I do love their covers.)
Penguin and Faber books of Irish verse. (The big new Penguin one intrigued me, but I thought I should catch up, see if I'm back at the point, for the first time in an age, where I want to read quite a lot of Irish poetry. I don't think I am.)
Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets (The rolling poetry thread made me realise I was really out of touch with what's going on at the mo in Brit poetry, this seemed a sensible place to start.)

Alan Garner, Strandloper. Promises to be ace.

stalingrad - antony beevor
life and fate - vasily grossman
the world at night - alan furst

Gene Wolfe - Shadow & Claw and Sword & Citadel

wow, the new twain autobiography is huuuuge.

Twain liked to write, not edit.

his (present) editors also seem fond of writing.

Hesperus books lying round the office again, did no-one else want:

Frank Wedekind - Mine-haha
Tolstoy - A Confession
Goethe - The Madwoman on a Pilgrimage

?

Are they mad?

A couple of the Collins New Naturalist series - plants and insects. (Cheap on amazon, sort of information I like, & I do love their covers.)

^ this series is mad collectable and firsts do go for good money. WIsh I had more cash to buy them as they come out...

Really like all 3 of those Hesperus. In fact, i like almost everything Hesperus puts out, but they've been missing publication dates right and left for more than a year now. Stuff due out mid 2009 is still not in print. Argh!

Reading Storm Jameson's 'In the Second Year', from 1936: set in 1942, in a Britain ruled by the Fascists. Very, very good so far.

may have mentioned in passing in one of the publishing today discussions, but am baffled as to how the Hesperus/OneWorld/Alma nexus make any money putting out slightly too expensive editions of stuff that interests 38 people. What are their bankers? Am I imagining things, or have they bought the Calder list, except for Beckett? Something really cheering abt their eccentricity. 'Kafka's Metamorphosis, with a foreword by Martin Jarvis'.

Oneworld own Calder, definitely. Hesperus is a different entity, though the people who now run Oneworld/Calder were the people who set up Hesperus, then left in a mysterious huff.

another iliad haul:

gore vidal - burr
george orwell - a collection of essays
gregory battcock, ed. - minimal art: a critical anthology
arthur rimbaud - selected poems and letters
paul auster - the ny trilogy
balzac - eugenie grandet

De Quincey - On Murder
A Panther collection of JG Ballard short stories
Arthur Schnitzler - Selected Short Fiction

xyzzzz: three gems!

Yeah - really pleased with the Schnitzler, James.

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/65/a9/228ceb6709a08caad8074110.L.jpg

roald dahl-my uncle oswald (for a book club i'm in)
andre gide-the immoralist (impulse buy on amazon)
john masters-casanova (also for book club)
robert musil-the confusions of young torless (finally gonna give this a go...)

Carlo Collodi - Pinocchio
Thomas M. Disch - Camp Concentration

bought a used copy of Kristeva's Powers of Horror that was in great condition, and a cheap paperback of Idylls of the King because I'm always down to read more poetry

flipping through the Tennyson at random, I loved this:

[. . . ] and Earl Doorm
Struck with a knife's haft hard against the board,
And call'd for flesh and wine to feed his spears.
And men brought in whole hogs and quarter beeves,
And all the hall was dim with steam of flesh.
And none spake word, but all sat down at once,
And ate with tumult in the naked hall,
Feeding like horses when you hear them feed[.]

^^ sweet

bought a used copy of Kristeva's Powers of Horror that was in great condition, and a cheap paperback of Idylls of the King because I'm always down to read more poetry

Aha -- I begin to see the pattern

oh fuck I have a pattern?

I have a habit of saying that.

I see the pattern emerging

lately i have bought…

david harvey, the limits of capital
porter abbott, diary fiction
a couple of post-deleuze books about… stuff, machines and such
a post-cavell study of animals and our lives with them by… someone

birthday gifts purchased for me:

dark star, alan furst - requested as a gift, since i would like to try to read his novels in order.
the nutshell studies of unexplained death, corinne may botz - looks really fascinating
armageddon: the battle for germany 1944-45, max hastings
autobiography of mark twain, vol 1
the spell of the sensuous: perception and language in a more-than-human world, david abram

Kundera - The Joke
Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude

Disch, Fun With Your New Head.

What a title!