Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

Not even supposed to be buying books, but I did just get the first vol. of Love and Rockets, which I had hitherto unaccountably managed to avoid. Also re-reading The Image of a Drawn Sword by Jocelyn Brooke. The description of an autumnal walk home at the beginning seemed perfect on a drizzly grey Sunday, and combined with which evoked many memories of childhood.

Got this last week!

Also:

Bolano - The Savage Detectives
Bihari - The Satasai (starting on Hindu lit, anyone know much about this, or are able to recommend)
Albert Camus - Selected Essays and Notebooks
Stephen Vizinczey - In Praise of Older Women
Apollinaire - Selected Writings of...

A couple of other things I've bought, read and re-flogged 2nd hand...haven't posted in this thread in an age.

for 10 euro

Huysmans - "Against Nature"
Richard Ford - "The Sportswriter"
Richard Brautigan - "Revenge Of The Lawn"

6 Donald Westlakes,
Poetry of the Forties (Ed. Skelton),
Tension by EM Delafield,
The Governess and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig

Can someone explain to me why it's impossible to find a copy of the Some Hope trilogy for less than like $50,000? By which I mean $48?

small press, american debut of a small-market author, that's just what happens to used prices under low availability?

i bet you could get it from the uk for cheaper with the shipping:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Some-Hope-Edward-St-Aubyn/dp/0330435884/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312082206&sr=8-1

Apparently the trilogy is being rereleased in US paperback but not til Jan 2012.

btw think the book you linked is just the novella some hope, not the trilogy

ohhh. sorry. : / i figured the prices worked out, somehow.

The trilogy is available here for $12, free postage: http://www.bookdepository.com/Some-Hope-Edward-St-Aubyn/9780330435888

A few cheapos from charity shops:

J B Priestley - Literature and Western Man
Doris Lessing - The Fifth Child
Svetlana Alliluyeva - 20 Letters to a Friend
Arthur Koestler - The Sleepwalkers
Theodore Zeldin - An Intimate History of Humanity

that lessing is pretty good

Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions from the kindle store

xpost I think that's also just the novella, not the trilogy

Bought the freedarko basketball history book. Very mcsweenyesque.

over the last month or so:

ezra pound - abc of reading
pound/lewis letters
wyndham lewis - the demon of progress in the arts
original version of graves' goodbye to all that
henry miller - the books in my life
collection of interviews with borges put out by some american university
collection of interviews with john fowles as above
nathalie sarraute - the planetarium
an anna akhmatova prose collection
poets of the millennium gertrude stein selection
recent grove press edition of breton's nadja
biography of guy debord called the game of war by andrew hussey
edition of doblin's berlin alexanderplatz with a section of photos reproduced from fassbinder's adaptation
and an old thames and hudson book on the life and art of henry fuseli

Just arrived: Stefan Collini, THAT'S OFFENSIVE!

think I might enjoy this and feel some agreement with it

A few days ago I nabbed a hardcover copy of the volume 1 of Twain's recently published autobiography. It had been officially removed from the local library's collection, so it has a lot of ex-lib markings on it, and it cost $5. That book is HUGE! But I am fond of Twain, so I am sure I will read most if not all of it. Eventually.

Man, your library ditches books FAST

maybe they found out no one wanted to check it out.

personally i've only read like 20 pages of mine.

that's right, snookered by an academic press's marketing coup

Brodsky - Less than One
Tarjei Vessas - The Birds
Fernando Pessoa - The Book of Disquiet (the really nice Penguin paperback w/that lovely photograph - you know the one I mean - really good intro by Richard Zenith, and more entries than the version I previously read)
Francois Mauriac - Therese

Nice haul!

Merchants of Doubt - Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway
From Hell - Alan Moore
The Mothers Mouth - Dash Shaw
Kafka - David Zane Mariowitz and R. Crumb

Dash Shaw has a new one? Wow

it's actually an old one! from 2006.

http://www.dashshaw.com/imgs/work/mothers_2.png

Clair Wills, THIS NEUTRAL ISLAND

Andy Beckett, WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT

surprisingly decent stock in the remainder shop opposite the British Library

A few more cheapos:

H D F Kitto - The Greeks
Robert Gittings - John Keats
John Wain - The Smaller Sky

I bought a copy of "From the Holy Mountain", by William Dalrymple, because I am interested in Middle East Christians and am willing to read a travel book about them.

Really scored some nice books yesterday/past week:

Selected poems by Pavese, Akhmatova (both on Penguin) and Osip Mandelatam (this one is on nyrb which inludes Conversation About Dante, not on the old Penguin ed. that I'd read before)
Leonardo Sciascia - Equal Danger
Jean Giono - To the Slaughterhouse
Horacio Castellanos Moya - The She-Devil in the Mirror. Have been looking for a novel by him for a while so excited to finally find something.

i've been on the look out for poetry collections with/by mandelstam and akhmatova (only have a collection of her prose)with no luck. any interest in the futurist/zaum type stuff? i have a collection of khlebnikov which i'm finding fairly impenetrable. all i know about giono is that he was one of henry miller's literary crushes.

bought a box of books and salvaged:

pudovkin's film technique and film acting
maya deren's divine horsemen: the living gods of haiti
a study of nineteenth century american utopian communities
and a collection of texts by the levellers

also recently picked up raymond queneau's we always treat women too well, which was a pseudonymous pulp novel pastiche he published in the forties, set in dublin with various joycean allusions throughout.

Halloween is over, so it was safe to venture into Goodwill again (for those outside the USA, this is a charity shop, but with a national reach) now that it isn't thronged with people putting together their costumes from the racks of old clothes. Consequently, today I purchased:

Pale Fire, V. Nabokov, in a decent paperback for $4.

Further Cuttings From Cruiskeen Lawn, Flann O'Brien, in a Dalkey Archive paperback edition, in very good condition, for $3.

Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change, Elizabeth Kolbert, also in a good condition paperback, for $4.

Selected Verse, Frederico Garcia Lorca, ed. Christopher Maurer, a paperback bilingual edition, for $4. I am not sure whether this will be much better, or even as good as the translations in the old New Directions that gives Lorca's brother partial credit as editor. I'll have to compare them.

Jim Newton's Earl Warren biography.

Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming Pool Library, which I never finished.

Hokusai Manga
Cahiers du Cinema : John Ford
Masters Of American Comics
DeRogatis Velvet Underground book
Wonder Of The Age: Master Painters Of India, 1100-1900

pauline kael - kiss kiss bang bang
flannery o'connor - the violent bear it away
sjowall/wahloo - cop killer
henning mankell - the man who smiled & the white lioness
le carre - the honourable schoolboy & smiley's people
godard on godard
tove jansson - the true deceiver
elizabeth hardwick - sleepless nights
ernst junger - storm of steel

Simenon - Dirty Snow
Jacqueline Rose - Albertine
Dante - The New Life
Camara Laye - The Radiance of the King

i bought books today! for myself, not my store. went to amherst books in amherst early this morning. they open at 6:30 a.m. on sunday!! anyway, its a nice store. basement floor is all used stuff. and i went to meetinghouse books in south deerfield which is an awesome store for book fiends. they have a really good eye for peculiar out of print stuff and the prices are fair. plus, its close to the whately antiquarian book store which is also an amazing trip for booknuts. you could spend days in the whately store.

at amherst books:

captain maximus - barry hannah (thinking about him, and i haven't read this one in a zillion years.)

flesh - brigid brophy (they had three handsome paperbacks - u.k. paperbacks from allison & busby - by brophy there and i kinda wish i had picked up all three, despite the fact that i've never read any of her books. they all just looked so nice.)

the connoisseur - evan s. connell

innocence - penelope fitzgerald

honored guest - joy williams (cuz you can never have too many.)

and i bought the pauline kael biography. a new book! can't remember the last time i bought one of those.

at meetinghouse books:

the last and the first - ivy compton-burnett (nice american first edition. kinda like the idea of having all her books in hardcover.)

van gogh's room at arles - stanley elkin

the olive of minerva or the comedy of a cuckold - edward dahlberg (nice hardcover copy. looks like new. "it's a riffraff age of shame kenneled like any mongrel.")

a father and his fate - ivy compton-burnett (oh, right, one more. very nice u.k. 2nd edition hardcover)

land under england - joseph o'neill

if all else fails... - craig strete (never heard of him! nice hardcover 1st edition. psychedelic fantasy short stories and an introduction by borges! borges calls him a genius, so who am i to argue.)

an infinite summer - christopher priest

find him! - elaine kraf (i already own the hardcover of this, but i couldn't resist the softback for 2 bucks. such an insane book. totally bonkers. someone should put it out again. have to wonder if kathy acker read this in 1977. its the kind of book you want to read out loud to someone, but you wouldn't know who the hell that person would be.)

a country doctor - sarah orne jewett ( will buy all S.O.J.)

the blush - elizabeth taylor (ditto)

fort privilege - kit reed

getting into death and other stories - thomas m. disch (this is the most i paid for anything today other than the new kael thing. 15 bucks for nice 1st edition. i have a REALLY hard time finding old disch books in used book stores these days. or bad luck. one or the other. so, i buy them on sight.)

i'm dying laughing - christina stead

miss herbert (the suburban wife) - christina stead

seven poor men of sydney - christina stead

cotter's england - christina stead

i bought books today! for myself, not my store. went to amherst books in amherst early this morning. they open at 6:30 a.m. on sunday!! anyway, its a nice store. basement floor is all used stuff. and i went to meetinghouse books in south deerfield which is an awesome store for book fiends. they have a really good eye for peculiar out of print stuff and the prices are fair. plus, its close to the whately antiquarian book store which is also an amazing trip for booknuts. you could spend days in the whately store.

at amherst books:

captain maximus - barry hannah (thinking about him, and i haven't read this one in a zillion years.)

flesh - brigid brophy (they had three handsome paperbacks - u.k. paperbacks from allison & busby - by brophy there and i kinda wish i had picked up all three, despite the fact that i've never read any of her books. they all just looked so nice.)

the connoisseur - evan s. connell

innocence - penelope fitzgerald

honored guest - joy williams (cuz you can never have too many.)

and i bought the pauline kael biography. a new book! can't remember the last time i bought one of those.

at meetinghouse books:

the last and the first - ivy compton-burnett (nice american first edition. kinda like the idea of having all her books in hardcover.)

van gogh's room at arles - stanley elkin

the olive of minerva or the comedy of a cuckold - edward dahlberg (nice hardcover copy. looks like new. "it's a riffraff age of shame kenneled like any mongrel.")

a father and his fate - ivy compton-burnett (oh, right, one more. very nice u.k. 2nd edition hardcover)

land under england - joseph o'neill

if all else fails... - craig strete (never heard of him! nice hardcover 1st edition. psychedelic fantasy short stories and an introduction by borges! borges calls him a genius, so who am i to argue.)

an infinite summer - christopher priest

find him! - elaine kraf (i already own the hardcover of this, but i couldn't resist the softback for 2 bucks. such an insane book. totally bonkers. someone should put it out again. have to wonder if kathy acker read this in 1977. its the kind of book you want to read out loud to someone, but you wouldn't know who the hell that person would be.)

a country doctor - sarah orne jewett ( will buy all S.O.J.)

the blush - elizabeth taylor (ditto)

fort privilege - kit reed

getting into death and other stories - thomas m. disch (this is the most i paid for anything today other than the new kael thing. 15 bucks for nice 1st edition. i have a REALLY hard time finding old disch books in used book stores these days. or bad luck. one or the other. so, i buy them on sight.)

i'm dying laughing - christina stead

miss herbert (the suburban wife) - christina stead

seven poor men of sydney - christina stead

cotter's england - christina stead

plus, at meetinghouse i got no tax + 10% discount on account of i'm a dealer and all. (i usually don't even bring it up, but i brought up my store when the owner was tallying me up. i always forget that i sell books.)

the connoisseur - evan s. connell

innocence - penelope fitzgerald

an infinite summer - christopher priest

i've never read thst one! i'm definitely a fan.

of evan connell. and john huston.

still can't bring myself to read son of the morning star though. i really should. i'm sure its good.

oops i didn't see that double post. ilx was getting kooky on me. i used to be a moderator here, but i don't think i am anymore... otherwise i would zap one of those.

still can't bring myself to read son of the morning star though. i really should. i'm sure its good.

Son of the Morning Star takes a somewhat accretive, meandering approach to the whole subject that allows him to take about a thousand selective details and build what amounts to a pointillist portrait of Custer and the world he operated within. If you are expecting a straightforward narrative, you'll be bewildered fairly quickly. Read it with open curiosity and a willingness to be led, and it is a very rewarding book.

That's a good description, Aimless. One thing of his that has really stayed with me is a short story about a lion.

A euro each in a charity shop:

William Golding - "Lord Of The Flies"
Nadine Gordimer - "The Late Bourgeois World"

if all else fails... - craig strete (never heard of him! nice hardcover 1st edition. psychedelic fantasy short stories and an introduction by borges! borges calls him a genius, so who am i to argue.)

Probably faked. Strete got into some controversy for apparently m.s.u.

wow, really? i will have to read up on that.

okay, this is what i came up with using my ace google detective skills:

Death In The Spirit House: Two writers, Ron Montana and Craig Strete, collaborated for a time, and then Montana later accused Strete of ripping off his novel, Death In The Spirit House. The case became a huge brou-ha-ha, with writers taking both sides, but author Sheldon Teitelbaum investigated and decided that it was more a misunderstanding than a case of out-and-out theft. (And Teitelbaum, who seems to have some history with Harlan Ellison, blamed Ellison for escalating the feud and hooking Montana up with his attorney.)