Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

I picked up a Loeb Classical Library hardcover copy of Cicero's Orations, volume III, today for fifty cents. It is decent condition, too. Just a bit of water spotting on the spine. I made a pact with myself long ago that I will buy any Loeb edition I find for $3 or less, regardless of title or condition.

LRB 10% off night:

Qiu Miaojin - Last Words from Montmarte
Victor Serge - Conquered City

I spent $11 on these five books today:

The Buccaneers of America, Alexander Exquemelin, used Penguin Classics paperback in good condition, $2.

Lady With Lapdog and Other Stories, Anton Chekhov, used Penguin Classics paperback in good condition, $2.

The Book of the Courtier, Baldesar Castiglione, used Penguin Classics paperback in good condition, $3.

Three Tales, Gustave Flaubert, used Penguin Classics paperback in good condition, $1.

Collected Stories, 1891-1910, Edith Wharton, used Library of America hardcover in very good condition, $3.

Short stories just don't command very high prices these days, I guess.

Three Tales might be my favorite Flaubert. Or at least the middle one.

Copendium the anthology of Julian Cope reviews. I read a lot of them as album of the months at his site.
Chickenhawk the book about a vietnam helicopter pilot that I started 24 years ago but had nicked at the time. Cheap find in a 2nd hand bookshop.
A book on Mexican cooking. Really must use some of these recipe books and learn to cook.
Flashback! #5 great psych-prog booksize tome.
Need to get
David Stubbs' Future Days krautrock book,
The Victorian Tailor on Victorian Tailoring
and Claire Shaeffer's book on Fabric

Connie Willis - Passage, Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog
Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men in a Boat/Three Men on the Bummel
E. M. Forster - Hardcover omnibus feat. A Room With A View, Howard's End, and Maurice; $2 from a public library book sale

graham harman's prince of networks, last night

The texts for my Fall grad course ("Death and the Victorians"):

Anne Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
George Gissing, The Nether World
H. Rider Haggard, She
Bram Stoker, Dracula

(Wuthering Heights is in there too, but I already own that one.)

Did a bit of recreational book shopping today and brought home:

Emma, Jane Austen. Fifty cents. Haven't read any Austen since college. I probably should revisit her.

My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin. $3. I have not seen the movie made of this, so the book has not been spoiled for me. I hope it is good.

Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Thomas de Quincy. I read this about five years ago, so I may not hang onto it, but I saw one of the Oxford World Classics pocket-sized hard cover copies for $2 and had to bring it home.

Joyce - Ulysses. Probably dumb, needed to get an annotated ed, but I think I'll scribble crap in the margins etc. Its an old ed., with an essay by Ellmann.

Buchner - The Complete Plays. A real, real fkn find. All the plays w/Lenz, a bunch of letters, a lecture "On Cranial Nerves" + intro and annotations. Can't wait to read this.

Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook. Forgot that one!

xpost http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Annotated-Notes-James-Joyces/dp/0520253973/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1409263695&sr=8-3&keywords=ulysses+joyce

This is a great companion to Ulysses if you don't have an annotated edition of the novel -- I've actually managed to plod through about half the novel thanks to this companion, after trying and failing several times to read it unaided. I managed to find a used version, it's great.

Only downside is having to lug around TWO huge tomes rather than just the one. It's basically a stay-put kind of undertaking, lol

Did he do that for Finnegan's Wake? Or do I have to rely on Joseph Campbell's A Skeleton Key To it??

Thanks, my local has the Oxford classics ed. of the '22 text. If I see the guide when on any browses through the 2nd hand racks over here I'll be tempted.

I read it once unaided, don't know how I finished it but if I have any one quality as a book reader is that I can keep turning pages.

I'll also be highlighting, there is a marked up version in progress. xp

So the Oxford classics is heavily annotated - already had a look and have to say the extent to which it is so probably isn't necessary, that's why I'm thinking of scribbling bits and pieces in the margins in this cheap 2nd hand one. I'll read 2-3 chapters at the time.

Miroslav Holub (vol. in the Penguin Modern European Poets ed.)
Frank Wedekind - The Lulu Plays & other Sex Tragedies

Sold a few for:

Kafka - The Castle tr. J Underwood
Beckett - Mercier and Camier.

D.H. Lawrence - Selected Poetry
Four Greek Poets (vol. in the Penguin Modern European Poets ed.)
Kafka - The Diaries (read it but needed my own copy)

I like Holub. Recently bought the expanded Poems, Before and After myself, along with a Szymborska selected and um something by Enzensberger (probably the Penguin MEP, it's in the post) and something else by Zbigniew Herbert. Just hit a euro-poetry mood.

Holub was good, but I don't know - found myself thinking his verse is too free.

I saw Herbert's Complete Poems and also a collection of Umberto Saba's stuff at Judd btw. Really need to control myself, breathe and get round to it slowly.

ikwym, he can feel a bit loose or thin or something - like it's an idea rather than a poem.

I've seen a couple of things that have been uncertain about that Herbert, & think the trans is a step down from the older ones. I haven't really looked at it – I've only read the Carpenters' versions.

I went to see Holub read, once. He gave every impression of being a delightful fellow, and finding his handsome slim Penguin Modern European Poets volume in a manky little bookshop in Sidmouth in the mid '80s got me started on collecting that series.

"Augustus," John Williams
"The Peregrine," J.A. Baker
"Gilead," Marilynne Robinson
"The Complete Poems of Cavafy," C.P. Cavafy
"The Complete Short Novels," D.H. Lawrence
"The Art of Worldly Wisdom," Baltasar Gracian
"Inner Voices: Selected Poems," Richard Howard
"A Time to Keep Silence," Patrick Leigh Fermor
"Light and Shade: New and Selected Poems," Tom Clark
"The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie," Agota Kristof
"Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas," Arthur Schnitzler

The intro iirc had a few arguments with what Holub said/the attitudes, i.e. that reading poems should be as normal an activity as reading the paper or going to a football match, which is fine and yet if you said so out randomly..

The series seems highly regarded as translations. I saw a piece on Ungaretti which said that the versions by Patrick Creagh seemed superior (and I've got that on order at my library). Penguin should try and re-issue the series but er, you couldn't 'monetize' it. xp

Michael Jackson's Dangerous, Susan Fast (33 1/3)
Burning Daylight, Christine Fellows (poetry collection/new album combo)

"A Time to Keep Silence," Patrick Leigh Fermor

― cakelou, Tuesday, October 7, 2014 11:41 AM"

I read this recently, its excellent.

Collected Poems, Dorothy Parker, used paperback, fifty cents.
Cool, Calm & Collected: Collected Poems, Carolyn Kizer, ex-lib hardcover, fifty cents.

Veena Das - Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary
Nancy Scheper-Hughes - Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil

I'm excited about the Scheper-Hughes. The anthology excerpt I've read is some haunting writing.

her best collection imho xp http://www.amazon.com/Portable-Dorothy-Penguin-Classics-Edition/dp/0143039539

i should post here more often. my recent purchases:

Shooters: The Toughest Men in Professional Wrestling, Jonathan Snowden
The Wizards of Armageddon, Fred Kaplan
Nightmare Alley, William Lindsay Gresham
The Jewish Writings, Hannah Arendt
Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke

The Archimedes Codex: How A Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing The True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist, R. Netz and W. Noel, used hardcover in excellent condition, for $3. Apparently, the title:subtitle is so long that it required two authors! But it was cheap and the subject seems intriguing, so...

Fantomas Versus the Multinational Vampires: An Attainable Utopia
by Julio Cortázar
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/1584351349.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

semi-fictional novella Cortazar wrote after finding out that he, Susan Sontag, Alberto Moravia and others had been written into bizarre 1970s Mexican superhero comic Fantomas

Ha! I may seek that out.

Are the multinational vampires pro book burning or anti book burning?

Very pro

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51rbHLxrSjL._SL500_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-big,TopRight,35,-73_OU01_AA300_.jpg

The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, The Origins of the New Conservativism, and the Transformation of American Politics

I remember Wallace from my childhood, I think a lot of Tea Partiers don't. How have I missed this one?

charity book sale

nonfic
Kurlansky - Salt: A World History
Anscombe - introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I know the main problems of Tractatus but I never read it closely enough to even get the arguments.
Hofstadter - I Am A Strange Loop. I enjoyed GEB as a 20 year old. His intros in The Mind's I were annoying. Not sure if I'll still like him.
Atwood - Survival

fiction
Chabon - Gentlemen of the Road. I think this his only novel I haven't owned or read before.
Lethem - The Fortress of Solitude. had it from the library before but didn't finish it.
Gaddis - JR
Tolkein - Fellowship of the Ring. tried it as a teenager, got fed up around 150 pages in where the hobbits go to yet another random place and meet yet another random hobbit who doesn't contribute to the plot.
Marai - Casanova in Bolzano. tried Embers before but didn't finish it. should get back to it.
Ngaio Marsh - Omnibus volume 2. read one of her short stories before and didn't like it. But I like classic mysteries, so why not.
Munro - Runaway

Marai - Casanova in Bolzano.

Seriously, go straight to the source, Casanova's own memoirs. Such an amazing book

Having said that, Arthur Schnitzler's 'Casanova's Return to Venice' is a beautiful book.

Hofstadter - I Am A Strange Loop. I enjoyed GEB as a 20 year old. His intros in The Mind's I were annoying. Not sure if I'll still like him.

Just ordered Interrupting My Train of Thought, by a certain someone.

Robert Burton - The Anatomy of Melancholy. Finally found a cheap copy of the NYRB pb! Made a crappy end of week better.

let us know when you're done with it, haha

Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau. Have wanted to read his Chiendent/Bark Tree/Witchgrass for decades. This turned up in a local shop yesterday so had to grab it.
Want to see the film too.

let us know when you're done with it, haha

― j., Friday, October 24, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't see a problem if I get into the prose and have a window of time.

:-D

one of my teachers read it in school, out of a resolve to have done so; she said it took her the whole summer iirc

Spent my monopoly money off the Notting Hill book exchange on:

Tibor Dery - Story of a Dog. Read it before, great to have a copy of this classic at home.
Jim Thompson - The Grifters. Ditto. (I think I have about ten of his now so might do a little project of reading them all in a go)
Natsume Soseki - Botchan.

I should not buy books between now and my next interstate move, but:

Eimear McBride - A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing
Ben Lerner - 10:04
Walter Benjamin - Radio Benjamin
Henri Lefebvre - Critique of Everyday Life, vol. 1
Jackqueline Frost - Young Americans

I love Jim Thompson but have never read The Grifters.

Last week I went to the bookstore looking for Christmas presents for my kids, and ended up getting two Georges Simenon mysteries and George Saunders' latest collection, all for myself. I did get one picture book also, but still felt a bit guilty.

i read his book about the bennedetti in college + really liked it, so i picked up Carlo Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms to read

i got some simenon too, though in my case it was a ten novel omnibus, which i'm about halfway through: finding him ridiculously addictive.

algernon blackwood - john silence: physician extraordinary (sort of an anti-sherlock holmes in that he "solves" his cases through sympathy/intuition rather than science/deduction)

thomas pynchon - gravity's rainbow (been feeling the urge to reread this lately since it's been over a decade since i first read it and ended up lucking into a nice cheap copy of the first uk paperback edition)

rené daumal - le contre-ciel (poetry) & pataphysical essays

dover edition of the drawings of william blake