Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

went to an annual used book sale and bought these for $1 each
Lloyd Alexander - The Black Cauldron
John Fowles - A Maggot
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Unconsoled and When We Were Orphans
Murakami - 1Q84
David Eggers - You Shall Know Our Velocity
Mick Foley - Have a Nice Day (autobiography of a pro wrestler, notable for not being ghostwritten)

then went back on their last day and they had all hardcovers at 25 cents, so I went out with a box full --
John Irving - The Hotel New Hampshire
William Trevor - The Hill Bachelors (short stories)
Arturo Perez-Reverte - The Painter of Battles (I enjoyed The Dumas Club, but The Flanders Panel was shit; I have low expectations for this one)
Margaret Atwood - Life Before Man
"Luther Blisset" - Q (already had a paperback version)
Toni Morrison - Paradise
Cordwainer Smith - The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction
Arthur C. Clarke - 2010
Ira Levin - Sliver
an Agatha Christie collection
Tom Wolfe - The Right Stuff
Bauhaus (heavy coffee table book)
Simon Winchester - A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 (random pick -- had a nice cover)

Haynes guide to the Millennium Falcon

Doctor Who handbook for William Hartnell, will probably want the next 3 if I can get decent copies.

Got a bunch of books for my birthday:

Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

xposts: i remember a maggot as being really good. think that must have been his last published novel?

We Need To Talk About Kevin
Flappers (thing about 6 women of teh jazz ae, I already read the more general one)

& a thing on wood and woodworking since I'm doing a short woodturning course

all from a charity shop yesterday.

Vineland paperbk in this cover

http://i43.tower.com/images/mm112099411/vineland-pynchon-thomas-hardcover-cover-art.jpg

bought

david mitchell the thousand autumns of jacob de zoet

yesterday

Mary martin's Sewing Bible
a sewing bee related book that looks like it should be quite useful, nicely presented etc. But I think it covers ground also covered elsewhere. it was just in TKMAxx for partially reduced price so I thought I'd grab it.

How To Play Guitar step by step
About time i sat down and actually learnt how to play the thing.

i bought a copy of marcus aurelius, and an old modern library reader of hellenistic philosophy, and a copy of anne carson's lectures on simonides & paul celan, and also her book on eros, and maggie nelson's bluets, and maybe something else i forgot in my insane frenzy of bookbuying

oh yeah a sartre reader and that nyrb selection of his essays

Roseanna (1965) by Sjöwall and Wahlöö is the first novel in their detective series revolving around Martin Beck and his team.

Love those Martin Beck books. So downbeat and dry and oddly funny.

I agree, although there was one that I read in which the tone felt a little off, can't remember which though.

The ninth goes a bit Die Hard

Cheap paperbacks at library booksales:
Theodore Sturgeon - Visions and Venturers
Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man and Virtual Unrealities
Angela Carter - Heroes and Villains
Mary Gaitskill - Two Girls, Fat and Thin
David Markson - Wittgenstein's Mistress and This is Not a Novel [signed and inscribed: "poetry does make things happen"]
Ursula K. LeGuin - A Wizard of Earthsea, Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore
Octavia Butler - Wild Seed
Dawn Lundy Martin - Life in a Box is a Pretty Life
Ted Berrigan - The Sonnets

General weakness of will:
Samuel Delany - Return to Neveryon
Lilith Latini - Improvise, Girl, Improvise
Tyler Vile - Never Coming Home

surprise surprise, if like me you had forgotten, sartre is like uh a masterful writer and stuff

The first volume of his WW2 resistance trilogy was also surprisingly funny. I have to read the other 2.

bought abt 5 more joyce carol oates books & trillin's abt alice, and 3 oneill plays

also bought evan hunter - every little crook and nanny -- sorta cool/weird the bottom spine has some red-dye bleed that looks like blood spatter, seems normal/unintentional i guess from the binding prob but its only the bottom spine

beckett's disjecta
wyndham lewis: on art
the novels of friedrich dürrenmatt
a couple of old penguin simenon omnibuses

For the morbidly curious, a misspent life crisis book binge (bold are read & recommended):

Alexander, William - Ordinary Recovery: Mindfulness, Addiction, and the Path of Lifelong Sobriety
Ash, Mel - The Zen of Recovery
Batchelor, Stephen - After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age
Batchelor, Stephen - Confession of a Buddhist Atheist
Begley, Sharon - Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves
Bostrom, Nick - Global Catastrophic Risks
Breer, Paul - The Spontaneous Self: Viable Alternatives to Free Will
Comte-Sponville, Andre - The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality
Costa, Rebecca - The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction
Damasio, Antonio - Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain
David Gregson, David - The Tao of Sobriety: Helping You to Recover from Alcohol and Drug Addiction
Flanagan, Owen - The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized
Flanagan, Owen - The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World
Grayling, A. C. - Life, Sex and Ideas: The Good Life without God
Grayling, A. C. - The Good Book: A Humanist Bible
Griffin, Kevin - One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps
Hagen, Steve - Buddhism Is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs
Hanson Ph.D., Rick - Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom
Harris, Sam - Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
Kogen Mizuno - The Beginnings of Buddhism
Alexander, William - Ordinary Recovery: Mindfulness, Addiction, and the Path of Lifelong Sobriety
Kurzban, Robert - Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind
Lane, Nick - The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
Leslie, John - The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction
Michel Onfray - Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
Mishra, Pankaj - An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World
Rottenberg, Jonathan - The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic
Russell, Mark - God Is Disappointed in You
S., Laura - 12 Steps on Buddha's Path: Bill, Buddha, and We
Snelling, John - The Buddhist Handbook: A Complete Guide to Buddhist Schools, Teaching, Practice, and History
Stanovich, Keith E. - The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin
Wallace, B. Alan - Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge

Holy cats!

God Is Disappointed in You looks promising.

As for fiction, I recently enjoyed (mostly as audiobooks):

Bacigalupi, Paolo - The Water Knife
Croshaw, Yahtzee - Mogworld
Faber, Michel - The Book of Strange New Things
Greer, John Michael - Star's Reach: A Novel Of The Deindustrial Future Kindle Edition
Haig, Matt - The Humans
North, Claire - The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Reid, Rob - Year Zero
Stross, Charles - Saturn's Children
Watkins, Clair Vaye - Gold Fame Citrus

All sci-fi, and besides the Haig & North (the best of this lot), mostly distopian.

Richard Weiner - Game for Real
Alvaro Mutis - The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
Poetry collection by Enzensberger

For a total of $5 at my school's book sale:

Ernest Buckler, The Mountain and the Valley
Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance
Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae
Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Tolkas

Richard Weiner - Game for Real

Just got this too--looks great!

The Toklas 'autobiography' was a best seller back in the day. Stein's celebrity in the early 1930s is one of the more puzzling media romances of the 20th century, but that book was popular for a reason. Enjoy.

Yeah, never could get on with Stein.

'between the world and me'
nyrb poets selecsh of pierre reverdy
paris spleen

Stein: dig 3 Lives, Tender Buttons, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, several best-ofs.

3 Lives cited as crucial influence by Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, among others.

p. sure Dylan, early Eno toklasing some Stein experiments too.

afaics, Stein was constantly experimenting with methods of transposing voice into text, but in my view most of her experiments were overly artificial, self-conscious and theory-driven failures.

3 Lives was her earliest serious attempt at something new and much less theory-driven. Decades later, in Autobiography of Alice B Toklas she finally relaxed her urge toward artifice and used a much more natural voice, one that also reflected many lessons she'd absorbed from several million words of brow-knitting experimentation. imo, her Wars I Have Seen is quite worthwhile, too.

xpost: wyndham lewis wrote an interesting attack piece on stein's influence on hemingway: 'the dumb ox'. could also add beckett to that list maybe... remember a very steinian passage in watt, though might have been parody?

am planning on rereading her detective novel again soon. despite giving myself a massive migraine trying to parse her portrait of isadora duncan once, i have plenty of time for stein & prefer the *artifice* to the *natural* when it comes to her work (though the autobiography is great)... found a copy of toklas' (non-stein written) autobiography awhile ago.

maybe one day i'll even make it through the making of americans

How was Toklas by Toklas? The once-famous brownie recipe was in her cookbook, right?

have not read yet. & yes, recipe c/o either paul bowles or brion gysin i think.

afaics, Stein was constantly experimenting with methods of transposing voice into text, but in my view most of her experiments were overly artificial, self-conscious and theory-driven failures.

I'd never guess you'd think this Aimless!

Janet Malcolm's fabulous little book on Stein and Toklas got me to purchase Making of Americans, which of course now sits on the shelf unread. Some of the excerpts of Stein's writing that Malcolm quotes are surprisingly funny.

I've read Janet's book, love the bit where iirc she slashes Making of Americans in three parts using a knife to get herself through it.

These items @ Waterstones Gower st where they are giving away quite a few from NYRB classics for half price:

Vasily Grossman - Everything Flows (just an incredible bk - so happy to have a copy)
Adolfo Bioy Casares - Asleep in the Sun

Elsewhere: Yves Bonnefoy - Rue Traversiere
Duras - L'Amour (this is a xmas present but I am reading first :-))
Mishima - Sun and Steel (possibly my favourite, happy to have my own copy)

Ulysses, Hugh Kenner. Bought on the recommendation of the pinefox, some years ago. New trade paperback. When you factor in the shipping & handling, $8.

Hit up an Amnesty International bookshop in Bristol yesterday, very pleased with my haul - £25 the lot!!

- a complete three volume edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson in hardback from 1900
- - odd copies of Little Women, The Corrections and The Name of the Rose, The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis and the complete short stories of Kafka
- an old, comprehensive but potentially kinda dry-looking history of English Literature by Arthur Compton-Rickett
- a very worn old copy of the Letters of Abelard and Heloise
- Penguin Classics versions of The Canterbury Tales, Herodotus' Histories and Fielding's Tom Jones
- John Donne: Life, Mind and Art by John Carey
- an Oxford World Classics collection of Ibsen's plays
- a nice little hardback copy of the Bhagavad-Gita

I very rarely buy books anymore, but with Xmas presents as well this little lot ought to see me right for the next year or more (I'm quite a slow reader)

That's a nice haul indeed, although The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis is a very bad book

More xmas book buying:

Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet
Songs of Kabir (NYRB Classics)

got

JR
The New Jim Crow

in the mail today

$2 each:

Lynn Coady, Hellgoing
Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel (which I just noticed I already own *sigh*)

Got a 2nd hand library copy of From A To Biba heading to me. Memoir of the shop's manager

picked up 4 books in the Expert series for gardeners for €1.50 each. Think they're things I'm going to want to know even if I'm not going to have room to grow a few types.

bought a selection of leibniz texts published by continuum but it arrived in hardcover which defeated my whole purpose in buying the kewl continuum volume : (

Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, since I lent it out about a decade ago and never got it back. Immediately re-read the Billy Joel essay.

^^^
I tend to re-read the Real World, Vanilla Sky, and Saved By the Bell! essays in that one a bit too often

Bought The Familiar, Vol 2 by Mark Danieleski last eek

Penguin Classics Edwin Drood. I have all the other PC Dickens with the b&w covers but didn't know this one even existed.