Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

Do you like her novels and essays or do you dislike her stuff in general?

I thought white teeth was a very good, overstuffed first novel, and then the autograph man was a disaster, while the third one was fine if you forget e.m. Forster was doing all the heavy lifting. And her short stories are feeble. Her essays are sometimes good, but always presented as though she is the finest mind of her generation. I guess i just don!t understand why she is so well regarded.

Found a copy of teh Blue Planet tied in to the David attenborough series for €2 yesterday.
Alan Clayson Rolling Stones Complete discography

Abbey road the Best Studio in the World by Alistair Lawrence and Sir George Martin for €12 the day before which is a great coffee table book based on the studio. Got some great photos.

Half-price sale at a used book store that already has good prices. For $60 I got about 20 lbs of book.

Kenneth Clark - An Introduction to Rembrandt
Van Dyck 1599-1641
Diane Cole Ahl - Fra Angelico
Au temps de Watteau, Chardin et Fragonard
Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century
Living in Bali (Taschen)

2$ each at Fripe-Prix Rennaissance

Americanah (already own a copy but I lent it to a couple people and it's quite beat up, figured a pristine copy for 2$ not a bad investment)
Margaret Atwood - Survival (this attractive A-List edition)
Muriel Barberry - The Elegance of the Hedgehog (picked it up on-sight because of the Europa Editions insignia--is it any good?)

NB: Europa insignia not always a sign of quality. Sometimes it just means a variant of A Year in Provence, for example.

And sometimes it means good books in awful, awful covers, like ferrante

Ha, yes exactly.

NB: Europa insignia not always a sign of quality.

good to know, thx. I've seen my used bookstore selling lots of their stuff, so at the very least I can always re-sell to them. You've not read the Burberry? apparently it was a best-seller in france? not the kind of thing i would read w/o a good recommendation...

And sometimes it means good books in awful, awful covers, like ferrante

Haw, i kind of like the mawkish ferrante covers

Sorry, the Burberry appeared at time when my Europa fixation was growing cold.

Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run
Neil Gaiman - American Gods
Nathanael West - The Day Of The Locust/Miss Lonelyhearts
Mario Vargas Llosa - The Feast Of The Goat
Streetwise: Stories From An Irish Prison

Jerome K Jerome - Three Men in a Boat

Pancatantra in the Penguin Classic version.

I succumbed to the evil empire and ordered from Amazon:

The Man Without Qualities: Volume 1, A Sort of Introduction and Pseudo Reality Prevails , Robert Musil, as a trade paperback, for $14.86. This order would not have happened without ILB enthusiasm. If Volume 1 appeals, I'll have to order Volume 2.

On the Nature of the Universe, Lucretius, in the Melville translation (Oxford World Classics), as a trade paperback, for $9.52. Another ILB-inspired selection, based on direct praise for this translation.

The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzche, in a Dover Thrift Edition paperback, in order to qualify for the FREE shipping on my total order, for $1.

Millhauser, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright

A big 2-volume Piranesi: The Complete Etchings from Taschen. It's beautiful, and the price is not bad for how much wood pulp you get.

Speaking, like Aimless, of enormous Viennese books, I ordered a second-hand box set of The Demons by Heimito von Doderer, after discussion above; plus I got the Edith Nesbitt ghost stories localgarda was praising.

And I WISH i had that Piranesi book. It looks amazing.

Last Night A DJ saved my life Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton

A Girl From OZ Lyndall Hobbs

Punk Rock Blitzkrieg Marky Ramone

Please report back on the Marky Ramone book, as I have been meaning to read it for quite a while.

Yeah, not sure how soon I'll get to it though.
So far have only read the bit on Dust which was interesting.

got a nice first ed of john updike couples for $3

Enjoying that Marky Ramone Punk Rock Blitzkrieg. Got as far as him getting back from first European tour with the Ramones so far , so he's been through Dust, Voidoids etc.
Like the voice but not sure how much it's his since he has a cowriter. But very readable anyway.

Went to a small-press book fair on Saturday and emerged with this (among other things) which I am very much looking forward to getting stuck into: https://www.atlaspress.co.uk/index.cgi?action=view_anti_classic&number=23

(It's "Journey to the Land of the Real" by Victor Segalen; I read his "Paintings" which is magnificent in a proto-Calvino kind of way.)

"Day Of The Locusts" is great, but slightly handicapped by the fact that one of the major characters is called Homer Simpson.

Bertold Brecht - The Complete Poems (this is the find of the year)
Leonard Sciascia - The Wine Dark Sea
Jean Rhys - Quartet
Miroslav Holub - The Dimension of the Present Moment and Other Essays
Jaroslav Hasek - The Red Commissar

Alan Moore - Jerusalem
Carrie Brownstein - Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl
The Good Immigrant

G.K. Chesterton - The Wisdom of Father Brown
Franz Kafka - Amerika

More 2nd hand finds:

Gottfried Benn - Impromptus (Selected Poems) (what a rich time for mid-20th century German poetry)
Sakutaro Hagiwara - Cat Town

That Gottfriend Benn is the Michael Hoffman translation, isn't it? It's wonderful.

Yeah - good intro, honest around Benn's middle period which he felt he couldn't bring it to English. Vital to have some of his work.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
cos it sounded interesting for €1.

Oh So Pretty: Punk In Print a book of punk memorabilia reprints of flyers, posters etc.

Guys, you've got to start spelling Michael Hofmann's name correctly. One 'f', two 'n's.

every time i write it I have to look it up, and when I don't check I invariably get it wrong. For me it's like putting in a USB plug, I will get it the wrong way round 100% of the time.

would love to read that benn collection. the new directions selection i have is more focussed on his earlier work (also includes some excellent prose!)

i bought a mass market paperback artbook of bruegel for $.01 plus shippin

Read like to read Benn's prose -- one more for the Prose works by poets thread!

also see novels written by poets

Some good conversations/arguments on there (also not just novels per se or at all)

Thanks I've just revived my thread but that's good too.

There are prose works (essays) by Benn in the Impromptu collection

even more reason to find a copy :-D

doesn't look like there have been any translations of his fiction (he wrote at least a couple of novels) outside the nd selection.

FAHRENHEIT 451 (which I know)

THE STARS MY DESTINATION (which I don't)

2ndhand splurge this week, at Skoob and Black Gull books

Tana French - The Likeness
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Some pulps - Thunderball, Goldfinger, Cards on the Table, Glitz
Two new Penguin translations of The Black Tulip & Around the World in 80 Days
Light - M John Harrison
In the Freud Archives

Peter Guralnick Dream boogie the Sam Cooke bio

Clinton Heylin Revolution in the Air the songs of Bob Dylan 1957 to 1973. Got the paperback with the original 2009 cover cos I don't tghink I had it, now hoping taht I haven't forgotten buying it with the more recent cover. But don't think i have it.

Lenny Bruce how to Talk Dirty and Influence people his autobiography.

a number of other stuff taht's turned up in various charity shops over the last week. Seem to be picking up armfuls this week.

2nd hand:

Marianne Moore - Selected
Joseph Heller - Catch-22

1st Hand. I broke down and myself the following xmas presents:

Arseny Tarkovsky - I Bunred at the Feast (Selected Poems)
Cesare Pavese - Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950

Italo Calvino If On A Winter's Night A Traveller.
Been meaning to read him for ages and the local bookshop got a load of these in cheaply.

THe Complete idiot's guide to Wine Basics

Sharon Osbourne Unbreakable My New Autobiography

Jonathon Franzen Freedom

Jonas Jonasson The Girl Who saved the King of Sweden

Dave Haslam Adventures oN teh Wheels of Steel The Rise of the superstar DJ

Fintan O'Toole Up The Republic Towardsa new Ireland

Kevin Dutton The Wisdom of Psychopaths
I think I read this a few years back with a different cover

Stevolende, that list of purchases looks like an attempt to break an Amazon recommendation engine

Lol

Couple of charity shop hits and one thing from a bookshop that sells remainder and 2nd hand stuff. So somewhat random.
& not tallied so not going to work that way.

& I forgot the book on Cooking Utensils I picked up on Monday. Also random but I can now tell what I need for my kitchen. Which is good, innit.