Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

I picked up the mini biography of Groucho Marx by Lee Siegel, which looks fun.

I just ordered the second volume of The Man Without Qualities, along with The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood.

Both books arrived in good condition. Just now I scored a used copy of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend for $1.50. Ho! Ho!

alan ryan - on marx
robert coover - pricksongs & descants
max ernst - une semaine de bonté: a surrealistic novel in collage
wyndham lewis - blasting and bombardiering (facsimile of the non-revised original version)

found a copy of the Folio Society edition of C.V. Wedgwood Thirty Years' War in my grandma's basement!!!

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i bought these three short story collections for the new year:

john burnside: something like happy
brian everson: a collapse of horses
livia llewellyn: furnace

Roberto Bolano - 2666 (finally got the old Picodor classics cover, so much better than the crappy editions this comes under nowdays)
Joseph Roth - Zipper and his Father
Claire Louise-Bennett - Pond
Malcolm Bowie - Proust Among the Stars
Milton - Paradise Lost (Books V-VI, Cambridge edition, which is marvellously annotated, keep on the lookout for the others)
Stendhal - The Red and The Black

I found both these used hardcover Everyman's Library editions (in great condition) at my local charity bookshop:

The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz, yet another 1300 pages and 2-1/2 lbs of literature I must find the time to read. $2.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; The Girls of Slender Means; The Driver's Seat; The Only Problem, Muriel Spark. I've read all but the last one. I am everlastingly grateful for an excellent writer who writes short novels. $2.

Shock and Awe the most recent Simon Reynolds book. Thing on glam,not got it yet.

Complete Dummies book of Guitar which did arrive today and I think I payed a penny for plus p+p, certainly less than £1 and is in a decent state. Been wanting to sit down and learn to play for years so maybe I'll get to do it this year.

Kraftwerk Publikation which looks like a decent biography of the band. I have some of the ir history but not as thoroughly as this will give me.

Pieces oF A Man biography of Gil Scot Heron again sort of half know about him but don't really know all the background. Stil need to pick up a few of the lps but do have several.
Also got his novel on a University Campus about half read several years ago and really ought to finish it.

a few other bits and pieces from charity shops etc.

haven't bought but saw at the shop today and WANT

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More 2nd hand finds - good to have my own copy of these classics I've read and loved before:

Cesare Pavese - Among Women Only
Junichiro Tanizaki - The Key
Leonardo Sciascia - The Moro Affair

More 2nd, having a go for the first time:

Boris Pasternak - Last Summer
Anita Brookner - A Start in Life
Seamus Heaney - New Selected Poems 1966-1987

2nd:

Erich Auerbach - Mimesis (great to have my own copy of this masterpiece)
Ramón del Valle-Inclán - Tyrant Banderas
Joseph Roth - The Silent Prophet
Joseph Roth - Weights and Measures

1st:

The Stray Dog Cabaret: A Book of Russian Poems (Translated by Paul Schmidt)

England's Hidden Reverse, paid full price for it after seeing that prices were rising steeply on Amazon etc.

The One the James Brown biography which was on heavily reduced price sale through Postscript Books

Truth a set of Jim Marshall photos

Black Fire, New Spirits the Souljazz book of photos of New thing Jazz artists from the 60s and 70s.

a couple of Dale Carnegie books I picked up in a charity shop and loads of other charity shop finds that I hope i will get around to reading at some point.

Jim Marshall book is called Trust not Truth. Going for £10 from that Postscript books website.

Just ordered a copy of the Library of America's compilation of all James Baldwin's books of essays, new, for $24.66 (a price no doubt arrived at by the finest computer algorithms, just the best algorithms, fantastic stuff).

I also bought a used book at the local charity bookshop for $1. Timothy Egan's The Big Burn, about massive forest fires early in the 20th century.

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destruction was my beatrice: dada and the unmaking of the twentieth century by jed rasula

Journals vol 1 Andre Gide who I was thinking was de Nerval for some reason or at least had the name confused. But think this should be interesting anyway. Think copy is same age as me too, still looks really good though.

Apocalypse Culture weird book to find as part of an academics library which was being sold through the local 2nd hand/remainder bookshop and also included the Gide.
Also possibly coincidence taht I picked tghis up while reading England's Hidden Reverse though this may be a lot more Industrial than Esoteric. I need to give it a good peruse.

Robert Anton Wilson Coincidance
another of the lecturer's books. I also picked up a copy of the Illuminatus trilogy pretty recently though i read it about 15 years ago finally, wasn't sure I still had the old copy. Really want to read the Historic Illuminatus series which was the first thik I came across by him. Picked up one volume in a charity shop in Dublin years ago. Not got around to getting any further but I tend to have a backlog of books anyway.

Invisible Cities Italo Calvino
set of vignettes describing imaginary cities based on the idea of Marco polo relating his travels to Kublai Khan but getting very anachronistic in the process.
Been meaning to read calvino for ages also have his if On A Winter's Night A Traveller.

several books from charity shops

also got a Crime & Punishment in a recent translation and a book on David Litvinoff put aside waiting for me to pick up

The Arrogance Of Power bio of Richard Nixon.
Thought it might give me more grounding in the potential corruption of the Whitehouse. & what to expect when they impeach the current IOTUS.
Is he automatically going to get a pardon from the next Potus?

If On A Winter's Night is one of my favourite books of all time. hysterical lols funny from beginning to end

^^^^ agreed, and Invisible Cities is an excellent calvino to be going on with afterwards, too

Probably said this here before, but when I was a teenager one year different relatives gave me copies of If on a Winter's Night... and Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings, and altogether they blew my mind. Suddenly I was "oh, you're allowed to do this like this!"

I like Borges though not sure what I've actually read beyond Labyrinths. But yueah it is pretty mindblowing.

William Gibson Neuromancer

Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo
Alexievich - Zinky Boys

cashing in a christmas gift card. i have so many unread books.

b.s. johnson - house mother normal: a geriatric comedy

Confessions of Zeno
The Vegetarian
Book about Thomas Aquinas by GK Chesterton - feel weirdly drawn to revisiting Catholic thinkers even though I am not drawn to returning to the Church

Thought about Artful by Ali Smith and Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami

Also got a free copy of Vox by Nicholson Baker. Is that at all good or is it lame

I love Baker but he is very polarizing

and he's done better than vox imo

I read "Vox" last year and enjoyed it. It's smutty and doesn't take itself too seriously.

cashing in a christmas gift card.

Really need to get around to this.

More at the local Oxfam:

Thomas Pynchon - Mason & Dixon (well I never thought I'd read this but I realized the chapters are many yet short)
Kurt Tucholsky - Castle Gripsholm (this is a terrific novel from the 20s, rare as fuck to see a copy)

Watched Into the Wild recently and by the by realised I'd never read Eiger Dreams so got that. Also Keiron Pim's book on David Litvinoff.

Got drawn into Baker's The Fermata: It is about a man named Arno Strine who can stop time, and uses this ability to embark on a series of sexual adventures. Thanks Wikipedia! I eventually got tired of the stasis always hanging around. But you might want to give it a shot, so to speak.

Krakauer's Into The Wild is worth reading for sure, if you liked the movie at all; he's still researching the elusive central character/subject and has published some follow-up material, which I hope will show up in later editions.

Yeah, it's a great book and a hugely involving topic - whether you think he was some kind of saint (as the Penn film makes him out to be) or an ill-prepared naif (as most Alaskans seem to see him). I love Into Thin Air, too.

With regards Nicholson Baker, I loved his book on Updike (U & I?), and enjoyed the Anthologist, too - albeit I can't remember a huge amount about it.

I recommend baker's a box of matches

Also Keiron Pim's book on David Litvinoff.

― The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski), Sunday, February 26, 2017 5:48 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have this on hold in the local bookshop, not sure about author but definitely subject.
Just came across it while looking through the place last week.
Is it good?

I also have the book on Tara Browne somewhere which i got very cheap elsewhere around town recently.

Also realised taht I never started the Beatles bio Turned On after finding it dead cheap last year.

I have this on hold in the local bookshop, not sure about author but definitely subject.
Just came across it while looking through the place last week.
Is it good?

I've not read anything by Pim but have heard a bunch of people say how good it is - research, style etc. I know about Livinoff via Iain Sinclair and Performance; he does seem a bit of a Zelig figure. Looking forward to reading it.

got a 15$ amazon gift card so I ordered a copy of 'Civilwarland in Bad Decline'

i bought christopher logue's iliad redo

Personal feeling is that the shorter Bakers are really good (U&I, Mezzanine, Room Temperature, Box of Matches), others not so good

Kurt Tucholsky - Castle Gripsholm (this is a terrific novel from the 20s, rare as fuck to see a copy)

have been meaning to pick up the copy of this that's in stock at my local. should do so before it disappears!

Outside the place I get coffee every morning on the way to work, there's a little book exchange shelf where people can leave and take books for free. Some kind soul had left a copy (hardback, apparently first edition, fwiw (iw not very much in ££ terms I suspect)) copy of "Old Men In Love" by Alasdair Gray. Score!

today i bought the living mountain by nan shepherd. there was an essay in granta that mentioned it and it sounds amazing - i guess it's quite famous? i had never heard of it.

Ach, the Living Mountain is a lovely book, but I think it kind of retrospectively suffers from what it engendered - all that ripe, confessional nature writing, the enraptured lone walker, come to save us from modernity etc.

You can also get it an an omnibus called The Grampian Quartet, with some if her fiction, which is also lovely

charity shop stuff

Homer The odyssey translated by T.E.Lawrence
The Etymologicon Mark Forsyth
Dawn of The Dumb Charlie Brooker
'68 Paco Ignacio Taibo first person account of a major student killing in Mexico city in October '68
The Temple Stephen Spender
Guards Guards Terry Pratchett
Reaper Man "" " "
The Fifth Elephant " " "
Mad bad and dangerous to Know Ranulph Fiennes
The killing Fields Christopher Hudson
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Jean-Dominique Bauby
Fixed 2 More answers to Ireland's frequently asked questions

Crime & punishment By Fiodor Dostoevsky translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Jumpin Jack Flash Kieron Pim
Prose and Poetry Hart Crane
My Shit Life So Far Frankie Boyle
One Is Fun Delia Smith
Great Apes Will Self
How to Fossilise Your Hamster Mick O'Hare
Mantis K.W.Jeter

Spent my tokens from xmas time on:

Natsume Soseki - The Gate
Gerard Reve - The Evenings
Peter Altenberg - Telegrams of the Soul

2nd hand:

113 Galician - Portuguese Troubadour Poems (trans. Richard Zenith)
Nocilla Experience - Agustin Fernandez Mallo
Raduan Nassar - Ancient Tillage

that is a completely excellent selection