Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

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

Walter Ong - Orality and Literacy
Oleg Grabar - The Formation of Islamic Art
Jacques Meuris - René Magritte
Wieland Schmied - Friedensreich Hundertwasser 1928-2000

Tragically had to return a beautiful and inexpensive book on Monet because a bunch of pages were torn out.

A cheap set of Barbara Pym paperbacks from a charity shop; a new Tana French; "Darkest Secret", a trashy thriller recommended on Sarah Weinman's crime fiction newsletter; and "Tastes of Paradise," a social history of intoxicants by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, which looks fun and was recommended on one of the Slate podcasts.

Also joined the London Library, because gyms are too noisy.

Peace by Barry Miles cos it was in Dealz for €1.50. & the other stuff I've read by him has been interesting.

From my favorite charity bookshop:

Du Mu: Plantains in the Rain: Selected Chinese Poems translated by Burton Watson, a used trade paperback published in 1990 by Wellsweep Press in London. It's in good condition, unmarked and cost me $2. Watson was a very fine translator of ancient Chinese poetry.

Junky, William Burroughs, as a used Penguin trade paperback, circa 1977 edition that mentions Burroughs death in August 1977 and trumpets itself as "complete and unexpurgated". It's in very good condition, probably never read, and was also $2.

The Comforters, Muriel Spark, as a cheapie mass market Avon paperback from circa 1965. It's readable, but the paper was acidic and is now discolored, and the glue in the spine is brittle. I spent 25 cents on it, so it's no tragedy if it falls apart on me.

Watson's translation of Chuang-Tzu is one of my favorite books.

William Burroughs died in 97 didn't he?
I had recordings he made much closer to then. I thought he cut an lp with Kurt Cobain too.
Were the rumours of his demise exaggerated 20 years earlier?

Yup. 1997. A reading (scanning rly) error on my part. I had just looked at the pub date seconds earlier and my brain did a bit of freelancing to substitute a second 7 for the second 9.

i found a signed 1st ed of ayelet waldmans red hook road, who i only later realized i knew her name cuz of -
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/how-ayelet-waldman-found-a-calmer-life-on-tiny-doses-of-lsd

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller in a 50s hardback.
I had a few Millers a few decades back but not sure what I have now. Know I have a paperback of Air Conditioned Nightmare that I started into last year but didn't get very far.

Seems odd that I went into a couple of charity shops that I only tend to visit because I'm getting my boots fixed and normally get some very interesting stuff from and walked out with nothing from either. Well, need to be there again next week so maybe there'll be something then.

houellebecq's lovecraft thing

Have had trouble taking Waldman seriously since that awful article she wrote (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/fashion/truly-madly-guiltily.html) and the spot-on parody that followed (http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com.au/2005/03/me-miniseries.html)

lol huh

Roberto Bolano - Skating Rink
Roberto Bolano - Last Evenings on Earth
Willam Empson - Complete Poems (read this last year, excellent - and now I have my own copy)

"Achieving Our Country," Richard Rorty
"Low Dishonest Decades," George Scialabba
"Suspended Sentences," Patrick Modiano

all A+

Just ordered from Amazon, because even Powells Books doesn't usually have this stuff in stock:

Sagas of Warrior-Poets, translator Diana Whaley, as a used paperback Penguin Classic, purported in very good condition, $8.39. Five Icelandic sagas with warrior-poets as the central characters. As bloody-minded a bunch of poets as ever were assembled.

Seven Viking Romances, translator Hermann Palsson, as a new paperback Penguin Classic, $11.18. Dwarves, trolls, magic weapons, ogres, the whole paraphernalia of Viking tales. Could be fun.

The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
have been hoping I'd find a cheap copy of this for years. & it was €1 today so might finally get to finish it. Was reading it when I interrailed around Europe in '85 and think it may have got lost in a bag in Paris.
Not sure if this is the same translation though.

The Book of Liff by Douglas Adams and somebody
a devil's dictionary type thing of imaginary definitions of words.

The Wok cookbook.
Will be good if it gives me further pointers beyond stirfrying

I had a very good visit to my local charity book shop and came away with:

Concluding, Henry Green, as a mid-1960s Penguin Modern Classics paperback in very good shape (assuming the spine isn't too brittle now), for fifty cents.

Selected Essays, William Carlos Williams, as a New Directions trade paperback in good condition, $1.

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey, as a fairly recent Penguin paperback, like new condition, $1. This is arguably the most admired novel ever written by an Oregonian. (Its only real competition might be Left Hand of Darkness.) I'm thinking I should read it someday.

> The Book of Liff by Douglas Adams and somebody

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lloyd_(producer)

"producer and writer best known for his work on such comedy television programmes as Not the Nine O'Clock News, Spitting Image, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Blackadder and QI."

new:

unica zürn - dark spring
leonora carrington - the debutante and other stories

not new:

alfred jarry - ubu roi
nathalie sarraute - tropisms
robert pinget - the inquisitory
felipe alfau - locos: a comedy of gestures
henry green - nothing/doting/blindness
henry green - loving/living/party going
ivy compton-burnett - elders and betters

Wow. Love to hear what you think of Locos.

Title: Gothic Tales (Hardback)
Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Title: The Equestrienne (Paperback)
Author: Ursula Kovalyk
Book Description: Language: English . Brand New Book. It is 1984 and a small town somewhere in the east of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic is in the firm grip of totalitarianism. Karolina, a teenage runaway who never knew her father and who grew up in an untraditional family full of strange women, discovers a riding school on the edge of town. There, she gets to know the physically handicapped Romana and Matilda, a rider and trainer...

Title: The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic (Paperback)
Author: Nick Joaquin
Book Description: Language: English . Brand New Book. Nick Joaquin is widely considered one of the greatest Filipino writers, but he has remained little-known outside his home country despite writing in English. With the post-colonial sensibilities of Junot Diaz, Teju Cole, and Jhumpa Lahiri and an ironic perspective of colonial history resonant with Marques and Llosa, Joaquin is a long-neglected writer ready to join the ranks of the world classics. His work me...

Title: Collecting Sticks [Graphic Novel]
Author: Decie, Joe

got gloomy went to bookshop bought stuff

balzac - old goriot
brecht - galileo
cervantes - exemplary novels
barbusse - under fire (le feu)
the pelican management survey 1948 - frederic hooper ("a key activity in modern society reviewed by an outstanding industrialist" let me tell you about scientific management...)

old goriot is grebt (so far -- i seem to have misplaced my copy tho)

Fab Gear by Paolo Hewitt book on Beatles clothing

Colour: The professional's Guide by Karen Triedman a book on colour, like. Got theory and stuff in it. Cheap from Postscript books

unica zürn - dark spring

Have you started reading this btw? How is it?

Nocilla Dream - Agustin Fernandez Mallo
Peter Stamm - Seven Years (one of my favourite novels from the so-called 21st century, glad to have a copy)
Giuseppe Ungaretti - Selected Poems (fuck finally! Been looking for a copy of this for years)
Natsume Soseki - Light and Darkness (again looking for this for a long time, most copies I've seen are old and have a broken spine and this was in relatively good condition so broke down and got it, really needs a reissue)
Osip Mandelstam - The Collected Prose and Letters

xpost: the zürn (& alfau) are both near the top of my reading pile once i'm done with the mid-twentieth c. english novelist kick i'm on... speaking of, anyone have any philip toynbee recommendations?

I ordered a copy of Seven Types of Ambiguity, William Empson, yesterday.

1st hand:

Alejandra Pizarnik - Extracting the Stone of Madness Poems 1962-1972

2nd hand racks:

Allen Ginsberg - Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems
Sylvia Plath - Collected
John Milton Paradise Lose (Books III-IV Cambridge ed.)
The Selected Letters of Anton Chehkov
J.M.Coetzee - Disgrace

er lost

Chekhov's letters are a delight
Ginsberg is a hack and a tool

Ginsberg is uneven, self-promoting etc, but can be good, esp. when pissed-off-zingy ("America") observational (all over, between and even in some bad lines), or occasionally digging into painful home truths, especially/maybe mainly in "Kaddish", the verse chronicle of his mother's struggle with mental illness (literary companion to my first and best acid trip). Now listening to the very (but not too) tight Complete Songs of Innocence and Experience, out next month. He and Burroughs and even Kerouac, in a quirkier way, hold their own as performers (maybe more than as writers, at least in terms of consistency and broader appeal).

Been waiting for the Cosey Fanny Tutti autobio and Psychedelia by Richard Morton Jack but may have been ripped off. Thought marketplace seller had high rating but now seems inverse. Crap.
Really want to read both.
Did get Harvey Kubernick 1967 arrive which looks interesting.

MR James' guide to Abbeys, Phthor, and Cthon by Piers Anthony, the first because the title made me laugh, and then both because of their weird structural/chapter organisation - I'm guessing on some sort of mystical organising principle. I hadn't heard of him before.

Arlo, son of Aton, sets himself against the mineral intelligence of his own prison-planet

They look terrible.

Wait the first sentence is confusing - MR James' guide to Abbeys is not called Phthor and Chthon.

Got refunds for the 2 books that didn't turn up so will buy them again shortly.

Now listening to the very (but not too) tight Complete Songs of Innocence and Experience, out next month. He and Burroughs and even Kerouac, in a quirkier way, hold their own as performers

Well said Dow. I once saw Ginsberg give a free performance in Covent Garden market in central London, where he accompanied himself on harmonium and 'sang' some of the Songs of Innocence and Experience, and it was utterly captivating - sincere, humane, poetic.

The Saul Bellow short story 'Him With His Foot In His Mouth' offers a surprising and wonderful tribute to Ginsberg - at one point, the narrator (a Bellow stand-in of course) uses the phrase "a screwball defense of beauty" to describe Ginsberg's poetry, which seems spot on to me.

The Gastronomical Me - MFK FIsher
The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead - Chanelle Benz
Intepreter Of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri

Charlie Radcliffe's autobiography "Don't Start Me Talkin'": an engrossing 2 volume read for anyone interested in the the Peace Movement in the 50s, the history of situationism in the UK, London in the 60s, high level hash smuggling in the 70s, the prison system in the 80s. Lots of diversions into favourite music and books.

Read some of the Ginsberg at the weekend - parts of Howl are full of energy still, and Kaddish is quite a touching piece. There is an issue with reading poems that just sound like there would be more there in actual live readings, crowding anyone else but Ginsberg out. Doesn't make him a hack.