Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

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.

Willa Cather - Death comes for the archbishop
Paul Auster - Man in the dark
Jeff Perlman - Boys will be boys

laura riding: progress of stories

The Saga of Grettir the Strong. Because you can't ever have too many Icelandic sagas.

John Darnielle - Universal Harvester
Nicole Markotic - Rough Patch

Really like MFK Fisher essays. xps

Got a copy of PKD's Valis, because i haven't read it, oddly.

Hi Fizzles, really want to read that, and reminds me that my Mom's got Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter, collecting and providing context for letters to her father (his replies have been lost, maybe burned by abbess of daughter's convent, being too hot to handle re his branding as heretic, though some of what he said might be inferred from her side of the conversation). Chapter One here, with link to the NYT review:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sobel-daughter.html

Oops meant as response to his post on What Are You Reading Now Spring 2017.

Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt, as a used Penguin paperback in good condition, $4. The banality of evil seems so topical right now.

Valancourt books is currently doing a 2-for-1 deal on all their LGBTI-themed ebooks, so am going a bit berserk stocking up on them. https://www.facebook.com/valancourt/

Cosey Fanni Tutti Art Sex Magic
& Richard Morton Jack Psychedelia
now bought from Book Depository so hopefully have within the week.

Elijah Wald Escaping The Delta :Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues
Cherie currie Neon Angel. Should be an interesting read at least.

I picked up a Hunkin book for 1p plus p+p from Amazon. Looks like it contains all of Rudiments of Wisdom from 73 to 87 but doesn't say so on the front cover. Just says the complete r of w from the Observer magazine on an inner page. & on the back which I don't think you see on the Amazon page.
It's called Almost Everything There Is To Know by Hunkin. It's a magazine sized paperback and 363 pages long. I'm assuming that reproduction is about the same size it originally appeared in the magazine but writing seems really small. At least it's in b+w which I heard wasn't true in the book compiled as Rudiments of Wisdom which Amazon reviews describe as badly coloured in so difficult to read.
So this seems to be the best way to get things. Do wish it had dates of first appearance listed somewhere. It's organised alphabetically so hard to tell. Probably not significant but would be nice to know.

Hours of fun for everyone.

Leith's How to Cook
The Cook Book
think I'll pick up some techniques while I can

a dollar a piece:

eleven modern short novels
büchner - plays
hardy - the trumpet-major
silone - fontamara
apollinaire - selected poems
gide - the counterfeiters
duras - the sea wall
butor - la modification
o'brien - further cuttings from cruiskeen lawn

That Eleven Novels has lots of good stuff: have never head of Abel Sanchez / Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo at all

For fifty cents each I bought two companion mass-market paperbacks by Isaac Asimov:

Understanding Physics: Motion, Sound, and Heat
Understanding Physics: Light, Magnetism, and Electricity

I figure I'll learn some new things from them and he's a sounder-than-average science popularize who can write simply and clearly about this stuff.

popularizer was autocorrected to 'popularize'

Just finished "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" - underwhelming and unexpectedly difficult to finish (although I've had a migraine which didn't help). Too many paragraphs about housecleaning. The opening chapter is one of the best I've ever read, though.

Ordered the new Graham Harman/Manuel Delanda book, The Rise of Realism. . . . Good times.

got a message from the front desk at work that i had an amazon package, which was odd bcos i wasn't expecting anything.

turned out to be a late birthday present from a great spanish colleague, who lives in cadiz, where i spent last weekend, inc my birthday. over some sherry and jamon she mentioned a book called life is a dream by pedro calderón de la barca, which she particularly liked and which sounded great and she'd sent a dual text edition as a present!

Heard of it---please be sure to comment whenever you read that one, okay??

Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen, a used trade paperback in standard condition, $1. As usual, short stories get short shrift and so may be bought cheaply.

U.S.A. Trilogy, John Dos Passos, as a like-new Library of America hardcover, with dust jacket, for fifty cents! This is cold, harsh proof of just how unfashionable Dos Passos has become.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51vnjJxo8PL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Leszek Kolakowski - Main Currents of Marxism Vol 1
Joseph Stiglitz - Whither Socialism
e.e. cummings - 100 Selected Poems

I carried on about Bowen's Collected Stories on a previous What Are You Reading (the current thread's title is derived from one of hers)---it's a bit uneven in the early 30s section, but overall very enjoyable. USA Trilogy has some arresting passages, but can come off like compulsive, insatiable, desperate and/or heedless activity too often, though he might say that's the point he's making about various (not all) characters and alarming American tendencies, How We Got This Way. But think I got that point pretty early. Mind you he pulled me along for the whole thing, even though I'm not nearly as tireless as his people (or him, god knows).

To continue the crosstalk with the rolling thread, Elizabeth Bowen was another correspondent of Eudora Welty.

xpost And some of those fave Dos Passos "passages" might be--up to 100 pages apiece--? Think so.

remaindered books i just bought cheap

Christopher Miller - American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny
Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live
Mara Wilson - Where Am I Now?
Joe Sacco - Journalism
Denis Johnson - Jesus' Son
John Scalzi - The Human Division
Ken Liu - The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
VanderMeers - The Big Book of Science Fiction