Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

BW might be respectful of DB he doesn't reserve that for a lot of the improv scene in general

this is bascially toop's problem with it = highly selective uncritical hagiography -- which does in general reflect my own issue w/BW (except where two of his gurus clash, in which instance no real indication of same)

imo this emerges from his personal negotiation of internal SWP politics (given that he was basically very much an oddity and a frustrated outlier in that benighted org)

literal conversation we once had:
bw: i wish you'd join!
ms: ben i'd be kicked out instantly!
bw: we could be kicked out together!

^^i found this exchange at once v flattering and v weird (he quit some years ago and has been its most furious critic ever since)

That's great I could never see you in the SWP.

this is bascially toop's problem with it = highly selective uncritical hagiography

His problems with the likes of AMM and what some other people get up to in that scene...to me I can some kind of method.

Then again I never got on with Zappa.

"Against Nature" was so boring. The main character was so hateful and pretentious.

I'm reading Vonnegut's "Breakfast of champions" now.

Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noosphere (In Vivo) by Richard M. Doyle
I saw it cheap in an Oxfam so grabbed it. Not really looked at it so far.

I have to admit I really enjoyed Against Nature, but your description of the main character is spot-on

Do we have a thread about new books with cheapo, bad and blurry offprint inside?

Suppose I could spring for expensive used Turtleback copy. Or post that on $900 Grandmothers thread.

What was it?

Realising that I can't get to the book i want to look up MDMA in because the shelf above it has collapsed and the weight might bring down the bookcase which is in an awkward place to get to.
i have a few of this style of bookcase where the sides have bulged out far enough that the shelves have fallen off the little plastic brackets they sit on/ So the shelves are sitting on the top of the contents of teh shelf below.

I need to get it together to get screws into the side of each shelf and hope that will not split them or the sides of the unit.

Maybe need to develop the skills to create units like that from scratch since the walls i have here seem to be plaster so wouldn't support the weight of shelving. Just thought flatpack versions would do the work and can't get it together to customise them.

sorry wrong thread,

What was it?

― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Sunday, July 23, 2017 4:45 AM

The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century, edited by Hayden Carruth. It looks like they just photocopied the 1983 edition instead of resetting it. Too bad, because it seems to be a really useful book.

So it is new in the sense of recently manufactured but not really "new."

Euurrgh: what publisher responsible for this atrocity?

Bantam is the imprint. But isn't this sort of thing relatively common?

Anyway, making my peace with the slightly blurry printing.

Verso's having one of their 90% off all ebook sales for 24 hours

saw that

What else to get besides Grand Hotel Abyss?

I've been wanting a bit more variety in my pile of unread non-fiction. Today I loaded up on five non-fic used books, plus one fiction book for good measure. Now I ought to be a bit less bewildered and lethargic when trying to pick an interesting non-fiction book from the pile to caulk the spaces between my novel and short story reading.

A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor, used NYRB trade paperback, $4.
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, Laurence Bergreen, used trade paperback, $1.50.
Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Ancient Athens, James Davidson, used trade paperback, $1.00.
Brunelleschi's Dome, Ross King, used trade paperback, $1.50.
The New Kings of Non-Fiction, an anthology, editor Ira Glass, 50 cents.
Jazz Age Stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald, used Penguin Modern Classic, $1.

Elias Canetti - Auto-da-Fe
John Steinbeck - Tortilla Flat
Roberto Bolano - The Third Reich

Manhattan Transfer by John dos Passos.
I like his writing but never competed his Three Soldiers which I should remedy.
& maybe reread USA which I had a fear yesterday I was duplicating part of on buying this..

Orlando Figes book on the Crimea in a charity shop this afternoon.
I enjoyed his Russian revolution hi8story a couple of years back.
I don't know much about the Crimea so thought this might be a good place to find out.

A Walter Mosely omnibus from a different charity shop today too.

Cant take figes seriously since he used fake names to leave bad reviews of books by other Russian historians on amazon, and when he was caught out he:
1. Blamed his wife
2. Admitted it was him, not his wife, but he had been researching Stalin and was traumatised so was not responsible for his actions

C21st UK academic claiming to be a victim of Stalin because he trolled other writers is pretty feeble stuff

I don't think I was aware fo it before you mentioned it. I read A people's Tragedy after having wanted to since nearly everybody on teh Solidarity Camp had read it back in 2006 and I hadn't managed to . Enjoyed it, this Crimea looks like it could be good.

Found a Guardian article on the fracas though
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/apr/23/historian-orlando-figes-amazon-reviews-rivals

gerhardie - futility
ableman - i hear voices
wahloo - the lorry
platonov - soul & other stories
biely - the silver dove
fassbinder - plays

Richard Barnes Mods.
Been meaning to get a new copy of this for ages

Grace jones I'll never write my memoirs
cos it was cheap in a n ew local record shop

Gerhardie: Futility is great. What's that Wahloo? One of his solo books? Doesn't ring any bells

impulse amazon buy:

peter guralnick - last train to memphis
ernest becker - the denial of death
angela nagle - kill all normies: online culture wars from 4chan and tumblr to trump and the alt-right

xpost: yeah, have been meaning to check out gerhardie for awhile. there were a few of his novels where i found that lot, but thought i'd start with his first (nice to learn it was published c/o katherine mansfield). i guess the polyglots would be the place to go after futility?

the wahloo novel is from the early sixties, based on his time in spain in the previous decade. was actually how i first came across his name via the books listed in the back of the old school picadors

That looks cool. Vintage US republished some of his other solo books a few years ago, which were really good, but that one's new to me.

Voltaire in Love, Nancy Mitford, used trade paperback in like new condition, $2. Sounds moderately interesting.

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America, Bill Bryson, used paperback, $2. This is copyright 1989 and aimed at a British audience, so it's before Bryson became established. Hard to say how much this one might deviate from his usual formulaic humor. Given its publication date, it probably describes a version of America that's dead as the dodo. I'll save it for when I need something mindless and frothy.

I've read that Bryson. It's as you say.

'several short sentences about writing' and calasso's 'art of the publisher' - books about booksssss

Art of the Publisher was entertaining but I wish it had gone much deeper

i'll throw it away then, thanks

no problem

AUGUST BOOK HAUL

Karl Schütz - Vermeer: Complete Works
Maurice Merleau-Ponty - Eye and Mind
E. H. Gombrich - Art and Illusion
Svetlana Alpers - The Art of Describing
Madeleine L'Engle - The Glorious Impossible

josep pla, 'the gray notebook'

seems nice, choice

The Recognitions, Wm. Gaddis, used trade paperback, Penguin Modern Classics, like new condition, $2. I tried reading this one before, several years ago, but failed at ~150pp into it. For this cheap I can probably recoup my investment if I abandon it yet again.

The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, Th. Mann, in a used cheap Signet paperback edition in readable condition, 50 cents. I really ought to give Mann a whirl some time and this seems like one of his more accessible books.

I wish I loved Josep Pla - like the idea of him - Life Embitters didn't leave much of an impression.

1st:

Antonio Di Benedetto - Zama

2nd hand racks:

Marguerite Duras - Yann Andrea Steiner
Muriel Spark - The Abess of Crewe ("A wicked satire on Watergate" made me groan but I like the cover and its short)
Muriel Spark - The Hothouse by the East River
Geoffrey Hill - Selected
Lazlo Krasznahorkai - War and War

calvino, six memos for the next millennium

Some used children's/YA lit at a local second-hand shop. The two well-known titles I grabbed because they were lovely editions:

S.E. Hinton - Rumble Fish
Ron Koertge - Boy Girl Boy
David Levithan - Boy Meets Boy
Johanna Spyri - Heidi

I found this for $2 at the library. I was pleased.

https://pictures.abebooks.com/NORMANKERRBOOKS/md/md14977445905.jpg

I just hauled in seven used Penguin paperbacks by P.G. Wodehouse for fifty cents each:

Carry On, Jeeves,
Very Good, Jeeves,
Leave it to Psmith (a stone classic),
Uncle Fred in the Springtime,
Quick Service,
The Luck of the Bodkins,
The Heart of a Goof

In addition, also for fifty cents: Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain

LOl Tolhurst's memoir Cured:The Story of Two Imaginary Boys
which is a pretty good read and i think covers at least most of the era of the Cure that i'm interested in

Christopher Isherwood My Guru and His Disciple
Not started this yet. I enjoyed Goodbye to Berlin earier this year and wanted to read some more of him.
I'm assuming some of the same qualities will appear in this book despite the pretty different subject matter.

Oh & The Sixties House by Catriona Gray a book on Sixties interior design that was going cheap in TKMaxx yesterday and I've had my eye on for a while.

& I bought the Vernon Joynson book A Melange of Musical pipedreams and Pandemonium.
Mainly bought because of the African section but I'm finding that the input on the actual African bands mentioned is not that great. I think he may be better on the white bands from the continent but I was looking for something good on African rock.
Would be great if somebody did a similar tome specifically about the native African rock and electrified music produced in the 60s, 70s especially and possibly up to date.
Though thi sdoes also have section son Australia and NZ oh and Turkey/Middle East though not sure how good that bit is either.

Uncle Fred in the Springtime
Even more antic than the Jeeves books I've read: the fearless Uncle Fred is himself of the upper crust Wooster World tirelessly mined by Wodehouse, and he only wants to help!

Donald Antrim - The Emerald Light in the Air

beautiful good-as-new used copy for 9$

wyndham lewis - the red priest
djuna barnes - vivid & repulsive as the truth

Not sure why I'm buying books in comparison to how little I'm reading at the mo :-(

Andrei Platonov - The Return
Flann O'Brien - Myles Away from Dublin
Sylvia Path - The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath - Letters Home (its nice to find a bunch of books by her, and a nice ed. of her poetry - hope to be digging deeply soon)
Dubravka Ugresic - Ministry of Pain
Szilard Borbely - Berlin-Hamlet