Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

Theatatus, Plato, used Penguins Classics paperback, 99 cents.

finally bought guns germs and steel and it's mainly irritating in ways i can't quite define

also reading Don Quijote for the first time since a teenager and it's amazing. half the stories i didn't remember and the other half I'm seeing entirely new details in. i love how so many of the stories use reported speech - it's a lot of tell-not-show, but the effect, slightly distancing, makes it effortlessly comic, your mind filling in all the blanks. i know there have been some doomed movie versions but genuinely surprised there haven't been more.

Yesterday I picked up a used paperback copy of Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald for $1.50. It's unmarked and in good readable shape. When I bailed out of Vertigo earlier this year, many ILBers said Austerlitz was the one to read. Now I can test that theory, some time or other.

Went to an exhibition in the local art college as part of the Arts Festival found they had a trolley of Free books that they had withdrawn from the library there.
So not bought but acquired

Cutting Room Floor Movie Scenes which never made it to the Screen Laurent Bouzereau

The Film Editing Room Handbook third edition Norman Hollyn

Print The Legend Photography and The American West Martha A Sandweiss

The Archaeology of Knowledge The Discourse on language Michel foucault.

haven't really looked at them much yet. Was pretty busy with things today.

Krakatoa The Day The World Exploded Simon Winchester

The Establishment and How They Get Away With It Owen Jones

The Blessings Of A Good Thick Skirt Women Travellers and Their World Mary Russell
think I may have heard of this, but subject matter looks interesting anyway. Not really looked at it to see exactly what time period it covers assume it's 18th, 19th centuries maybe longer.

Nopt really had a look at any of these so far. But look interesting.

Sold a bunch for:

Lewis Carroll - Through the Looking Glass and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alexander Pope - Selected
Ursula Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness

I'm going to have to sell a bunch soon. Shelves are getting crowded. But today I went to a charity shop where I bought:

Ferdydurke, Witold Gombrowicz, used paperback like-new, $4. This has been name-checked so often on ILB I figured it had to go home with me so I could check it out.

Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky, (the Pevear/Volokohnsky translation) used paperback, very good, $3. They are Dostoevsky specialists and I like their work. Been playing around for a couple of years with the idea of reading this again.

Collected Poems, Vachel Lindsay, 1941 hardcover edition, no dust jacket, unmarked, in very good condition, $3. I'm not his biggest fan. He was bruited as an 'authentic American primitive' by people like Carl Sandburg, but is he a good poet? Not especially, but I'd like to browse this one a bit to see if it stays or goes.

The name Vachel Lindsay appears a dozen times in The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick, trying to remember which section in particular struck me when I was reading it last year. Think it was something to do with Robert Frost.

found a lovely paperback of antal szerb's the pendragon legend, with what i believe are called, er, "french flaps". so far it's quite gentle, erudite and funny. terrific translation, you'd never know.

Pere Ubu the Scrapbook
blooming nice collectio9n of press reprints lyrics and things.
do wish somebody would write a full biography dedicated to them and covering the Cleveland scene. But thi sis a nice thing to have.

pleasingly one of pere ubu's songs is based on a vachel lindsey poem (=the voice of the sand)

This is the voice of sand
The sailors understand
There is far more sea than sand
There is far more sea than land
Yo ho yo ho yo ho (ho)

Now if we could only discover Vachel Lindsay's connection to Kevin Bacon...

2nd hand racks:

Italo Svevo - As a Man Grows Older
Haldor Laxness - The Fish can Sing
Antonio Tabucchi - Tristano Dies
Marie Darrieussecq - My Phantom Husband

i am finally reading tristram shandy (tho i bought it years ago)

Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker
Herman Melville - Moby Dick

Sold about 25 books at Powell's Books a couple of days ago, then came home with:

Five Tang Poets, David Young (translator), paperback, $7.95.
Less Than Angels, Barbara Pym, mass market paperback, $3.95.
At Freddie's, Penelope Fitzgerald, trade paperback, $4.95.
Froissart's Chronicles, used Penguin paperback, $1.
Fong and the Indians, Paul Theroux, used mass market, $1.

I went to Hay on Wye and now I am broken,broke and divorced.

Was trying to buy the new Henry Cow by Benjamin Piekut but it seems to be appearing on the 27th. is that a delay on the paperback

xp Read that as "Ham on Wye".

I think this has to be the be

Sold about 25 books at Powell's Books a couple of days ago, then came home with:

/Five Tang Poets/, David Young (translator), paperback, $7.95.
/Less Than Angels/, Barbara Pym, mass market paperback, $3.95.
/At Freddie's/, Penelope Fitzgerald, trade paperback, $4.95.
/Froissart's Chronicles/, used Penguin paperback, $1.
/Fong and the Indians/, Paul Theroux, used mass market, $1.

Picked up Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth from someone's stoop who was giving it away.

my recent finds (for the most part) skewing very much mid-twentieth century & english:

josephine tey - the franchise affair
elizabeth taylor - complete short stories
jocelyn brooke - the orchid trilogy
anthony powell - a dance to the music of time
william gerhardie - the polyglots

Dirk DeWachter: the art of buying unhappy

He’s awesome.

extremely late 19th century lately

- the portrait of a lady - h james
- sentimental education (in French!) - flaubert
- house of mirth (1905 ok, ok)

xpost Nice score on the Gerhardie, don't often see his books s/h (in the UK, anyway)

Broken Stars anthology
Lucia Berlin - A Manual for Cleaning Women
Arthur C. Clarke - The City and the Stars
Tomas Transtromer - The Great Enigma
I read some wonderful (translated) TT poems in a New Yorker essay, soon after he won the Nobel, and people who over here were saying Who is that man: he seemed like a true Transtromer, and thanks for reminding me to read some more.
Mean to finally catch up with The City and the Stars and Broken Stars too.
Berlin collection is one of my all-time-space fave raves: the way she places and shines a window between fiction and non-fiction, if there's any fiction in there at all---stuff I assumed she made up about her life turned out to be verified, but then again it's the telling, in any case. Coming from the way she experienced it: like she mentions the time and place out West frequented by her and a ripe bunch of other citizens (and others, maybe) of all ages, who would party all around bands that were like big ol' recombinant jukeboxes, reflecting the mix of the crowd, incl. moods and other tides--she never heard anything like the bands at this particular joint afterwards, until she got to New York and caught the Ornette Coleman Quartet.
Vachel Lindsay's poems seem better for performance than on the page, like a lot of Poe--VL was associated with the Chautauqua arts & entertainment circuit, I think--favorably mentioned by Allen Ginsberg, and good 'un by xpost Pere Ubu yeah.

"Better for performance than on the page," but then again you can hear them as you read them.

dow, were those kindle daily deals? i bought all those there.

Bought Fitting Pieces to The Jigsaw the book on Dr Strangely Strange cos I found out I could get a further discount on Book depositary stuff a couple of weeks back. Heard about it in either teh Monthly mainstream rock mags or Ugly THings a coupl eo fmonths back.
Quite like Kip of the Serenes and probably oughta have Heavy petting.

bought Buddy Guy autobiography and a biography of Sam Phillips on sunday.

Got a copy of the Marquis de sade book a couple of weeks ago in a mass purchase from a local 2nd hand/remainder shop's anniversary sale.
alongside a book on the 85 ways to tie a tie by Thoams Fink & Yong Mao
Cowboys & Indies the book on record companies by Gareth Murphy
The Vatican cellars by Andre Gide
The Big Oyster A Molluscular History of New York by Mark Kurlansky

THat is the Grove Press version of Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and other Writings to be specific

dow, were those kindle daily deals? i bought all those there.
No, these are the only kindle books I have (via free app on my laptop, but after using it for work I can't stand to read for pleasure on a screen, turns out):

Shots From The Hip: Notes From the Counterculture by Charles Shaar Murray (got it after reading interviews etc in mark s anthology A Hidden Landscape Once a Week: The Unruly Curiosity of the UK Music Press in the 1960s-80s, In the Words of Those Who Were There).
Atomsk by Carmichael (AKA Cordwainer) Smith (early Cold War thriller).
Sleep Donation by Karen Smith (contemporary speculative etc fiction; she's one of my favorites).

These are all ebook-only, apparently, so I hope I'll get to where I can stand to read for pleasure on a screen.

Maybe try an actual Kindle. I find the reading experience more pleasant than a laptop or tablet screen.

Seems that an actual Kindle, with a smaller screen, might be--different, for better or worse---which version of it do you like?

I guess a smaller device would be handier, and maybe more personal, since you could take it around---?

Kindle you can slip in a lot of jacket pockets

I've only used an older version of Kindle, but I don't think the screens have changed too much. It's a different experience and I find it less fatiguing to read an e-ink screen than a regular screen. It's that aspect I like more than the size.

Yes. As well as less possibility of distraction from Intranetz/ILX/email checking etc. Also I have a lot of stuff on there after all these years so the ability to search everything on the device is useful.

Highly recommend the old, smaller kindle oasis if you can find a cheap one on eBay or wherever. It’s very light, has a great screen and BUTTONS, plus it displays bootlegged epubs quite nicely. I use it to read bootlegs of the paper books I’m reading in bed, so I can read in the dark after my partner’s gone to sleep.

today:

eric thacker/anthony earnshaw - musrum/wintersol
alan burns - europe after the rain (old school calder pb edition for $3!)

re gerhardi(e) availability: i guess there must have been a vogue for his work in nz at some point since i've found his stuff in all three of the secondhand places i tend to patronise... granted it's always the same few works in each case (though one currently does have his history of the romanovs & the pop psych book he co-authored in the thirties)

Anyone read dopesick? Tempted.

Yesterday I bought a copy of ULYSSES: THE CORRECTED TEXT which is no longer easy to obtain ... for £1.90!

Best book bargain I've found in years.

futurist manifestos
cendrars - selected writings
jarry - the supermale/selected works

Agatha Christie: THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD.

I haven't posted on this thread for months. These are some of my newcomers, all purchased used:

A Book of Common Prayer, Joan Didion, hardcover Book Club edition, $1.
Amnesia Moon, Jonathan Lethem, trade paperback, $1.
The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann, translator: Woods, hardcover ex libris in Everyman's edition, $1.
A Coffin for Demetrios, Eric Ambler, trade paperback, $2.

I've read the first two!

Amnesia Moon is my favorite Lethem novel, not counting the Omega the Unknown comic.

last few months
Agatha Christie - An Autobiography
Plato - Five Dialogues
The Song of Roland

ebooks
Arthur C. Clarke - The Collected Stories of
Friedrich - City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s

Last few months:

Anna Kavan - Sleep has his House
Pierre Michon - Small Lives
The Ruba'iyta of Omar Khayyam
Elena Ferrante - Troubling Love
Thomas Bernhard - On the Mountain

Trauma and Memory
The body keeps the score

Wqnt to process 2019 aka shit year

Is there a 'best' english translation of the Rubaiyat? I've heard the FitzGerald version is very loose.

Tristan Gooley wild signs and star paths.
Though would probably have got another copy of the Walkers guide by him cos I think it would have been more immediate to the reader it was meant for. Might keep this and give her something else now that I started it. Will see if FOPP have any of his.

Finton O'toole heroic failure.
Irish political writers book on Brexit and the mentality behind it. Thought I'd see if he could make any more sense of it.
This was from last year so far from up to date. He's started off talking about bits being extremely arrogant when people were originally trying to set up the common market in ghe early 60s. Being totally dismissive of the project etc.
Well might make some sense as background.