Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

Ha woof I think I saw that Henry Green at Judd but I already had enough with me.

Now I got an idea for a book shopping ending with FAP :-)

Not a lot better than Judd. I like the couple of books around Charing X road and Skoob - any others apart from yer Charity shops? I guess not much more will emerge - unfortunately I never get around to Amazon.

skoob are actually owned by the same people as the place i'm working.

over this past weekend:

morante - history: a novel
frame - a state of siege
stead - the man who loved children
stead - dark places of the heart
john cowper powys - wolf solent

Nice little haul!

frame - a state of siege
stead - the man who loved children
stead - dark places of the heart
john cowper powys - wolf solent

yeah!

Would be interested on any thoughts when you get round to the Morante, omar.

b.f. skinner - 'walden two'
althusser/balibar - 'reading capital'
theodore h. white - 'the making of the american president 1960'
michael chabon - 'the final solution' (american edition i've wanted for the cover fr aaages)
james kelman, alasdair gray, agnes ownes - 'lean tales' (1st ed.)
british medical association - 'the medical effects of nuclear war'

The Epistles of Horace: Bilingual Edition, trans. David Ferry, used paperback, good condition, $9.50.

Su Tung-P'o: Selections from a Sung Dynasty Poet, trans. Burton Watson, used hardcover from Colombia U. Press, 1966, $9.95.

Insurgent Mexico, John Reed, used paperback, $1. Firsthand account of Pancho Villa's guerrilla war, by the author of Ten Days That Shook the World.

will do!

xxp

Thomp, yes, Waugh's diaries aren't much fun; the letters, though, I found very readable: like there's a lot of the shitty side of him (grumpy foul Catholic snob bigot), but it's fun enough when he sharpens up for writing to Nancy Mitford, also all the letters to other writers where he's sort of indifferent-critical about the book they've just sent him. Still, wouldn't exactly recommend above reading actual Waugh novels.

& xyzzzz, always on for bookshopping and pint. I'll sometimes do a circuit of Gower st Waterstone's, Skoob & Judd 2 of a weekend. Maybe see if used-to-be-Osborne's has fluked something interesting. I've never really got to know Charing X for second hand - I just imagine that every shop is full of ancient reptilian dealers waiting to gouge me. I don't really know about other second-hand and remainder places. The South Bank book tables can have pleasant surprises, I guess. And if I pass an Oxfam bookshop I'll drop in.

But I should slow down, since I've just been back to the Liberty Fund for Hume's History of Britain in six volumes.

I really wish I knew which Oxfam shops were nearby where I work, and yeah Southbank is always worth a browse. And I do the Judd-Skoob-Gower Street Waterstones thing too.

Avoid Cecil court off Leicester Square - that's where all the expensive 1st edition booksellers reside, although I wouldn't avoid the music score shop once in a blue moon - they have a music books section that might be worth a browse. I would go into the Esoteric bookshops if I knew what I was looking for. That stuff needs to be more on my radar than it is (interested in histories of mysticism etc)

Anyway - cool, I emailed you woof. Hope you got it ok.

Last bought:

Antal Szerb - Journey into Moonlight

Ed McBain -- Nocturne
Mandarin The Easy Way

Love that Szerb! Yes, got the email thanks, have (I hope, if the webmail works) replied.

Just remembered the Book & Comic Exchange in Notting Hill. Sometimes it's a bit dull, but it can come through with real surprises and f***-me bargains. Also enjoy that 50p book graveyard in the basement. There's something breathtaking about all those books no-one, not even me, wants.

that's the only bookstore i particularly know of and like in london, the exchange

stuff on desk at present:

'the rime of the ancient mariner' - illust. by mervyn peake
'the stuffed owl: an anthology of bad verse', eds. d.b. wyndham-lewis and charles lee
'the first clerihews' - e. clerihew bentley - with illustrations by g.k. chesterton
'diary of a nobody' - 40s hardback reprinting original illustrations

also today:

max apple, 'the propheteers'
max apple, 'free agents'
nicholson baker, 'the mezzanine'
nicholson baker, 'room temperature'
donald barthelme, 'sixty stories'
donald barthelme, 'forty stories'
donald barthelme, 'the king'
borges and bioy-casares, 'six problems for don isidro parodi'
borges and bioy-casares, 'chronicles of bustos domecq'

hrm.

Thomp, yes, Waugh's diaries aren't much fun; the letters, though, I found very readable: like there's a lot of the shitty side of him (grumpy foul Catholic snob bigot), but it's fun enough when he sharpens up for writing to Nancy Mitford, also all the letters to other writers where he's sort of indifferent-critical about the book they've just sent him. Still, wouldn't exactly recommend above reading actual Waugh novels.

i am actually going to pick up the unread copy of brideshead i've had for years from my parents' house this weekend, might pick up the letters as well. i might try and locate scoop and flags first, though ... scoop's where i left off, last time round. (though i did read the loved one and what i could stand of pinfold, which wasn't much.)

Haven't visited the exchange in an age.

Yes, got the email thanks, have (I hope, if the webmail works) replied.

Didn't get it. I'd forgotten that email I signed up to ILX with doesn't work anymore. If you click on my name I list my other email address (obv replace the 'at' and 'dot') and try again.

today's charity shopping got me 'Don Quixote', Alice Munro's 'Runaway' (I'll credit that one as an ILB recommendation, since I'm not sure I'd be aware of her if not for the talk here) and Perec's 'Life: A User's Manual'. All for just £3.25! Pretty good. This buying five books a week thing when I only really have time for academic reading is probably a bad idea. I recently bought Eco's 'The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana' and can't imagine being bothered to read it at any time in the next, say, ten years.

I finally sold my unread copy of Don Quixote. It had acquired an accusatory look.

Just bought a bunch of cheap Folio Society books on ABE, having recently interviewed one of their illustrators and got a taste for big, nicely-designed illustrated hardbacks in slipcases that are probably too huge to read in bed.

JM, Folio Society today, next thing you know it'll be calf-bound first editions.

bookstores in berkeley sell heritage club books usually for around $10-$15 a piece... it seems like such a good deal, since paperback copies of the same books are only a couple dollars less.

JM, Folio Society today, next thing you know it'll be calf-bound first editions.

I know--this could be the end of me.

Those Heritage editions are lovely but I can't help but want the proper, signed Limited Editions Book Club editions when I see them. I have a couple (the awesome Edward Bawden-illustrated Salammbo being my favourite; I have it without the beautiful slipcase but it was a gift...).

First editions are a mug's game. Really well-designed books are great, though.

Charity shop fun times, hopefully a fiver well spent:

Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment
Nabakov Pnin (finally reading Lolita; this fucking guy.)
Zola The Kill
A book of Dylan Thomas poetry.
Wilde The Happy Prince & Other Stories
Hollinghurst The Swimming Pool Library

Crime & Punishment is worth way more than a fiver on its own.

Yeah--that and the Nabakov alone and you're well ahead of the game!

xp to tim - i'm in the same boat... i have a couple limited editions club books, and they are way nicer than the heritage ones.

a trio of $1 purchases:

territorial rights - muriel spark
weymouth sands - john cowper powys
ocean of sound - david toop

I did some poetry grubbing over the weekend. You'd think I'd have enough by now, but no... I had some trade credit at Powell's Books and it was burning a hole in my pocket.

Collected Poems of Muriel Ruykeser, used paperback in good condition, $10. I usually veer away from women poets, just because they tend to handle language in ways that don't quite sit right with me. I don't really know why this is. But I am willing to be persuaded about Ruykeser's work.

Almost Paradise: New and Selected Poems & Translations, Sam Hamill, new (remaindered) paperback, $8. He's better known these days as a poetry editor, I think, but he's a local PNW poet and we share many influences.

Making the Scene: Selected Poems, Kenneth O. Hanson, new paperback, $7. A local poet, locally printed, and (again) has many of the same influences.

Greek Lyric Poetry: A New Translation, Sherod Santos, used (like new) hardcover, $5. I must own six or seven of these anthologies of Greek poetry in translation by now, both plain and fancy. This is one of the fancypants ones, but well done in that style.

I keep buying books that I already have because I don't think to check the shelves.

Have done a load of book shopping in the last week - due to being too ill to crawl to my computer I post about about my efforts now:

Last Sunday a nice bout of book shopping w/ILB head woof which doubled as FAP

Tibor Dery - The Story of a Dog
Jiri Grusa - The Questionnaire
Hrabal - Closely Observed Trains

I wonder if ever Czech novel released in the West has an intro written by Josef Skvorecky, whom I've not read.

Then walking by Lower Marsh street later in the week (there is a 2nd hand bookshop there) I saw that Crockatt & Powell Bookseller was closing that very day and clearing their stock with everything at 50% off so i got:

Knut Hamsun - Hunger
MR James - Casting the Runes and Other ghost Stories (on Oxford classics - good to finally get something by him with an OK cover, as good as I think you can get at the mo)

Finally: Mishima - Death in Midsummer and Other stories (read Patriotism off it so far and its so good that I don't whether there is any point in reading any of the others, but of course I will)

MR James - Casting the Runes and Other ghost Stories (on Oxford classics - good to finally get something by him with an OK cover, as good as I think you can get at the mo)

Publishers do love their John Atkinson Grimshaw for ghost stories - I can think of five books offhand that have his pictures on (Oxford Book of Ghost Stories, Oxford World's Classics Through a Glass Darkly, Wordsworth Collected MR James, Oxford World's Classics MR James, er.... make that four - I know there's more.) Rightly so - he's excellent, but it does become a little predictable.

Also, I must admit, xyzzzz__, I abhor that edition of MR James (Michael Cox I believe - who edited the Oxford Book of Ghost Stories I think). For a start, enough with the asterisks in the text already! So much of a good ghost story requires a gradual removal of both the reader and the main character (often willed in his or her case) away from mundane and material reality, to be jolted out two, three or four times a page in most cases is a gross imposition. You feel uneasy ignoring them, but all too often when you turn to the back you find it's to define something you could look up in a dictionary (if, indeed, you don't already know it) or some chatty bit of facetiousness or opinion. (Including one note that simply stands 'I have not managed to locate this quotation').

Nothing wrong with having them as end notes that you can turn to after finishing the story (unless your memory is exceptionally porous, you should be able to remember enough of the details to make reading such notes a relatively simple business), but they can't decide whether they are notes for the imbecile or notes for the scholar, and please, stop interrupting! I'm trying to read here!

Sorry to have missed you the other day, I had work, curses, but glad to hear you got a good haul.

Yes it is Michael Cox. I guess when I look for a nice paperback I think of the 'feel' of the page, the font, that the words aren't horribly squeezed in and the cover - that it has a picture that is intelligently selected for how the book might make you feel (I have read and know bits about MR James, but haven't read him so this is guess work.)

I get at what you mean re: asterisks (didn't notice them at the shop). But I never go back unless its something I feel I have to know at this minute, but very rarely - it does stop the flow, true. Footnotes are way more important when reading something like Marx.

What ed of his Ghost Stories do you have Gamaliel?

(It was a good day and you were missed; I saw a copy of Montherlant's The Girls at Skoob. Anyway, there will always be another time.)

Ah, you are stronger willed than me! And it's not so bad really. I've got a number of editions in fact, not through any desire to collect them, but for some reason when the will to read him comes on me, which is at least annually, I never seem to have a copy about me.

The Collected Wordsworth edition (before he went back into copyright) was very good, although lacked some of the extras containing as it did only Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, More Ghost Stories, and A Warning To the Curious (I think).

I've also got individual Penguin copies of GSOAA, and GSOAA + MGS. If I every buy any of these again I like to think it would be in a pre-1939 hard cover edition. There's a wonderful early edition of Le Fanu's Through A Glass Darkly with lovely spacious wide-leaded text, which I covet for the same reason - you can sink into their atmosphere so much more easily, on cold winter days, with a glass of something sustaining next to you.

I haven't read The Girls, I'm quite often in Skoob so I'll have a butcher's the next time I'm down there, cheers for the tip.

btw, Gamaliel, have you seen this discussion of M R James stories (ILX was created by the people who run Freaky Trigger)? Many of the contributors were/are readers/post on ILX, still.

You may find it of interest.

Cheers xyzzz__, I'm doing a bit on ghost stories at the moment, so this is excellent.

"Three Nights In Havana: Pierre Trudeau, Fidel Castro, and the Cold War World" by Robert Wright
"City of Quartz" by Mike Davis
"A Perfect Spy, John le Carre
"Balkan Ghosts," by Robert Kaplan
"The Great Game: the Struggle for Empire in Central Asia," by Peter Hopkirk
"Will You take Me As I Am: Joni Mitchell's Blue Period" by Michelle Mercer

A quarto book on Flemish painting, second hand from Oxfam, with quite beautiful reproductions and from what I could tell from a couple of minutes' skimming, decent text as well. It was still £25 though and I'm currently feeling mildly guilty, guilt that I am assuaging by telling myself that because I seem to be coming down with a filthy cold, it's a worthwhile investment for holing up indoors for the next few days and poring over.

If I get restless later, I might pop out and find a copy of Ada or Ardor, a Family Chronicle. I tried reading this years ago, when I read loads of Nabokov, but couldn't get into it. I'm feeling like I want to now.

That probably means I'm going to put The Apple in the Dark by Claric Lispector on the back burner for the moment.

Clarice. I'm blaming the cold.

this month's deductions:

eric ambler, 'dirty story'
lillian ross, 'picture'
beryl bainbridge, 'the bottle factory outing'
a.l. lloyd, 'folk song in england'
various, 'economics: an anti-text'
marshall jevons, 'the fatal equilibrium'*
liu shao-chi, 'on the party'
donald moore, 'far eastern journal'
jean rhys, 'wide sargasso sea'
nabokov, 'pnin'
'guy debord and the situationist international: texts'
pound, 'the cantos'
eugene ionesco, 'the hermit'
'musical instruments of south east asia' (old oxford asia series thing)
graham greene, 'a burnt-out case'
stendhal, 'memoirs of an egotist'
pound, 'selected prose'
samuel delany, 'tales of neveryon'
anthony powell, 'afternoon men'
oct 1963 issue of analog
feb 1964 issue of galaxy
2 x penguin modern painters

at this rate i'll be out of pocket to work here /:

* one of the worst books i have ever read btw

Hilarious title though, thomp. What's that folk song book like? I strongly recommend Reg Hall's I Never Played To Many Posh Dances, if you haven't read it.

In fact, is that Bert Lloyd's book? I meant to read it ages ago, but never got hold of it.

I have also bought today, The World of Jonathan Swift, with essays by Pat Rogers, Irvin Ehrenpreis and Geoffrey Hill, for £5 and The Judas Window by Carter Dickson for a friend who's just had a baby and who was requesting detective fiction of that period while she's on maternity leave. £3.

Must stop.

got mildly drunk last night and was thinking about how old goriot was such a great book imo and why don't i read more balzac. so i got these three cheap on amazon: colonel chabert, cousin bette, the wrong side of paris.

I gave a large part of my library (in reality less than 10%, and probably quite a bit less) the boot last weekend. Paul McCartney's Many Years From Now arrived yesterday, which I have assured myself is to be the last new arrival this side of Christmas.

As the other participant, must say the London book-shop + pint expedition was a good Sunday afternoon. Came away with a slim volume of Swinburne (didn't have a portable selection before), The Cambridge Companion to John Dryden and the best of Elizabeth David (driven by slightly delusional logic: 'I like cooking. I should cook more. This'll bring an inspiring element of literary snobbery to kitchen, then I'll cook more.' RONG. )

Gilbert Highet, Poets in a Landscape. Boring title, great book. I see NYRB will bring out a new edition this spring, but I bought the amazingly solid, built-like-a-tank 1957 Knopf edition, the kind they don't make anymore.

Incidentally, having mentioned John Atkinson Grimshaw upthread - three of his paintings are in the window of Robert Green, a fine art dealer on Bond Street, if you're in London and happen to be passing.

it is the bert lloyd book, and i haven't read it yet. ho hum

"Uranium Frenzy: Boom and Bust on the Colorado Plateau" by Raye Ringholtz
"The Boat" by Nam Le
"In Praise of Barbarians: Essays against Empire," Mike Davis
"Complete Short Stories," Graham Greene
"Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle east, and the Caucasus" by Robert Kaplan
"The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia" by Lutz Kleveman