Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

1st hand: Marina Tsvetaeva - Earthly Signs - Moscow Diaries: 1917-1922
Gift: Gillian Rose - Love's Work

2nd hand:

Eimear Mcbride - A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
Anne Carson - Glass and God

let's start an anne carson thread

Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, used trade paperback, very good condition, $3. I read Michael Lewis's The Undoing Project last year and thought I'd go straight to the horse's mouth, some time later this year.

Jerry Brotton - A History of the World in Twelve Maps ($1)

Thought this looked cool. I want to read about maps. Seems like it talks about the Dutch Golden Age and maps in Vermeer, too.

The Knitting and Crochet Bible: The Complete Handbook for Creative Knitting and Crochet
Claire Compton,
I did a short aran knitting course at the local museum and found that since I hadn't spent any time at school learning how to knit I was finding it difficult. So think I'll get something and learn from the start. Been practising knitting an purling daily for the last few weeks.

Constance Spry Cookbook looked like a good one to have and was going very cheap on Amazon Marketplace

How to Speak Fluent Sewing Christine Haynes
overview of sewing terms and techniques.

John Milton - Paradise Regained/Samson Agonistes and the complete shorter poems
Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov (two vol. ed.)
Herman Broch - The Death of Virgil (this is possibly the most Old White Men novel ever - crankily modernist, and is effectively a fake history on Virgil writing the Aeneid as if its his destiny to do so. It also has a very annoying quote by George Steiner at the back, and a garbage intro (needless to say this should be reissued). I liked parts of it but I sold it years ago and it was only when I saw Charlotte Mandell (French translator whom I follow) tweeting bits of it did I realise that trying to approach it like a Thomas Bernhard novel was wrong and I should revisit - weird seeing this in the racks so soon after wanting to find it again)

Who translated the Bros? Hadn't heard of a two vol.

Magarshack. Its on Penguin, just available as two vols., good and sane.

is the 'garbage intro' by arendt? picked it up about a decade ago & still need to read it (along with the sleepwalkers). anyone rep for the spell?

found an old virago edition of leonora carrington's the hearing trumpet to replace previous copies given away as gifts.

No its by Bernard Levin - just a whine on how there isn't a lot of German Literature about - except he is doing an intro for a translation of a fairly obscure text.

I think its a lot better than Sleepwalkers.

oh right, mine has what could be construed as an obnoxious blurb from steiner (out-joycing joyce! closer to the realities of the age than kafka!) but with an arendt intro extracted from a circa 1945 essay from partisan review.

2 x gass: omensetter's luck + life sentences: literary judgments and accounts

Dizzy Gillespie To Be Or Not To Bop
Autobiography of teh great jazz trumpeter. I read a version of this back in the mid 80s. Only realised on looking at when thsi copy came from yesterday that it was only a few years after it was published. thought it was older.
Has some interesting insight into some things including the Islamic renaming of various jazz players in the 40s to get around Jim crow laws.

Will Carruthers playing The Bass with 3 Left Hands
THe memoir of Spacemen 3/Spiritualised bassist's time in those bands. Quite good so far. Seems to be intent to get himself messed up on drugs though i think he does keep the audience sympathetic.
I think I need to pick up physical copies of the Spacemen 3 studio lps.

Brix Smith Start The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise
Mark E Smith's ex autobiography I heard the bits about somebody from californian privilege getting used to Manchester getting by hood are quite amusing. Saw it cheapish when i was in a rush to get through a cheap booksp so finally took the p0lunge. been meaning to read it for a while.

Conran cookbook
Looks very interesting,So far I've been going through the ingredients sections which are pretty good. Seen some bad reviews of the recipes having been of their time which I think was mid 80s. But looks like a good find for a couple of €.

Tim Jeal Stanley
biography of Victorian explorer.

oh right, mine has what could be construed as an obnoxious blurb from steiner (out-joycing joyce! closer to the realities of the age than kafka!) but with an arendt intro extracted from a circa 1945 essay from partisan review.

the quote in the back of mine: "The Death of Virgil represents the only genuine technical advance that fiction has made since Ulysses." Which is really alienating (a lot of Steiner can read like obnoxious grandstanding; he can be lazy, seldom shows his workings and is never asked to because no one challenges him). Its a bit weird Steiner doesn't like Peter Weiss' Aesthetics of Resistance, which has a bit in common with this particular Broch, style-wise.

Never got past initial impression of Steiner as off-putting snob. Trying to remember his beef with Anthony Burgess now.

tolstoy - war and peace
thomas mann - the magic mountain
dave fanning - the thing is...
michael calvin - Living on the Volcano: The Secrets of Surviving as a Football Manager
ta-nehisi coates - between the world and me

An Exorcist Explains The Demonic Fr Gabriele Amorth
turned up in a local charity shop and i thought it might be interesting to see what the other half thinks as it were.

Sotheby's Wine Encyclopaedia
another charity shop find. Has some articles on sources of flavour and differentiation etc etc that I want to read. Also thorough listings of wines per region which I might get to a point of knowing a thing about if i start drinking now.

ring Koji Suzuki
the horror novel that the films were based on . turned up for 25c in a local charity shop. Hadn't known it was a book first.

Illustrated Directory of Native Americans edited by ray Bonds
looked interesting.

I Am Ozzy
Ozzy Osbourne's autobiography.

The Who The Illustrated history
Partially to see the clothing they were wearing to see if anything was worth copying.
& I do like the Who up to about Quadrophenia.

Hunter S Thompson The Rum Diary
don't think I've read this, charity shop again. Wasn't sure to what extent it was completed. Know it wasn't published when written so not sure how far into the editing process it went.

The Interrogation JMG Le Clozio
looked interesting for 25c,

The author of that exorcism book is the subject of the new William Friedkin film

OK, wonder if that was a pure coincidence that that turned up at this time, or somebody working there being tuned into what's being released.
Anyway looked pretty interesting for €1 so glad i grabbed it. Now to get around to reading it.

Just never know how much of a surplus of books one is likely to get if you're a donations based charity shop and how good a job certain staff members have to do to put things that sell on the shelves. Presumably not everything that is of sellable quality will ever make it out.
PIcking up some very interesting stuff for 25c from another charity shop on the same backstreet. Included most of Margaret Atwood i think.

The Interrogation JMG Le Clozio

Hope you enjoy extended scenes of animal torture

Becky Albertalli - Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (because I'm writing on it)
Stephen Leacock - Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (because I keep stubbornly insisting that I'll get into him)

"Soul Mountain," Gao Xingjian
"Winter Mythologies and Abbots," Pierre Michon
"Alchemy & Mysticism," Alexander Roob
"In Bluebeard's Castle," George Steiner
"A Legacy," Sybille Bedford
"Care Crosses the River," Hans Blumenberg
"Other Men's Daughters," Richard Stern
"Daido Tokyo," Daido Moriyama

I bought a used copy of Charles Portis' Masters of Atlantis for $1. I would have preferred Dog of the South, since ILBers have said good things about it, but I'll take what I can find.

At the same time (and for the same price) I bought a used copy of John Keegan's The Price of Admiralty. I would have preferred his The Face of War, for the same reason, but again will settle for what I can get.

anna kavan - my soul in china
pessoa - the (complete) book of disquiet
david markson - wittgenstein's mistress

Anadolu Psych by Daniel Spicer.
An expansion of a Wire Primer by an author who apparently just got into the music because he had won himself an assignment that happened to be on the subject.
So reads a bit like one of the Julian Cope music books but with less of Cope's idiosy7ncratic style.
Quite enjoying it so far.
JUst got through the section on Mogollar whiuch is the first band covered in the book.

There was a Cafe Oto reading tied in with it which may have been last week.

Next thing i consciously want to buy right now is the Rob Young Can book and teh latest edition of Ugly Things which came out at the beginning of this month.
& the copy of Seasons May Change that I have put aside to replace the copy I got soaked at Xmastime . & the BUrn Jones book that's with it.

2nd hand:

Cervantes - Don Quixote (this is the famous translation by Tobias Smolett, so look forward to re-reading it in that)

Finally broken down and ordered a few items on Amazon:

Ingeborg Bachmann - Malina (such a classic, re-reading it just now)
Hilda Hilst - Letters from a Seducer
Juan Benet - Return to Region (although I haven't got it yet)

1st hand (from an actual shop and everything):

François-René de Chateaubriand - Memoirs from Beyond the Grave 1768–1800

Emily Mackay, Homogenic
Thomas Tryon, Night of the Moonbow

Raul Ruiz : Diario. Notas, recuerdos y secuencias de cosas vistas (Diaries 1993-2011)

Brassai: Images of Culture And The Surrealist Observer

Brassai: The Monograph

christine brooke-rose - xorandor
william gerhardie - of mortal love

Rob Young All Gates Open arrived a couple of days ago and i've had a quick look in it. Read his description of Ege Bam yasi and been busy with other stuff.
Also got latest Ugly Things in same delivery which is also great.

Years ago I read a borrowed copy of “Havoc” by Tom Kristensen, and loved it (as documented on the Scandinavian lit thread). I’ve been looking for a copy since then - the only available edition was a university of Wisconsin edition. It’s been varying between £120 and £1000 on Amazon this whole time

Yesterday I was in a bookshop in Madison, WI and there was a copy for $7.50! I was so excited.

I looked it up on Amazon to show my wife what a score I’d made and how rare it was and noticed that it’s about to be issued by NYRB this month. Oh, and another paperback edition had been available since 2016. Oh well, it’s still GREAT.

I also bought a copy of “Encires for a Dilettante” by Ursule Molinaro, I remember loving her “Positions With White Roses” twenty-odd years ago.

I bought that 2016 edition and still haven't read it. Need to rectify this.

Broke down (again) and purchased a few items off Amazon:

Sergio Pitol - The Magician of Vienna
Josef Wrinkler - The Garden of Bitter Oranges
Wolfgang Hilbig - I

(I love all three writers dearly - sadly published by obscure-ish ppl, however these are some of the most successful writers to be rendered into English these last few years)

2nd hand:

John Keats - So Bright and Delicate. Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Browne.
Anne Carson - Red Doc >
Joao Gilberto Noll - Quiet Creature in the Corner
Durs Grunbein - Ashes for Breakfast

a dollar a piece:

the penguin complete saki
ew hornung - raffles: the amateur cracksman
elizabeth bowen - eva trout
elizabeth taylor - hester lily
elizabeth taylor - the soul of kindness
dorothy carrington - granite island
malcolm lowry - hear us o lord/lunar caustic
dh lawrence - letters to thomas & adele seltzer
louise desalvo - conceived with malice: literature as revenge
the concise oxford dictionary of french literature
francis james child - the english & scottish popular ballads vol. iv

Wow

The Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire, unabridged, translated by Peter Gay, in two used hardcover volumes, slip-cased, for $10. In the bookshop I randomly opened to several different passages and read them, and decided it looked like some pretty awesome stuff in there.

oh, and wow, no lime tangier! that's some ace used book nabbing.

not bad for thirty minutes attendance at a book sale. sort of regretting not picking up some of the countless henry james titles that were lying around.

That's a great haul. Raffles is fun and very, very gay. The Bowen and the Taylors are excellent.

I was at a wedding recently and the place where they held the reception had a giant library, clearly used for decoration. At my girlfriend's instigation I stole Joy In The Morning, following the logic that books are to be read, not displayed.

All IN THe Downs
Shirley Collins memoir. America Over The Water was a fantastic read so hope this is as good

Hippie Hippie Shake Richard Neville
Oz editor's memoir of the 60s

I was at a wedding recently and the place where they held the reception had a giant library, clearly used for decoration. At my girlfriend's instigation I stole Joy In The Morning, following the logic that books are to be read, not displayed.

This is wise. Once stayed in a hotel that had a library where the books had obviously been bought by the metre based on spine colours. But managed to make off with a couple of St Expurys and a Molly Keane.

Tom Stoppard - Arcadia (loved it and already ordered The Coast of Utopia trilogy to follow up)
Arthur C Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama (basically new and £1!)
Antonio di Benedetto - Zama (had to pick it up after seeing the film)
Clark Gable, Laurence Olivier and Humphrey Bogart biographies (I've forgotten the authors but they were £2 each and I presume they were all donated by the same enthusiast to Oxfam)

And in advance of September jaunt:
Paul B. Henze - Layers of Time: History of Ethiopia
Ryszard Kapuściński - The Emperor (this was absolutely fascinating)

Amazon:
Paul Celan - Complete Prose
Holderlin - Hymns and Fragments

2nd hand:
Gyula Krudy - Knight of the Cordon Bleu
Kenzaburo Oe - A Personal Matter

1st hand: Georg Buchner - Lenz (This is a birthday present for a friend)

Bloody hell, that Oe. It's very good but, oh god.

Its in a really pretty tuttle edition too. Looking fwd to it :-)

Really happy about the Krudy as well, that's as good a find as I'll have all year (quite a few Krudy books on Corvina, but I don't think the publisher exists anymore)

(I've probably banged on a bit about The Fifth Seal by Ferenc Santa, also on Corvina? Amazing book. Corvina was a Hungarian state publisher, I always assumed, but now I realise I have no particular basis for that assumption.)

Yeah, that was my impression too - maybe Soros need to get on top of that

I bought a couple of Zsigmond Móricz titles on Corvina last year, and found the first boring enough that I haven't troubled the second yet.