Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

"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.

needed to pick up some Henry James:

What Maisie Knew
The Wings of the Dove
The Aspern Papers & The Spoils of Poynton

a couple Roald Dahl books for our kid:

Boy
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me

john cowper powys - a glastonbury romance

Bof. ^That's extraordinary. Read it in Fiji of all places.

have to admit the size of it is somewhat intimidating, though once i got stuck into wolf solent i sped through that so here's hoping (will also be reading it in the south pacific, if not in quite so warm climes)

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

need to read! just got hold of a copy of the documentary.

Gyula Krudy - Knight of the Cordon Bleu
How much did you pay? That goes for crazy money, sometimes

lol, really. I paid 3 quid for it.

"The End of the Novel of Love," Vivian Gornick

A couple of thrift store buys:

The Sicilian Vespers, Steven Runciman, Cambridge U. Press. It's a hardcover in good condition w/ dust jacket, a Book Club edition. $2.

Zen and the Birds of Appetite, Thomas Merton, New Directions paperback in good condition, $2. A small collection of his essays.

Some great 2nd hand finds:

Pavese - This Business of Living
Strindberg - Inferno/From an Occult Diary
Rilke - Selected Letters

^that strindberg is something i have to revisit

thomas bernhard - extinction
alfred döblin - a people betrayed
adolfo bioy casares - asleep in the sun

Kit Pearson, The Sky is Falling

"Reading Rilke," William H. Gass
"How Fiction Works," James Wood
"By Night in Chile," Roberto Bolaño
"Moravagine," Blaise Cendrars
"No Place on Earth," Christa Wolf
"In Patagonia" and "The Songlines," Bruce Chatwin
"The Years," Annie Ernaux
"Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius," Ray Monk
"The Avignon Quintet," Lawrence Durrell

a compilation of 3 Henry Miller texts from his centenary
& Rock and Roll Doctor by Mark Brent on Lowell George and Little Feat

Brecht - Poems Part Two 1929-1938
Brecht - Poems Part Three 1938-1956
Dezso KosztoLanyi - Anna Edes

Note to Londoners - Judd books had quite a few Hungarian books in their shelves last week when I picked up Anna Edes.

Well you're disqualified from borrowing my copy of Anna Edes now.

I am sure I will qualify to borrow something else from your Hungarian collection soon enough.

Dudes, if you are interested in Hungarian come over to Beszélsz magyarul?

Yesterday I ordered (through alibris) a used copy of the Everyman Library hardcover containing three novels of Penelope Fitzgerald: Offshore, Human Voices, and The Beginning of Spring, for $7.30, shipping included.

Today I took books to Powell's Books to sell. From the proceeds of selling about a dozen books, I was able to purchase these six books:

Doting, Henry Green, NYRB trade paperback, new (remaindered), $9.

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, Elizabeth Taylor, used trade paperback, $3.

The Rise and Fall Athens: Nine Greek Lives, Plutarch, trans. Scott-Kilvert, used Penguin Classics, $2.

The Face of Battle, John Keegan, used trade paperback, $2.

Maigret Gets Angry, Georges Simenon, used trade paperback, $3.

The Hot Kid, Elmore leonard, used mass market paperback, $3.

Doting, the Fitzgeralds, Mrs Palfrey and the Simenon all great. The Hot Kid is disappointing--Leonard did seem to be running out of puff towards the end.

Mrs Palfrey is vg but made me v sad.

Bohemians by Dan Franck
a book on the Birth of Modern art in Paris in the early 20th century

Robert Plant A Life Paul Rees.
biography of midlands singer, like.

Didn't buy Johnny Rogan's Neil Young biography cos the pages were brown down the outside which looked very suspicious in a 2nd hand book. Shame want to read that.