Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

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.

2nd hand:

Tanizaki - A Man, A Cat and Two Women
The Psalms

1st Hand:

Dag Solstad - Armand V

I went a bit wild today and bought more books than I have in a single day for as long as I can recall. Used, of course. Cheap, relatively so. But I rarely buy more than three at a time. I guess it will be time to clear more space on my shelves and get rid of some dead weights.

Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust, the Kilmartin update of the Moncrieff translation, in 3 hardcover volumes published by Random House (1981), for $12 total. Approx. 3200 pp of languid fiction that I don't know when I can find the time for.

Excellent Women, Barbara Pym, used trade paperback, Penguin, $3.

Iceland's Bell, Halldor Laxness, used trade paperback, $4.

The Human Factor, Graham Greene, used Everyman hardcover, $3.

A Malgudi Omnibus: Sawmi and Friends, Bachelor of Arts, English Teacher, R. K. Narayan, used trade paperback, $4.

The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson, used trade paperback, $4.

The Dog of the South, Charles Portis, used trade paperback, $4.

The Siege of Krishnapur, J. G. Farrell, used NYRB paperback, $4.

The Towers of Trebizond, Rose Macauley, used NYRB paperback, $2.

The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald, used trade paperback, $1.50.

I also bough some nice replacement copies of Herodotus and Thuycidides, in Penguin Classic editions, for $3 each, because my old copies were kind of bunged up.

Found a 2nd edition of CV Wedgwood's Kings Peace for £2, excited to read

Wow, Aimless, good haul

At a well-organized used bookstore before a movie, both in unread condition:

How Should a Person Be?, Sheila Heti, $8

O Pioneers!, Willa Cather, $5

Elijah Wald Dylan Goes electric
I really enjoyed teh book on Delta Blues, Leaving The Delta and have been meaning to grab this for a while.

Snow Upon The Desert Frank Mcflynn
biography of Richard Francis Burton the victorian explorer and translator.
I picked this up and then saw there was another biogrpahy of him from the same year 1990. Not sure what the significance of that is yet. centenary of something?

Not purchases as such, but have recently been going through a dozen big boxes of unread books that have been in storage for over a decade, so at the moment my house is like an ideal 2nd-hand bookshop circa 2005.

Mick Farren The Black Leather Jacket
interesting find in a local newsagents I don't tend to go near. Have to check them out more frequently. THink I've seen some interesting rock stuff in there before cheaply. T
This was €1.99. Not asure why something like this would be popping up in there but do like his writing .

Frederik Pohl: THE WAY THE FUTURE WAS - a memoir.

Cool. Old edition or did they recently put out a new one?

No, an old hardback, 2nd hand, for £3!

Bought at the big-ish NYRB sale @ Gower st Waterstone (there are I'd say nearly 50 titles going for a fiver each):

Poems of the Late T'Ang
Proensa An Anthology of Troubadour Poetry
Umberto Saba - Ernesto
Yoel Hoffmannn - The Sound of One Hand 281 Zen Koans with Answers

1st hand:

Gerald Murnane - The Plains

2nd Hand:

Nabokov - Speak, Memory An Autobiography Revisited
Bae Suah - A Greater Music
Maeve Brennan - The Visitor
Dante - La Vita Nuova

I should check out this sale.

THe Fire and teh fury Michael Wolf
wondering what of teh books on the trump era are actually worth reading. I know most of what's in here already or have heard the related stories.

Mars By 1980 David Stubbs
bought but not as yet received. The book on the history of electronic music by the author of Future Days which I enjoyed and i think only saw very superficial attacks on. I know him from his writing from one of teh music weeklies a couple of decades ago anyway.
hopefully will appear by the end of the week.

Ernie Pyle Ernie's War the best of Ernie pyle's WW2 Dispatches
been meaning to read something by him since I saw the film of his work with Burgess Meredith I think. THough had Henry Fonda as him running through my head.
Saw a copy of something by him somewhere recently and looked it up on Amazon where i bought thsi from the marketplace.

Noam chomsky Understanding powerL The Indispensable Chomsky
from a charity shop yesterday. Looked good.

a few library books and library giveaways.

Kenny's choice 101 Irish Books You Must Read
list book of books over the last couple of centuries. One of the brothers who runs one of the local longstanding bookshops writes a couple of page son each, short precis a story connecting the book to the bookshop.
looks interesting for 25c and even more interesting on closer perusal.

Ghosts of my life by mark fisher

So far this book is fucking good. Reminds me why i used to love music writing and made an ilx account years ago.

Burne-Jones by Martin Harrison and Bill Waters.
1989 paperback version of an overview of teh Victorian Pre-Raophaelite painter.
I put this aside in a shop a while back and then didn't get around to buying it for ages. Bought a number of other titles from the same shop.
When I did go to buy it the counterstaff couldn't find it. They had rearranged their kept stuff in the interim
I found it on the shelf today. Or at least a version of teh same book.

Looks great anyway. I like a number of these Pre-Raphaelite and otheriwse Romantic victorian painters.

I have the Penelope Fitzgerald bio of Burne-Jones, need to actually read it.

I didn’t know you were interested in PKF.

Sundog-Scott Walker (a compendium of his recent and some not so lyrics)
The Velvet Underground-New York Art (not essential as literature perhaps, but man is it Beautiful to look at.
Mark E Smith-V11 (a wonderful and rare bit of Fall arcana that i scored on ebay recently,illuminates some of the darker corners of his wordage for this yank and lifelong Fall freak. Also just paid 50.00 u.s. for pages out of NME and Sounds etc of Fall inteviews etc from 78 to 80. Figure that kinda stuff's not going to get cheaper)
So yeah mostly music stuff here.

Richard Holmes - Shelley: The Pursuit
Sybille Bedford - A Legacy

Both second-hand.

For any Torontonians or anyone in the GTA, U of T is starting up its annual college book sales tomorrow, which are always an embarrassment of riches.

Mars by 1980 just arrived. Not had a chance to look at it very closely yet.
Hoped it might be today but thought storm might delay it.

Bought the new Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, which is gorgeous. Also Leaving Las Vegas (Venturi, Scott Brown, Izenour) and What a City is For (Matt Hern)

Wondered about that Penguin Japan collection, but am dubious about the editor: anyone who thinks Haruki Murakami is amazing and who devotes much of their life to his work is someone whose judgement of what makes for good literature, Japanese or otherwise, is deeply suspect.

Having said that, I'll inevitably end up buying it in paperback.

Including Murakami will automatically make the book sell so many more copies, I really can't begrudge that editorial decision. I have no strong feelings on him either way tho so that might help.

Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting, Sianne Ngai

I have heard that that was interesting!

Michael Chabon: THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION - £2 hardback from a library sale.

It's a good one.

2nd hand:

Giuseppe di Lampedusa - Two Stories & A Memory
Thomas Bernhard - The Lime Works
Natalia Ginzburg - All our Yesterdays

bought mahself a greg tate reader and that ian bostridge book on the winterreise

At the bookshop:
The Little Drummer Girl, John Carré
The Vegetarian, Han Kang
Solar Bones, Mike McCormack
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

Online:
A Hypocritical Reader, Rosie Snadjr

Michael Chabon: THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION - £2 hardback from a library sale.

― the pinefox, Monday, September 24, 2018 1:24 PM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haven't read it in a while. but i remember loving this. apparently the coen bros had an option to film it? don't think it's gonna happen tho.

2nd hand - Violette Leduc - La Batarde

Dag Solstad - T Singer
Ilse Aichinger - The Bound Man
Juan Rulfo - The Plain in Flames

I read the Violteete leduc about 1990 thought it was pretty good, was there a 2nd volume of it or something.
PIcked it up in a charity shop at the time.
May still have it somewhere.

From what I can see there is a 2nd volume that appeared 10 years later called Mad in Pursuit. What I do have is this first volume, published in '64. This is an edition on Panther books.

Yeah Think it was taht Mad in pursuit I had too.

The Books of Earthsea is out. 1008 pages collecting the 5 Earthsea novels, Tales from Earthsea, early and late uncollected stories, a couple other bits, and illustrations by Charles Vess. Buy one for every middle schooler in your life.

I have an earlier omnibus of the novels that I picked up a couple of years ago. Only got though the first one. Must get back and read more.