Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

We had a Vancouverite poet read tonight, and I liked her work. N@talie Simps0n.

I seem to be on an east Asian religion bender lately. Yesterday I bought:

The Diamond Sutra, translated by Red Pine, with extensive commentaries, from Sanskrit and Chinese. Trade paperback in excellent condition. It was US$14.00 at Powell's, but I had $13.50 in trade and I used that.

The Book of Tea, Okakuro Kakuzo, used hardcover in a slipcase, a bit warped, but in decent shape. This is one of the older Tuttle editions that were printed in Japan. I owned this long ago and I don't exactly consider it indispensible, but it was nice to find a cheap (US$3.00) copy in OK condition.

i do not know that poet, but will recognise her name now if i see it!

i had a good day at value villiage:
-"night of the shooting star" by dan vipond. a 1970's conspiracy/thriller, set entirely in the canadian wilderness!
-"fellowship of the stars", a 1974 sci-fi anthology focused on "the friendship between humans and beings from other dimensions"
-"the tent peg", by aritha van herk. western canadian lit, about misfits ending up in the yukon.
-"survival: a thematic guide to canadian literature", by margaret atwood. a classic and a steal at $1.99
-"roadside empire: how the chains franchised america" by stan luxenburg. from 1985, all about the historical development of franchising in the US and the subsequent effect on cultural expectations.
-"act of faith: an illustrated history of the reform party" - a 1991 history of the western-based PC splinter that became canada's official opposition by 1997 and, in a vague sense, is currently in government.

I bought 2 Coetzees today, 'Waiting for the Barbarians' which is one of my favourites, and 'The Life and Times of Michael K' which I've not read before. Also 'Pale Fire' because I don't own a copy and was feeling rich.

Also 'Pale Fire' because I don't own a copy and was feeling rich.

Damn good excuse.

I prefer to think of it as a rationale.

A remainder-fest:

Pocket Guide to the Apocalypse, and Parasites Like Us (can't remember either author, but looked promising)
Mark Salzman: The Soloist, The Laughing Sutra
Robert Frost:Early Poems
The Letters of Sacco & Vanzetti
Somerset Maugham: Mrs. Craddock, The Razor's Edge
Hesse: Siddhartha (I'll probably regret this one, even at $3)
Hannah Arendt: Between Past and Future
DH Lawrence: England, My England and Other Stories
Iris Murdoch: The Good Apprentice, The Bell
Pynchon: Vineland
DuBois: The Souls of Black Folk
Conrad: `Twixt Land and Sea
Garland: A Son of the Middle Border

I visited my favorite cheapie bookstore today and came away with:

One Man's Meat, E.B. White, a collection of essays from the WWII years and just prior. A 1944 "new and enlarged' edition, hardcover with dust jacket, in good shape, $3.

Saints and Strangers, George F. Willision, in a 1945 hardcover edition, $1. This is a history of the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony, starting from their days in England, up through exile in Holland and the voyage to North America. It seems to paint a pretty realistic picture of them.

The Golden Casket: Chinese Novellas of Two Millenia{, tr. into English by Christopher Levenson, from a German translation from the original Chinese. (Whew!) This is a used Penguin paperback in marginal condition and I don't think it ever sold very well, because I've never seen it before today. It seemed worth a tumble for 50 cents.

Beauty and Sadness - Kawabata Yasunari
The Stain in the Snow - Georges Simenon
Breakfast with the Ones you Love - Eliot Finushel
Alphabet of Thorn - Patricia McKillip
Varieties of Disturbances - Lydia Davis
Call Me By Your Name - Andre Aciman

Lonely (or is it Lovely?) Bones. Seems to be good.
Fast Food Nation (for less than 3 dollars!)
Cheap ass chicken recipe book (less than a dollar!)
Children Recipe book

I traded a bunch of books at Powell's yesterday and used up some of my credit to upgrade my paperback copy of The Dream Songs by John Berryman, to a used hardcover copy. It is a first printing (which I don't care about) in standard condition, and was heavily marked in pencil by the previous owner, so it was marked down to $15 from an overly optimistic $30. I have been busily erasing the pencil markings.

I also picked up a nice harcover edition of The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pisan and translated by Earl Richards. It was only $7.

Earlier this week I picked up a used copy of Ernie Pyle's posthumously published Home Country for $1. It's a just cobbled-together rehash of his journalism from before WWII, but I enjoy Pyle's style and observations, just as his millions of loyal newspaper readers did, so it's fine by me. He was another of those Indiana boys who mastered typing, like Vonnegut.

Bookmooched recently:

Jose Ortega y Gasset - History as a System
Christopher Lasch - Revolt of the Elites

Impulse bought Someday I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman and that Miranda July book, borrowing the new Arthur Philips and Consider the Lobster.

I do like that Book of the City of Ladies.

I think I am off to the Strand now.

I bought one of those Aberystwyth detective novels, in the hope that my unread book mountain will assume critical mass and blow up the world.

Oh, and I also bought Gore Vidal's memoir, Palimpsest, which was on sale at the Strand Annex.

Yesterday:

JR by William Gaddis, in a used in-new-condition Penguin paperback edition, $4.99. Constant favorable effusions by ILBers led me to buy this book.

Plutarch's Lives VII: Demosthenes and Cicero, Alexander and Caesar in a used Loeb classical library edition, $2.99. I cannot pass up any Loeb edition less than $5. I just can't.

Picked up Cronopios and Famas by Cortazar and Calvino's The Baron in the Trees on some old store credit I forgot I had yesterday.

Not a purchase, but my mommy was in town last week and left me a couple of her books:

Wild Latitudes by Barbara Else (a Kiwi)
The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens (which was actually her Christmas present from me last year, but which I am more than happy to get back)

my university gave me book tokens:

philip dick, 'four novels of the 1960s'
- notes (tho no introduction, hrmf) from jonathan lethem. i already own all the actual novels. but it's a library of america edition of philip k dick, hey.
daniil kharms, 'incidences'
dee goong an, 'the celebrated cases of judge dee'
- looks bizarre. an 18th-century historian's detective novel version of seventh-century chinese legal cases, englished in the 1940's by a dutchman.
david foster wallace, 'infinite jest' (10th anniversary 10 dollar ed)
- i don't know why i felt i needed a second copy.
tove jansson, 'moomin: the complete tove jansson comic strip'
- one wonders if they'll publish her brother's.

i picked up incidences at random, i didn't realise he was on here already. huh.

Found an old paperback of Elaine Dundy's "The Dud Avocado".
To quote the cover: "The blithe and bubbling bestseller about an American girl who goes to Paris to be naughty-- and quite often succeeds!"
Well!

Also picked up a bunch of old science fiction paperbacks for a bonus-gift for my father. Intend to wrap a stack (well, five) of them in newspaper and tie it up with some old string to make a nice hobo-gift. I got a raise at work today, so clearly I'm intoxicated by money!

When you read it, do tell us if it succeeds in being "blithe and bubbling", while yet remaining readable. This is a difficult feat, worthy of homage.

I've read a few chapters of it and so far it does succeed at that- it's like Holly Golightly telling her story in the first person. Although maybe that is a cause for worry, that all will not end well.

The NYRB classics just released a new edition of Dud Avocado last month.

the book sale was this weekend! three days. it's quite the affair. went the first day and spent about 30 bucks. but today, monday, everything is free! believe you me, they have a LOT left. anyway, here is what i have picked up in the last couple of weeks at the book sale/thrift store/dump:

annual world's best sci-fi volumes: 72/76/77/78/81/83

nebula award stories eleven (edited by ursula leguin)

harlan ellison - approaching oblivion

ann pyne - in the form of a person (short stories ???)

grace paley - later the same day

adam haslett - you are not a stranger here (short stories ???)

robert anderson - ice age (short stories ???)

italo calvino - marcovaldo

o*blek (literary mag)

john cowper powys - lucifer

bruce wagner - the chrysanthemum palace

kate atkinson - behind the scenes at the museum

evan s. connell - the alchymist's journal

penelope fitzgerald - the gate of angels

helen knode - the ticket out (crime novel)

paris review 40th anniversary issue (delillo and toni morrisson interviews. cheever journal excerpts.)

robert coover - the universal baseball association, inc, j henry waugh, prop.

andre dubus - dancing after hours

paule marshall - brown girl, brownstone (really nice out of print 1st edition of little-known african-american 50's lit)

tom phillips - a humument - a treated victorian novel

j.g. farrell - troubles

denis johnson - angels

pam houston - cowboys are my weakness

harold brodkey - first love & other sorrows

harlan ellison - the beast that shouted love at the heart of the world

vernor vinge - the collected stories

j.g. farrell - the singapore grip

calvin trillin - floater

william gass - in the heart of the heart of the country

five fingers review (lit mag)

graham swift - last orders

denis johnson - fiskadoro

malcom lowry - under the volcano

toni morrison - the bluest eye

brian moore - the color of blood

bizarre books (basically, long lists of weird books)

frederick barthelme - painted desert (which i'm reading now)

thomas berger - neighbors

tim powers - the drawing of the dark

marijane meaker - game of survival (couldn't resist this. weird 70's thriller about people stuck in an elevator!)

l.p. hartley - the go-between

tom drury - the end of vandalism (just finished this one)

anne lamott - hard laughter

paula fox - desperate characters (which i've read, but don't own a copy of.)

john fante - dreams from bunker hill & 1933 was a bad year

italo calvino - invisible cities

john westermann - sweet deal (soho crime)

kate atkinson - case histories

russell banks - continental drift (signed!)

alice munro - the progress of love (couldn't remember if i owned a copy)

frederick busch - harry & catherine

andre dubus - voices from the moon

paula fox - a servant's tale

dennis cooper - try

(all told, i don't even think i spent 40 bucks. beat that, amazon!)

WOW! That's a great haul! It's probably a good thing I live on the other side of the country, I would go snap up all their free leftovers.

Whimper.

How far away was this? Why was I not told?

this is on martha's vineyard, chris! i believe you are as far as jaq, no? and yeah, i made out like a bandit today when everything was free. and i was in such a book fog that i completely forgot about the art/architecture/photography section at the front of the gymnasium! oh well. next time. i'm not greedy. much.

Well, no, I am in NYC for the summer.

ah, a mere stone's throw away!

dennis cooper - try

if you haven't read this yet you're in for ahem a "treat" the rockcritic character is beyond perverse. on the whole I found this book profoundly moving and utterly twisted...long after I thought there were no taboos left to be violated "try" proved me wrong (again)

nice haul scott. i love brian moore, haven't read that one tho.

In between library runs lately I've bought a few used paperbacks.

patricia highsmith -- the blunderer

kingsley amis -- i like it here

bruce chatwin -- on the black hill

shiva naipaul -- north of south: an african jounrey

Latest batch is:

<I>The Procedure</I>. Harry Mulisch.
<I>Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books</I>. Marcel Benabou.
<I>After Many a Summer Dies the Swan</I>. Aldous Huxley.
<I>Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing</I>.
<I>Snake Catcher.</I> Naiyer Masud.
<I>Crooked Little Vein</i>. Warren Ellis.
<i>Curses</I>. Kevin Huizenga.

Not sure if i'm in the mood to read any of them right now though. (Except Curses.) Too fickle.

The Brian Moore (Colour of Blood) is really good - read it on the weekend.

That Benabou book is one of my favorites.

It is of course mentioned in Bartleby & Co, by Enrique Vila-Matas which I recommend to you, Chris. I tried to take it out of the library, but they only had another called something like Get Rid Of This Book Quick!, so I reserved that instead.

Eager to read that Benabou. It'll be my first of his.

Yes, Bartleby & Co. is fantastic. Montano's Malady i'm still working on, as i don't want the two books conflated in my memory. The friend who recommended it is not so keen on it as he was on the first. He's slathering for Nazi Literature in the Americas.

Anyone have any idea when that Borges biography by Bioy Casares is going to make it into English translation? although i picked up the Williamson one, i have no intention of reading it. Him hanging with Bioy Casares and Ocampo slagging everyone seems more fun... at least in small doses. The TLS review interested me.

I bought one of those Aberystwyth detectivey stories. I imagine it will sit in my book mountain until I donate it to Oxfam.

From neighborhood junk store:
Jean Cocteau - Beauty and the Beast: Diary of a Film
William J. Schnell - 30 Years a Watchtower Slave
Anna Deavere Smith - Fires in the Mirror
Atul Gawande - Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
C. Vann Woodward - The Strange Career of Jim Crow

'no one belongs here more than you' by miranda july. just arrived and i can't wait to start reading it.

online book-buying will be the death of me:
spitting off tall buildings - dan fante
the heart is a lonely hunter - carson mccullers
the magus - john fowles
mister dog: the dog who belonged to himself - margaret wise brown

the last one is a long-lost childhood favourite. i didn't realise they were still printing it, till i mentioned it to a friend and he searched it out on abebooks for me.

I sold some books to Powell's Books in July and had amassed a whopping $33 in trade credit, so today I went down and overspent it. My purchases were:

Poems and Translations, Ezra Pound, in the hardcover American Library edition. This has the works: 1200pp of poems, including his uncollected chaff, plus a chronology, notes and index (those indispensible aids to time wastage). It was in great shape for a mere $32. Now I can sell my paperback edition of Personae and recoup a couple of dollars on this extravagence.

The Journal of Cardan: Together with The Quest of the Opal and The Probelm of Form, J.V. Cunningham, for $5.95. A hardcover with dust jacket, most probably a first printing, because Cunningham is presently so obscure. These are essays by a mostly-forgotten, but quite good poet.

Collected Poems in English, Joseph Brodsky, 'first edition', hardcover with dust jacket, in excellent condition for $9.95. Flipping through this he seemed to have some interesting licks - good enough to justify the Nobel he won.

Collected Poems, Stevie Smith, in an xlib hardcover with dust jacket, Oxford U. Press, for $7.95. Not a solid favorite poet of mine. She wavers between the faux-naive and the genuinely charming. The price sold me on this one.

I made some other thrift shop purchases lately:

Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples, V.S. Naipul, hardcover, dust jacket, $6.00.

One World, Ready or Not, Wm. Greider, trade paper in good shape, $4.00. I've read it already, but I kind of bought it as a tribute to Greider, who I still think has sussed out the tenor of the times better than far more celebrated pundits.

The Shaping of a City: Business and Politics in Portland, Oregon 1885 to 1915, E. Kimbark MacColl, trade paper, $1.00. This is a local history of our highly venal and typically American founders.

my order for 'mister dog: the dog who belonged to himself' just got cancelled :(

That Pound dealie includes the Cantos?

That's not a bad price on that Portland book.

No Cantos included. You need 45 more box tops for that. But it has his translations of Confucius and Sophocles and the Noh plays, etc.

Oh hey even better really. 1200pp without the Cantos? Damn!

Why do I get myself into these situations?

Anyway, I just bought another 1150pp. of scintillating prolixity that I shall someday feel obligated to read: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West, in a massive Penguin paperback edition that would choke an anaconda, for $5. Shoot me now.

Also, I bought Collected Poems of James Joyce, a much slimmer read, for $1.29.

Presumably you have finished the Joyce poems by now, at least.

I keep seeing that Rebecca West book! I had never heard of it, but it keeps popping up in bookstores. I suppose $5 would have been pretty tempting.

I met up with Ned in Powell's yesterday but we did not stay long enough for me to be tempted to buy anything. This is probably a good thing!

It seems odd to me that the foremost inventor of twentieth-century modernist fiction wrote poetry as a pastiche of Elizabethan lyricism and Celtic Twilight romanticism. It's hard to say where he would have gone with it, had he stuck to poetry. He wasn't terribly bad at it, but I suspect he made the right choice in abandoning it.

Book purchase or no, I imagine Ned beamed upon you. Being as he is the patron saint of ILE, I imagine Ned beams aplenty upon his flock. I have been the recipient of one or two electron-composed nedbeams. May he live and prosper.