Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

Went to a Deanery bookshop, which always has amazing stock and is ridiculously good value. They always seem to have a slew of Virago books so got two Elizabeth Taylor's I've not read (Palfrey and Lippincote's) and a Molly Keane (The Rising Tide).

I read a short story of Taylor’s this week - The Flypaper. Not exactly good but *very* unsettling

A copy of WCW's WHITE MULE that used to belong to another quite celebrated poet.

Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, used hardcover in an old (1962) Modern Library edition, very good condition, no dust jacket, $1. I bought this in order to re-read the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which is included complete. The other selections are just a bonus.

The Highland Clearances, John Prebble, used Penguin trade paperback, very good condition, $1. Because it's good to recall that the poor always get handed the dirty end of the stick.

georges perec - three/53 days
morton feldman - give my regards to eighth street

WH Auden - Around the House
Seamus Heaney - Death of a Naturalist
Wallace Stevens - The Palm at the End of the Mind
Susan Cain - Quiet
Sylvie Simmons - I'm Your Man

Ciaran Carson - In the Light of (after Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud)
Marina Tsvetaeva - Select (tr. McDuff)
Juan Benet - A Meditation

thrift store purchases that should see me through the end of the world:

Gontran de Poncins - Kabloona
memoir by a French nobleman who traveled to the Arctic to live with an Inuit community in the late 1930s. nice looking Time Reading Program reprint, though the first edition has a more generous selection of photos

RW Spryszak - Edju
signed by the author: "thank you for letting Edju into your house"

Sacheverell Sitwell - Journey to the Ends of Time
I've dipped into this a bit and I'm still not sure what to make of it: part Sunday morning sermon, part art criticism, part morbid philosophical musings of a leisure class nonbeliever, part guided tour through setpieces/dreams/prose-paintings representing death and the afterlife? it looks like he wrote s(ach)everal other books in the same vein. can't help but type out this gem of a quote from the introduction:

It is my belief that I have informed myself of nearly all works of art in the known world. I cannot think that anything considerable is missing. Where I have not been in person, I have read and studied. I have heard most of the music of the world, and seen nearly all the paintings.

alright big man

Esther Perel-mating in captivity.

my first post-quarantine book purchase arrived today...

wrong movements: a robert wyatt history (michael king) - being a combined chronological oral biography/discography/session history with masses of archival photos, art & articles up to the early nineties + an unexpected bonus book!

The 13th Floor Elevators A Visual History
Paul Drummond's 2nd book on the subject. has some really great images in. Might get some of tehm printed up and stick them on a wall once the shops reopen.
Not read any of the text yet.

The sewing Machine Master Guide Clifford Blodget.
Great book on the workings of a sewing machine. Shows how it works and how to do simple fixes and things like timing and needle correction.
I thought my sewing machine had totally messedup at a time that I couldn't take it to a repair person. So thought I needed to teach myself.
I got it working a coupleo fdays later but now have this which is really useful. This plus loads of hours of hands on exeprience ought to lend to me knowing how to fix things.

Active Hope Joanna Macy.
I saw Demain a couple of months ago which talks about soime of her work.
Wanted to read some of it too. So hoping this is going to get here soon.

Mike Barnes A New Day Yesterday
Nice overview on prog in the UK.
MIght go out and pick up a few titles i don't have. Still not got any Egg unless you count Arzachel which you can't really . Also not got solo Steve Hillage.
Interesting read anyway.

Tony Allen Autobiography
Japanoise
2 books grabbed from the duke University press sale. Might go back for some more.

that elevators visual history looks nice. i did have a copy of drummond's eye mind but ended up giving it away mostly unread cos i'm not really sure i need to know all the voluminous 13fe related detail it went into... then again maybe i'll borrow it back sometime.

With all my favorite bookshops closed, of course I've turned to online ordering to feed my habit. I've tried to feed it as sparingly as possible, since I'm used to paying $3 or less for used books. I've put more than a dozen into my 'shopping carts' while browsing, but have not sprung for any beyond these:

The Complete Novels of Dawn Powell, in the two-volume hardcover edition published by Library of America, new, $27.50 (after discount). I've read about half her output and these will allow me to read the remainder.

A Maigret Trio: Maigret's Failure, Maigret in Society, Maigret and the Lazy Burglar, George Simenon, as a used hardcover w/o dust jacket, $6. Hasn't arrived, yet, but I'm looking forward to gulping these like oysters on the half shell. I hope it's mostly unmarked, cuz I hate markings anywhere past the inside cover and frontispiece.

I've got that threefer, posted about first two on previous What Are You Readings: very tasty individually, and go together well. Looking fwd to The Lazy Burglar.

I don’t need any new books, two decades of over-purchasing and under-reading has meant I have a pretty good lockdown library of stuff to read. That said, we have a kids bookshop on the road I’d like to support, and they also take adult orders, so I’m gonna pick up 4-5 Barbara Pyms, the Madness oral history, Dumas’s Women’s War, Harriet the Spy, Nancy’s Genius Plan board book, and a bunch for Virago things

Re: Virago - I wanted to pick up some Rose Macaulay and Barbara Comyns - recommendations gratefully accepted!

I like all Comyns's books; of the (I think) four VMCs the only one is hesitate to recommend is "Sisters By A River" because some people find its child-like tone a bit much iirc. I'd prob start with the Vet's Daughter but toy can't go wrong with The Skin Chairs or Our Spoons Came from Woolworths.

THe Selling Sound Diane Pecknold
book about how country music was shaped by commercial concerns etc

Birds of Fire Kevin Fellezs
book on jazz fusion. Have heard some varying reviews of this so hope it is pretty good.
THere were another load of books I might have grabbed if I had some more money. The Duke University Press sale ends today unless it gets a further extension.
Would have loved Slaves To Taste the book on Black Dandyism.

Site did seem to not be the best lay out for browsing easily and going in to check the blurb then step back to where you were on teh list left you with a dead connection which isn't great.
Looked like there were a load of very interesting books in there though.

The Selling Sound is really good.

great, I wondered. Did hear it was pretty good for information but th ewriting might be a bit taxing or something. BUt looking forward to reading it.
Not sure how long it'll take to get here. Previous purchase hasn't appeared yet.

Pier Paolo Pasolini - Roman Poems
Simone Weil - Anthology
The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1920-24 (vol.2) (these are the years where she wrote Mrs Dalloway and was reading Joyce and Proust so it should be a banger)

I bought a physical copy of The Pendragon Legend (1934) by Antal Szerb, described as combination of romance, class comedy, ghost story and murder mystery -- a mix that made me curious. Translated by Len Rix who also did Magda Szabo's The Door.

Superior by Angela Saini
saw the online launch of this a couple of weeks ago.
Thought it sounded interesting, the return of scientific racism or that is racism getting a pseudo scientific backing from sources taht really shouldn't be supporting such tosh.
Haven't got it yet but looking forward to reading it.
A return to things like Eugenics that were putting forth an idea of some races needing to be controlled more athn others whic was BS at the time but too widely believed and policy influencing and directing in too many places.

Antal Szerb was an absolute gem

Maria Gabriel Llansol - The Geography of Rebels Trilogy
Pontoppidan - Lucky Per (this is an incredible find for 3 quid lol)
Robert Musil - Posthumous Papers of a Living Author
Ciaran Carson - The Star Factory
Juan Jose Saer - La Grande (great to finally have my own copy of this masterpiece!)

In a fit of despair-induced shopping the other night, I utilized a tip from a friend an went on the very clunky Powell's Books website and found some gems for next to nothing, including:

Norma Cole- Do the Monkey <--- Cole has become one of my favorite poets and translators over the past year, she's incredible
Bruce Andrews- Corona <--- signed copy, from an edition of 300, goes for 10-15 times what I paid for it elsewhere
Carla Harryman & Lyn Hejinian- Wide Road <--- an experimental novella that I've never even *seen* a copy of, which goes for 10 times what I paid.

Basically, if you can deal with the clunkiness of it, it's worth checking out the Powell's site, as you can get some real deals. Why? Well, they stopped selling through both Abe and Amazon, so one of the only ways to get at their huge warehoused catalog of used books is by ordering through their website. Since the workers there don't give a shit about some of these names and don't know what they're shelving, there's a lot of great stuff that's extraordinarily cheap.

Those three books I mentioned? I could have easily paid $100-$150 bucks for them elsewhere....but I paid $21 including shipping.

from the last two months

ebooks, mostly kindle daily deals
Tim Weiner - Legacy of Ashes
Rick Perlstein - Before the Storm
Sjowall & Wahloo - The Abominable Man
Vonnegut - Player Piano
Mark Dunn - Ella Minnow Pea
Emma Viskic - Resurrection Bay
Betty Edwards - Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Gotham Writers' Workshop: Writing Fiction
Loren Eiseley - The Unexpected Universe
El Sandifer - Tardis Eruditorum Volume 8 kickstarter/preorder

physical, from bookoutlet.com
Angie Thomas - The Hate U Give
Margot Lee Shetterly - Hidden Figures
Sjowall & Wahloo - The Locked Room
Masako Togawa - The Lady Killer
Hesse - Steppenwolf
Chia-Chia Lin - The Unpassing

local library
Jason Lutes - Berlin

Hey book buyers, a few of us including JM and me have been doing this: can you fill in any of our Harvill Leopard gaps?

https://300oddleopards.wordpress.com

Current gaps / queries: 33, 76, 176, 196, 249, 284, 288, 289, 294, 298.

1491 Charles C Mann
I think I bought the UK version from 2006 cos it was cheaper. Hope I'm not going to find out that the more recent US 2nd edition is heavily updated or anything.
Couldn't see anything said anywhere.
Anyway attempt to revise supposed understanding of the Americas before Columbus as not having civilisations across it. Showing instead that people were thriving and 1492 was a point of disruption not discovery.so 1491 or whatever it would be in the native calendar was just another year or at least one without a European influence.
Book hasn't arrived yet so looking forward to reading it. Bought partially because I was looking for equivalents to the below for the Americas and Africa.

Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe
Is a book that was recommended to me on a few webinars when I had mentioned native land stewardship after hearing presentations on Native American influence on their environment.
Interesting overview of what a settled population of aborigines had cultivated in terms of agriculture and aquaculture . & what early European explorers actually saw in the 19th century before European influence erased large parts of it.
Also what effect a mislabeling of aborigine culture has meant in terms of rights. A nomadic hunter gatherer society is still seen to have less right to traditional lands than a settled people so that is useful in a racist establishment's treatment of a displaced population.

Who is JM?

I have bought, very cheap:

Diarmid Ferriter: A NATION NOT A RABBLE
Ian McEwan: ON CHESIL BEACH
Gail Honeyman: ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE

jM is me

So you and Tim H. have made that website that he linked to?

Tim did all the work, I just contributed some data.

I am Damo Suzuki
which was 1/2 price on Book Depository yesterday.
I've been meaning to buy it since it came out.

I did a curbside pickup of three used books from my local Friends of Library bookstore and I ordered a used book from a Goodwill in Colorado, via Amazon. All are paperbacks, hopefully in readable condition.

The Fish Can Sing, Halldor Laxness, $6.30.
Living, Loving, Party Going, Henry Green, $3.
Crampton Hodnet: A Novel, Barbara Pym, $2.
Civil to Strangers, Barbara Pym (stories), $2.

I heartily recommend bookfinder for all used book purchases.

Also, I might have mentioned it above, but there are loads of rare and inaccurately priced books in the Powell's warehouses, searching their site is clunky but one can find some deals.

just for informational purposes, bookfinder.com is owned by Amazon.

As is every single worthwhile used book emporium online.

It's also one of the best ways to get money into the hands of small booksellers. If people don't want to use it because the site infrastructure is owned by Amazon, that's fine, but pretty shitty praxis

when I can deal directly with a local used bookstore, that seems far preferable to using a service where Amazon gets a cut. when I can't deal direct, I am content to buy used from small bookshops nationwide through Amazon's online services.

Oh, it's just that all the stores in Philly are shit, and so to get decent used books I need to go to a different state or order online. If you live in a place with a good used bookstore that's still open, more power to you.

If I lived in Northampton or New Haven, I'd be at Grey Matter every goddamn day.

Just as a side note, are other country's Amazons, the US aside, as shitty as the Australian one? I rarely buy from them unless there's no other choice but they are also routinely more expensive than other online shops and books even from major publishers (Penguin Random House etc) are frequently "available in 1-2 months", which seems fairly much bullshit. Plus they had Prime Day and the "amazing deals" were things like infinitesimally cheaper Wordsworth Classics and $5 remaindered sticker books.

Bookfinder is also not great here, as it'll tell you a book will cost you, say $15 Australian and when you actually click through it's routinely several dollars more.

Basically, how did this empire of crap deals and non-availability conquer the world.

Acquisitions! Amazon purchased Abe in 2008, and the latter had purchased bookfinder a few years prior to that. Bookfinder does work well here in the states, not sure why it wouldn't work well elsewhere.

around a third of the internet runs on amazon web services. no ethical consumption under capitalism.

Do wish Book Depositary wasn't them.
Cos it does seem to get most things reasonably cheaply and free p+p .
So then could escape guilt of buying from Amazon, like.

But the point is that a lot of times on Bookfinder you're not actually buying from Amazon! You're buying from small booksellers and shops who lost through Abe, and who rely on that income to keep their businesses afloat. Of course it sucks, but if Abe and Bookfinder didn't exist, half the booksellers in the US would go out of business tomorrow.

G.K. Chesterton - The Best of Father Brown
Adelbert Von Chamisso - Peter Schlemihl
William Shakespeare - Hamlet
Ann Quin - The Unmapped Country
G.K. Chesterton - Robert Browning
Junichiro Tanizaki - The Makioka Sisters
The Metaphysical Poems (selected and ed. Helen Gardner)

another bookoutlet haul. I'm on a 20th century history kick.

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
How Democracies Die