Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

I just bought a copy of David Peace's Tokyo Year Zero, based partly on teh Britishes rave reviews of The Damned Utd in the archives.

david markson's detective novels. (the cashier told me he also wrote a western, albeit one that is out of print. he also gave me a copy of something called 'context: a forum for literary arts and culture', my curiosity about the topic of out-of-print markson novels apparently having qualified me as someone who would be interested in such things.)

the frank miller designed edition of gravity's rainbow.

'modern dramatists: gilbert and sullivan', by charles hayter.

psmith journalist and all omnibuses containing it seem to be out of print. bah.

I don't think I'm ever going to get around to finishing Markson's Down In Mexico novel, so I haven't bothered going near the detective novels.

Isn't Context an organ of The Dalkey Archive?

I treated myself! A good hour of browsing in a lovely dusty old second-hand-bookstore turned up the following:

A Frolic of His Own - William Gaddis
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
Summer in Baden-Baden - Leonid Tsypkin
The Barracks Thief & Selected Stories - Tobias Wolff
Authority & the Individual - Bertrand Russell
Mr Palomar - Italo Calvino
Memoirs of Hadrian - Marguerite Yourcenar

Plus a $3 copy of Antony and Cleopatra since it's my favourite and I did't own a copy.

The Psmith omnibus is in print in the UK, I believe.

I have been buying books for school. They are schoolish. But "The World's Major Language" looks pretty hot.

dirk gently compilation Adams

hhg2g hardback Adams

thousandfold thought l scott bakker fantasy

Watchmen graphic novel

god delusion Dawkins

made in the USA Bryson

to kill a mockingbird

all cos i got to go book shopping in london and i needed to get presents.

A Mencken Chrestomathy, selected writings of H.L. Mencken, in a hard cover edition from its first printing, back in 1952. Approx 650 pp. I paid $6 for it. Now I'm set up for life for all my miscellaneous Mencken needs.

Mark Twain's Speeches; it's an orphaned volume from one of those Mark Twain's Works Authorized Edition sets that reproduce his signature (none genuine without it!) on the front cover. This one has a pale yellow cover with marroon and phony gilt decorations. I paid $2.99. He was a fantastic speechifer, by all accounts.

We Pointed Them North: Reflections of a Cowpuncher, by E.C. "Teddy Blue" Abbott. A cowpoke's memoirs, issued in a nice hardcover edition from The Lakeside Press in 1991. I paid $2.99 for this, too. Americana, you know. Like the snuff boxes in the Senate.

Byrne, Anthony Burgess, new(?) hardcover copy for $7.95.

The Exclusions of a Rhyme, J.V. Cunningham, excellent condition paperback for $5.95. This book of poetry serves as Cunningham's 'collected works'. He was best known as an epigrammatist, but all his poetry shows a condensed and compact form, with a sharp intellect behind them. I may toss one or two onto the poetry thread for inspection.

Aimless, didn't you already read Byrne, and report on it across several threads?

Some used books yesterday:
Frank Norris - McTeague (thanks to the old ILB, innit. The random pages I read didn't look too hot, but I'll give it a proper whirl)
Conan Doyle - Tales of Unease (It's got "twilight excursions" from "Doyle's vivid imagination for the strange". Gotta be good)
Maxim Gorky - On Literature
Benedetto Croce - Aesthetics (A Norwegian translation that only includes the theory part)

And some new stuff last week:
Tommy Bernhard - Cutting Timber: An Irritation
Donny Barthelme - Sixty Stories & Forty Stories (The foreword by Dave Eggers reinforces the impression that I must never read Eggers' books)

I just bought McTeague as well.
Also:
Patrick Marnham - The Man Who Wasn't Maigret
William Carlos Wiliams - The Doctor Stories
Richard Yates - Young Hearts Crying.

JR (&tb), yeppers.

I bought a 1947 Teach Yourself Russian book. It is kinda gorgeous. I do not really plan to learn Russian but I hang out with all these Slavicists and actual Russians and I felt, you know, obliged. Except then one of the actual Russian profs laughed at its old-skool pedagogical technique, which I think might actually be better suited for someone like me.

Although then I noticed that it waits until lesson, like, 10 to give you verbs, and then it gives you the entire verb system at once, seemingly. So maybe it is a bit crazy.

Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch in a brand new, remaindered hardcover copy that I found on Alibris for $11.00, which price includes the shipping.

Selected Satires of Lucian as translated into English by Lionel Casson, hardcover, no dj, unmarked, for $8.95 at Powell's.

Rising Up and Rising Down: Some thoughts on violence, freedom and urgent means ny William T. Vollmann. This is a one volume abridgment of a seven volume work, as a remaindered trade paperback, for $7.95 at Powell's.

Trails of a Wilderness Wanderer by Andy Russell, used hardcover, $1.00. This is just some random book I ran across in a used book store, published in 1971, when wilderness wandering books were enjoying a small vogue.

The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975, used paperback in fairly decent shape, $8.95.

The Writings of William James: A comprehensive edition, edited by John J. McDermott. New trade paperback, 850 pp., for $16.95. I just felt the need to have more Wm. James available on my shelf to read when I want a brilliant and practical writer to spend time with.

My copy of Chomsky's "At War With Asia" (ordered from Haymarket Books, no less) arrived with the parcel package ripped open. Does that mean I'm under surveillance?

Yes. We will be watching you until you post your reaction to reading it.

Those are decent prices, but not the stunning prices I've come to expect from you, Aimless.

Sometimes you just hafta pay for yer books.

It's a shame. A damn shame. A dirty, rotten, no-good, stinking, lowdown, goddamned, filthy, crying shame, if you ask me. But what can you do?

(he shrugs and, with elbows pulled in, displays his palms at waist level turned upwards, while wearing a chagrinned look)

Lately I've been reading The Exception by Christian Jungersen. I really like his no-nonsense writing style; it's the kind of thing that gets ridiculed, I think, for being not sufficiently "literary," but -- so long as it is his genuine style and not just an excuse for lazy writing -- the straightforward clarity in his prose is refreshing.

Also, he knows how to build drama and tension into a novel. Really, the book is about how even fundamentally good people can turn on each other -- and do such evil things -- in difficult situations. It's very good.

The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, used hard cover, $3. I bought this so I could be hectored by a generally humorless atheist into disbelieving what I never believed. No, actually, I am curious to see if he is creative enough to break a single clod of new ground in the ages-old arena of religious controversy. Probably not, but you never know. When I'm done I'll sell it or give it away.

The Goshawk, T.H. White, used paperback, 50 cents. Animal story.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972, Hunter S. Thompson, used paperback, 50 cents. I lived through this back when it happened the first time. I am a masochist to want to go back and recall it with any vividness. I should be kicked in the head.

I am told that the answer is "no" to the Dawkins, but maybe you'll find something.

I am reading a book from the 50s about the history of the book before the printing press. Its title is something similar to that. It is the sort of book from the 50s that likes to talk about today's "primitive" people, and how the "Oriental man" is "naturally suited" to singing. Still, some good stuff in there, and nice (if black-and-white) pictures.

For birthday/Christmas:

Nine Hundred Grandmothers by R.A. Lafferty (lover of the Russian Queen)
Nadja by André Breton
Platform by Michelle Houellebecq
The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian by Robin Lane-Fox
The Further Adventures of the Queen Mum by Harry Hill

I got just one book for Christmas: Justin Paton's <i>How to Look at a Painting</i>. It's fabulous so far, and very kiwi. Excellent for homesick old me.

Received for Christmas:
So Help Me God: The Founding Fathers and the First Great Battle Over Church and State - Forrest Church

Today I bought Atlas Shrugged and The Story of a Nobody by Checkhov.

I knew that looked wrong, Chekhov.

I think you'll find the second book is waaaay better than the first, 'I Know'.

merry xmas, me!

jaroslav hasek - the good soldier svejk
knut hamsun - hunger
irving sandler - from avant-garde to pluralism: an on-the-spot history
muriel spark - everyman library novella collection with the prime of miss jean brodie and the girls of slender means
witold gombrowicz - cosmos/pornografia two-fer
jg ballard - concrete island
richard burton - prague: a cultural history
norman davies - both volumes of god's playground: a history of poland and the heart of europe: the past in poland's present
out-of-print (i think) 4-volume "writers from the other europe" series that has: milan kundera - laughable loves, bruno schulz - sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass, tadeusz borowski - this way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen, and danilo kis - a tomb for boris davidovich
anne tyler - the accidental tourist
italo calvino - if on a winter's night, a traveler
joyce carol oates - because it is bitter and because it is my heart and you must remember this
joan didion - the year of magical thinking
celine - journey to the end of the night
the collected stories of eudora welty
stanislaw lem - solaris
walter m. miller, jr. - a canticle for leibowitz
hannah higgins - the fluxus experience

Are those books you received as gifts, or books you bought for yourself as gifts? Either way: excellent haul. Cosmos is faaaaabulous.

all gifts. and i apparently have two more on the way because amazon is sloooooow

I'm curious about that Fluxus book now. Let us know how it is.

My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk, used paperback in new condition, $1.99 at Goodwill. It's a Faber edition and when I got it home I found a sales slip from Paris, France. Looks quite interesting, but it will have to get in line like everyone else.

OK, Joe, you can marry me after all.

How many Richard Burtons are there?

My Name is Red is a great book. Deserving of just as much praise that "Snow" has gotten the past few years. It's a good book to sink into, in that it feels mysterious because of its setting and tone as much as because it is, at base, about a murder(er).

Today I bought a collection of Nabokov short stories for a buck at the Strand.

Music for Chameleons Truman Capote
Licks of Love John Updike
A Good Man is Hard to Find Flannery O'Connor
Nine Stories JD Salinger

And a couple other things I can't seem to remember for the life of me.

"jaroslav hasek - the good soldier svejk
knut hamsun - hunger

muriel spark - everyman library novella collection with the prime of miss jean brodie and the girls of slender means
witold gombrowicz - cosmos/pornografia two-fer

out-of-print (i think) 4-volume "writers from the other europe" series that has: , bruno schulz - sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass, , and danilo kis - a tomb for boris davidovich
italo calvino - if on a winter's night, a traveler

celine - journey to the end of the night
"

harlot,this is what i read from your list,and it's all masterpieces.
esp. the east european stuff.

"A Good Man is Hard to Find Flannery O'Connor "

one of the best short stories collection ever written.powerfull as hell.

Uncle Wiggily in Conneticut is one of my favourite stories of all time xxpost

Finally getting around to A Sport and A Pastime. Racy!

Thirding the O'Connor favourite-ing.
Now there's a horrible sentence.

Jack London - To Build a Fire and Other Stories

I'm embarking on some ambitious pre-law reading, using this list as a starting point:

http://www.amazon.com/Favorite-Pre-Law-School-Recommendations-Amazon/lm/3GJSC216GWISB

Ordered first three books:
- Death of Contract by Grant Gilmore
- To Steal a Book is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilization by William Alford
- A History of American Law by Lawrence Friedman

also Discipline & Punish by Foucault, which is also from that list buit probably less directly related.

in my amazon cart (which i never order EVERYTHING from but mostly use as to-buy reminder list, select a few at a time:

Matter - Iain M Banks; Hardcover
20th Century Selected Poems - Osip Mandelshtam; Paperback
My Last Sigh - Luis Bunuel; Paperback
Vertigo - W Sebald; Paperback
Selected Stories of Robert Walser - Susan Sontag; Paperback
Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York - Luc Sante; Paperback
I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 - Victor Klemperer; Paperback
I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942-1945 - Victor Klemperer; Paperback
Chess Story - Stefan Zweig; Paperback
Notes on the Cinematographer - Robert Bresson; Paperback
H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life - Michel Houellebecq; Paperback

ok i just ordered the banks, the bunuel and the mandelshtam... somewhat at random.

Fantagraphics had a 1/2 off spring cleaning warehouse sale and I got 3 Krazy Kat & Ignatz compilations, 5 Love & Rockets collections, Ellen Forney's I Love Led-Zeppelin and the graphic adaptation of Paul Auster's City of Glass.

Score!

I am trying not to buy books, sadly.

just bought Lush Life and the Savage Detectives, started the latter.

the ol' bookshelf is getting a little crowded, i think it's time to part with some things.