Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

but this is just bonkers! ?????????????????

http://media.perseusdistribution.com/covers/high/9781852423681.jpg

even the most recent reissues suck:

http://www.wright.edu/~martin.kich/PurdySoc/covers/eustace.jpg

I've never even heard of this Purdy fellow! The Dorothy Parker blurb has me interested, though. Is 'Malcolm' a good place to start?

yeah, Malcom is a good place to start. Or one of his short story collections. If you want full speed ahead dementia then read narrow rooms. if you like one, you are probably gonna want to read more. that's what happened to me anyway. he's an amazing stylist and he's just, um, kinda bonkers! but bonkers in a very unique way. The Nephew is a good starting place too. i dunno. dive in!

from his wiki page, here is a short list of some of his fans over the years(!!!!):

"His work has been translated into more than 30 languages. It has been praised by writers as diverse as Dame Edith Sitwell (an important early advocate), Dorothy Parker, Edward Albee, James M. Cain, Terry Southern, Lillian Hellman, A.N. Wilson, Francis King and Marianne Moore. From the start, his work has often been at the edge of what was printable: Gollancz could not bring himself to print the word motherfucker in the 1957 UK edition of 63: Dream Palace; decades later, the German government tried to ban Narrow Rooms, but a court threw the case out. Although many readers were scandalized, a solid cadre of distinguished critics and scholars embraced his work from the start, including John Cowper Powys and Susan Sontag, who warmly defended him against prurient critics."

oh, and i started reading his stuff after i read an interview where john waters said he was his favorite writer. i figured that was good enough for me.

i can't help but picture john cowper powys and susan sontag hanging out together when i read that last wiki sentence.

(hangs head in shame)

This past weekend I spent about $350 on new backpacking equipment. I may not have spent that much on books this entire year. I suppose this speaks volumes on my warped sense of priorities. However, if the books I bought cost from $100 to $150 a pop, they would add up much faster.

i just dropped $320 on two books for my boyfriend's birthday!

Do you have a twin sister?

And what were the books?

the lettered/slipcased edition of the black sparrow press bibliography (he's a collector of BSP stuff, particularly bukowski, john yau and paul bowles).

the numbered (1/150) and signed edition, in a beautiful clamshell box, of alex gross' art book, including a 7-colour silkscreened print.

i should mention that he bought me a $650 book very recently (limited edition ray caesar art book, in a clamshell box, linen covered, signed and numbered).

i just gave them to him tonight - he's very happy!

As who wouldn't be with such a thoughtful gift.

Wow!

Diarmaid MacCulloch - The Reformation: A History
Kathy Acker - Blood and Guts in High School (Plus Two)
Jacobus de Voragine - Legenda Aurea (selections in Norwegian translation)

The Colours of My Life - Malcolm Allison. Read before after borrowing it from a friend, but decided that it was definitely worth having a copy of my own.

Teehee, bought Twilight. But also Stendhal's Red 'n' Black book, No Country for Old Men, Gibson's latest Spook County (?), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

I had a feeling I already bought it. Yep, Stendhal will be returned for another book. Roffle.

Just Christmas presents

For one brother - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - PKD, Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury, We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
For girlfriend - Rings of Saturn - WG Sebald (even though I have big problems with this book, I think she'll like it)
For mum's husband - the first three Flashman books and The Colours of My Life, because he's a Palace fan and because it's great (see above).
For other brother - hmmm, still not sure. Was thinking of Buchan's Hannay stuff, but I got that for my mum last year - maybe Sherlock Holmes, or maybe, yes, wait! Father Brown Stories. Hmmm. Lots of standing around in bookshops to do tomorrow.

not purchased by me, but purchased FOR me for my birthday:

'drop city' - signed first edition by t.c. boyle
'call if you need me' - raymond carver, first edition
'horsebucket' - carol es (1/50 edition, signed, manually typed text accompanying sketches)
'proofs' - james crombie (kickshaw press), entirely letterpressed/screenprinted in way cool slipcase covered in this bizarre 'pebble' paper
slipcased library of america editions of willa cather's work
'the upset' - collection/analysis of contemporary lowbrow fine art
'counterpoint' - robert and shana parkeharrison (photography book)

apparently these are the 'small' presents and the 'big' book present is coming in january - it's on order but not ready yet.

(also, this rubyredd, i've just got a new user name)

Purchased today at Half-Price w/glorious VISA gift card:

The Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction
Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up -- Norman Fischer
Days of Obligation: Arguments with my Mexican Father -- Richard Rodriguez
Girl in Landscape -- J Lethem
Wall of the Sky, Wall of the Eye -- J Lethem

just bought "the man with the axe," which is a book about alfred jarry, illustrated by bill griffith. i was stoked to find it in hardcover, since i wasn't aware one ever existed.

got a bunch of books from fantagraphics too- most excited about jimbo in purgatory and jimbo's inferno by gary panter.

i have stopped buying books and started reading them, huzzah

i try to be ambidexterous that way.

I made my first bookstore run since mid-November. I bought:

Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin, used trade paperback in standard shape, at my favorite thrift shop for $3. The cashier informed me this book is very fashionable now, as it has been linked to the magical name of Obama. I expect good things from it.

The Prelude: Version of 1805, William Wordsworth, in an Oxford Standard Authors blue-cloth hardbound edition, reprint of 1949, with a dust cover (somewhat tatty), and some light pencil underlining for $10. I got this at Powell's Books, where browsing the shelves makes for as pleasant a way to spend an aimless winter's afternoon as I am ever likely to find.

A really nice, compact paperback edition of Don Quixote
Victor Serge - Birth of our Power
Yasunuro Kawabata - Beauty and Sadness

Solzhenitsyn's 'The Gulag Archipelago', complete set. Which I may eventually get around to reading!

Anne Applebaum's 'Gulag'.

Douglas Coupland, 'Generation X'.

Granta 103 - The Rise of the British Jihad.

a coworker just bought me the 20th anniversary, 1968, edition of 'other voices, other rooms' by truman capote, as an engagement present. pretty awesome gift, considering i've had my eye on it for awhile now.

i am still waiting for the january-surprise book gift mentioned upthread.

yeah me too.

I went to my local super-cheap charity bookshop today and books kept jumping into my hand.

Treasury of American Folklore: Stories, Ballads and Traditions of the People, ed. B.A. Botkin, copyright 1944 hardcover, 918 pp. for $3. The editor was in charge of the Folk Song Archive, Library of Congress. A quick browse shows this to be a pretty good mirror of USA folkways, up to and including racism and egg-sucking dogs.

Morte D'Urban, J.F. Powers, trade paper NYRB Classics, $1. Looked interesting. Blurbs very persuasive.

Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (Opinions), Kurt Vonnegut, mass paperback, 50 cents. Read this long ago and have forgotten every words of it. Time to re-read it.

Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, ed. Carl Van Vechten, mass paperback, 50 cents. Not a favorite author, but she has few, if any, peers, so worth having a selection.

The Greek New Testament, Matthew, Mark, God, et. al., in a vinyl cover, for $1. I must admit I bought this mainly to resell at Powell's for more than I paid for it.

A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, Dana & Mantley, hardcover, for $1. Purchased for the same reason as above.

For xmas, all used:

Generation Ecstasy, Simon Reynolds
Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit
The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thompson

And earlier tonight, from Half Price Books, for 67 cents,
Escape From Freedom, Erich Fromm

i kind of wish i knew people who gave me used books for christmas.

The Reynolds is well-written, and told me all I want to know about that world.

what, the 90s?

Yeah I enjoyed it and it sent me in the right direction on the things I was curious about, though I kinda lost interest 2/3rds of the way through.

John Dos Passos, The U.S.A. trilogy (in Paperback)
Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives (reading this one right now)
Warren Beck, Joyce's Dubliners: Substance, Vision, Art (just came in the mail)
Will Chirstopher Baer, Kiss Me Judas (hasn't arrived yet)
Dave Sim, Cerebus (mentioned this in ILC; has not arrived yet either)

i kind of wish i knew people who gave me used books for christmas.

So do I. Bought 'em with cash.

We should be those people! Lets start doing it. So cheap, too.

splurged on a bunch of stuff:

White Teeth Zadie Smith
Corregidora Gayl Jones
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere ZZ Packer
A Visitation of Spirits Randall Kenan
Revolutionary Road Richard Yates
Joe Turner's Come And Gone August Wilson
Assassination of the Black Male Image Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Tree of Smoke Denis Johnson

I got The Plague from a charity shop today (which I've read before, but I also got The Fall, which I haven't) and then had a bit of an awwwww fuck when I opened it and saw that someone had annotations in it. But then they gave up on the third page. Phew.

Taking good advantage of offers and a £5 off voucher I also got The Corrections, Fathers and Sons, Women in Love, Revolutionary Road and White Noise from Borders for £21, which isn't too bad.

"A Visitation of Spirits" is one of my favorite books of all time. I re-read the last page on a weekly basis. So good.

I just picked up Cowley's "Exile's Return".

tonight:

Pride & Prejudice
Infinite Jest
Mary Gaitskill, Two Girls, Fat and Thin
William Manchester, A World Lit Only By Fire

i found a clearance table in an academic branch of waterstones.

david jenemann, adorno in america
murat aydemir, images of bliss: ejaculation, masculinity, meaning

i found this box of books outside by the dumpster, all in really good condition. probably the most interesting books were some film books from hungary from the early '70s, a series called "szemtol szemben". small paperbacks, one book each on fellini, antonioni, welles, wajda, and bergman. can't read a damn word of them but still...

lol there was a huge dumpster outside the Albion College Library full of books, and one night before it rained I climbed in and got a bunch of weird/cool textbooks abt schizophrenia, and an interesting book that has made my reading list called "The Inner World of Mental Illness" edited by Bert Kaplan...

also:

lately I've bought
Xaime Hernandez, The Girl from HOPPERs (death of Speedy Ortiz and whatnot)
Xaime Hernandez, Perla La Loca (Wigwam Bam, bang on some spam)
Collected Poetry of Wallace Stevens
Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2
Frank Kermode, Shakespeare's Language (found this in Brighton abt 5 yrs ago & liked it a lot)

i'm about to bid on the big palomar and locas collections by the los bros on ebay in about 4 minutes. we'll see if i win them. i bought deitch's pictorama yesterday - i'm pretty excited to read it.

so ytth were u successful?

nope, he got outbid. probably a good thing, since the antiquarian book fair is coming up soon.