Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

That's the middle one of the Shelby Footers, isn't it? I bought them for my dad a while ago. I remember thinking that he was maybe a bit pro-Southern... the stuff in the first book about how Jefferson Davis would only punish any of his slaves after they had been convicted by a jury of their peers struck me as being a bit O RLY. And in the volume you have he never even mentions Joshua Chamberlain at the battle of Gettysburg.

Sorry, that's my inner nerd coming out.

The Figes book is great crack. Maybe I should read it from cover to cover some time.

IR buy with birthday book tokens:

William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal, about the last Mughal Emperor and the Indian mutiny. I get the impression that this book will be a bit sadface. I've been meaning to read something by Dalrymple for a while, and am currently on an India kick (having just finished Mike Dash's Thug

Alan George's Jordan, a book about the country of Jordan. I am not *that* interested in Jordan, given that it is a boring country made up of leftover bits of other countries, but I found Alan George's book on Syria very interesting.

two textbooks!
the resettlement of british columbia: essays on colonialism and geographic change by cole harris
and a double issue of bc studies from 1997/98.

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.

free library find yesterday: an old school panther paperback of john o'hara's a rage to live with a very young looking ben gazzara on the cover

I have pre-ordered a large book by Bioy Casares on Borges, but it will not be published until next year.

I bought books for the first time in a long time. It was my birthday this week so I felt like I owed myself something after one long crappy summer. I bought books online from Barnes & Noble! For the first time ever! I bought seven books by Daniel Woodrell ENTIRELY based on the say so of Meghan Abbott. She says he's great. So, what the hell. Who am I to argue?
Today my pal Ray had his monthly media sale next door to my house. Can you say 22 cardboard gaylords of books weighing, like, a thousand pounds apiece and every book inside is 50 cents for you the consumer? Nothing like digging thru huge boxes of books with old men outside on a beautiful fall day. He gave me a deal and I got 26 books for 10 bucks. Mostly paperbacks.

colette - cheri/the last of cheri
edith wharton - the house of mirth (own but i know not where and this way i can have one handy to look in.)
robert musil - the man without qualities - book one (i'll never read it and its only one part but i felt like reading in it.)
margaret drabble - a summer bird-cage
jean rhys - quartet
david freedberg - the eye of the lynx
patricia dizenzo - an american girl (first - only probably - edition of 1971 american teen slice of life novel.)
doris lessing - briefing for a descent into hell (nice 1st american hardcover with dust jacket and i've avoided doris lessing all my life for some reason.)
editor, janet sternburg - the writer on her work - essays by anne tyler, joan didion, erica jong, maxine hong kingston and more on being a woman and being a writer.
harrison kinney - james thurber - his life and times (it's over a thousand pages so there is no way...but will be so much fun to dip into.)
colette - the complete claudine
may sarton - journal of a solitude
albert camus - notebooks 1935-1942
colette - my mother's house/sido
doris lessing - the summer before the dark
james r. mellow - charmed circle - gertrude stein & company
gertrude stein - 3 lives
may sarton - the house by the sea
may sarton - mrs. stevens hears the mermaids singing
diane johnson - lying low
jean rhys - tigers are better-looking
margaret drabble - the waterfall
diana trilling - reviewing the forties
edith warton - a backward glance
yuri olesha - envy
orrin keepnews and bill grauer, jr - a pictorial history of jazz (hardcover with dust cover. 1957 3rd printing of the 1955 book. the bookmark in it is a mailer/pamphlet from Birdland heralding their 6th anniversary complete with 3 cent stamp.)

my exciting finds though - uh, exciting to me - came earlier in the week. got a nice 1st hardcover edition from 1885 of A Marsh Island by Sarah Orne Jewett, early edition of Deephaven by SOJ, and a beautiful 1893 1st edition of A Native Of Winby And Other Tales by SOJ.

I have pre-ordered a large book by Bioy Casares on Borges, but it will not be published until next year.

― alimosina, Friday, 20 September 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Really looking forward to that book.

colette - my mother's house/sido

briefing for a descent into hell still the only lessing i've read. veers off into sf territory at a certain point which i think she took further in some of her later work?

speaking of, bought 60+ sf books recently & hidden amongst them was a 1st uk edition of mother night. long time since i read that so gonna revisit.

also got a bunch jim thompsons which i went through in a few days of rainy weather this week.

Mother Night is an okay Cold War thriller---not too generic, got the KV turns for sure- though not very science fictiony; for that I rec my fave KV to date(haven't read 'em all, I mean): his second published novel, The Sirens of Titan (1959): full scale pulpadelic, satirical and yet poignant, amaaazingly, calmly inventive---also sf is his debut full-length, Player Piano(1952): it's 50s executive drama, as in Executive Suite, The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit, Patterns,The Rat Race, etc. etc.---yet set in The Future, when Big Computers, having saved America's ass in The Big War, have been entrusted with peacetime economy, and relegated most workers (men) to menial jobs, though POV characters mostly managerial, in high pressure benign-face office culture across the river, although some of the suits do like to go drink with or in same room as proles (he got a lot of good material working for GE). Discussion of these & other KV way upthread.

i have read very little Vonnegut. don't know why. i read Breakfast of Champions when i was a kid.

Discussion of these & other KV way upthread.