2007 Book Purchase Thread

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There is a large stack of unread tomes on the table, but you are weak and you just can't help yourself. I'm not here to judge. I'm here to applaud you.

Today at the thrift store:

Unless - Carol Shields

City Of God - Paulo Lins

The Collected Prose - Elizabeth Bishop

The Barbarians Are Coming - David Wong Louie

The Winthrop Covenant - Louis Auchincloss

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 20 January 2007 01:49 (eighteen years ago)

Mr. Seward, Mr. Auchincloss was a fine observer of and writer about his own rarified stratum of society. Within this purview he is eminently satisfactory, almost a Henry James.

Today I bought FullHouse by Stephen Jay Gould for $1. I have already read it and I can state that it is a disquisition on the finer points of applying statistics to the observable world, in which Gould finds and elucidates some surprising connections between paleontology and the recent absence of .400 hitting in baseball. Worth a look.

― Aimless (Aimless), Saturday, 20 January 2007 02:41 (eighteen years ago)

yah, i dig louis. it's the wasp in me. his books remind me of my grandfather. so does william hamilton:

http://www.thenewyorkerstore.com/assets/1/28429_m.gif

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 20 January 2007 02:46 (eighteen years ago)

I picked up two Hardy novels today but I don't count them as "new" because I already own previous copies of Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Far From the Maddening Crowd; I just haven't a ruddy clue where they are.

This week I got:

The Black Book and Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan - He is one of the ballyhooed authors I thought I'd never read until two acquaintances effused so rapturously over Atonement that I gave it a look see in the store. It didn't take. Enduring Love did.

― Arethusa (Arethusa), Saturday, 20 January 2007 02:49 (eighteen years ago)

Today I bought no books, although I did buy a fountain pen and ten mayfair blue cigarettes.

― tom west (thomp), Saturday, 20 January 2007 05:06 (eighteen years ago)

Today "A Time Of Gifts" by Patrick Leigh Fermor and the Penguin "Medieval Writings on Female Spirituality" arrived.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 20 January 2007 07:04 (eighteen years ago)

I just keep going to the Mysterious Bookshop and Partners & Crime and buying nouveau noir paperbacks. I don't even know who you are anymore.

― The Redd And The Blecch (Ken L), Saturday, 20 January 2007 08:03 (eighteen years ago)

I've bought a ludicrous amount of books this month, as I spent a bunch of hours at the used items store down the street. I bought some 50-cent books that I'm not entirely sure I'll ever read, like Gene Wolfe's first novel, "Operation ARES", which he apparently hates, and even fans consider a turgid potboiler.
I did pick up a great deal of books yesterday as well, so I'll list those.

John Dos Passos - Manhattan Transfer
Marcel Proust - Book 4 to 6 of the 7-volume Norwegian paperback edition of Recherche
Richard Ford - The Sportswriter & The Lay of the Land (already had "Independence Day")
Flannery O'Connor - The Complete Stories
T.S. Eliot - The Complete Poems & Plays
The Paris Review Interviews vol.1

My bookshelves were already well past overflowing, so I'm not entirely sure where to put all of this.

― Øystein (Øystein), Saturday, 20 January 2007 10:52 (eighteen years ago)

Number9 Dream -- I'm trying to whittle away at the unread stack, reading more than I buy is my goal for january

― Docpacey (docpacey), Sunday, 21 January 2007 00:43 (eighteen years ago)

Spent the last of my birthday giftcard on Agatha Christie's Taken at the Flood. I think I've already read it, but who the hell knows.

― franny (frannyglass), Sunday, 21 January 2007 22:03 (eighteen years ago)

Taken at the Flood??? never heard of that one!

i'm looking to buy a JG Ballard novel as a gift - he has Crash. what should i get him?

― surmounter (rra123), Monday, 22 January 2007 21:21 (eighteen years ago)

A tie.

― Laurel (Laurel), Monday, 22 January 2007 21:39 (eighteen years ago)

It has to be a novel? His stories are better - get the Collected Stories. If it does have to be a novel, get him 'The Drowned World' or 'The Drought'.

― James Morrison (JRSM), Monday, 22 January 2007 22:59 (eighteen years ago)

Taken at the Flood is one of the postwar Poirot mysteries. I think it was also published as There is a Tide or something like that.

It turns out I have already read it, but as I can't remember who the murderer is, and as they're all the same anyway, it doesn't really worry me. I love the hell out of Poirot.

― franny (frannyglass), Tuesday, 23 January 2007 00:45 (eighteen years ago)

last night at depressing badly lighted towson waldenbooks:

chuck klosterman "sex, drugs, anc cocoa puffs"
david foster wallace "infinite jest" (cheap paperback $10 edition)

― Raymond Cummings (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, 23 January 2007 13:02 (eighteen years ago)

awesome james thanks!

interesting... hahaha i know i've reread agathas before. although my favorite agatha of all time is a marple - a murder is announced. just gives me the chills.

― surmounter (rra123), Tuesday, 23 January 2007 18:14 (eighteen years ago)

Purchased thus far in 2007:

The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford
The Recognitions - William Gaddis
The Rush For Second Place - William Gaddis
The Tin Flue - Gabrielle Roy
King, Queen, Knave (first ed.) - Vladimir Nabokov
Childhood - Andre Alexis
The Porcupine - Julian Barnes
A Frolic of His Own - William Gaddis
Vineland - Thomas Pynchon
The Color Magic - Terry Pratchett
The Autograph Man - Zadie Smith
The Emperor's Children - Claire Messud
The Children's Hospitale - Chris Adrian
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Leona - Umberto Eco
Uncollected Short Stories - William Faulkner

Thank God for overstock/remainder. I think all that came out to less than $100.

― August (August), Thursday, 25 January 2007 17:48 (eighteen years ago)

August, how do you find William Gaddis in remainders? I've never ONCE seen a William Gaddis book in any bookstore ever, cheap or not.

― franny (frannyglass), Thursday, 25 January 2007 18:22 (eighteen years ago)

The Recognitions is the only one that I had to buy new. The only reason I didn't get a copy of JR is because somebody grabbed it when I had my back turned. A Frolic of His Own is everywhere here in the used/remaindered stores... I can't seem to turn around without see a hardcover copy on sale for $6.

Oh, and 'here' is Toronto. I got mine at BMV, but they're at She Said Boom, Seekers... all over the place in the Annex.

― August (August), Thursday, 25 January 2007 18:34 (eighteen years ago)

A Frolic has been on remained at Powell's for a while, I think. It's the paperback edition with the "typo" on the spine, as I recall.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 25 January 2007 20:37 (eighteen years ago)

Dammit, I'm in Toronto too. I will have to seek these out.

― franny (frannyglass), Thursday, 25 January 2007 23:38 (eighteen years ago)

Literature for Today's Young Adults--textbook cost $90 sob

― Mary (Mary), Friday, 26 January 2007 01:38 (eighteen years ago)

I just started the first semester of Spanish, so I wanted to read some Latina/o authors. Found these.

Yxta Maya Murray, What It Takes to Get to Vegas
Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz
Oscar Hijuelos, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

Hey, if anybody has any suggestions in this area, I'm ignorant to the genre.

― silence dogood (catcher), Friday, 26 January 2007 02:45 (eighteen years ago)

You should check out the bilingual edition of Fuentes's Aura.
Also the bilingual edition of Ernesto Sabato's The Tunnel

― The Redd And The Blecch (Ken L), Friday, 26 January 2007 03:00 (eighteen years ago)

Thanks, I just ordered "The Tunnel". I can't wait, it sounds amazing.

― silence dogood (catcher), Friday, 26 January 2007 03:38 (eighteen years ago)

still no books, although today i bought two courgettes, a packet of mushrooms, two green chilis and twenty marlboro 100's.

― tom west (thomp), Saturday, 27 January 2007 19:39 (eighteen years ago)

Still no books!

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Saturday, 27 January 2007 22:54 (eighteen years ago)

I ventured out to buy books today.

Robert Bridges Poetical Works, in the Standard Authors series of Oxford U. Press, hardcover (blue cloth and gilt letters), $9.95. He was appointed Poet Laureate, was a polished and accomplished poet, was a friend and tireless promoter of G.M. Hopkins, and wrote in a manner that was just about ten years out of step with his times.

Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing, Samuel Hoffenstein, in a nice hardcover edition from approx 1928, for $7.95. He wrote rhyming light verse that was deceptively offhanded and charming. A closer look shows him to be a masterly craftsman and a very perceptive poet.

I also upgraded my paperback edition of the Poems of Andrew Marvell in the Muses Library, by buying a clean, spiffy hardcover edition of the same for $5.00.

― Aimless (Aimless), Saturday, 27 January 2007 23:58 (eighteen years ago)

Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach (4th edition) by Dee Unglaub Silverthorn

So I've bought one book so far in 2007 and it is a textbook. I really need to go to actual bookstores more often.

― Sara R-C (Sara R-C), Monday, 29 January 2007 22:28 (eighteen years ago)

I bought The Lincoln Lawyer - Michael Connelly, Gilead - Marilynne Robinson and Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky in a 3 for 2 sale at Waterstones.

― Navek Rednam (Navek Rednam), Thursday, 1 February 2007 17:07 (eighteen years ago)

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Thursday, 1 February 2007 20:48 (eighteen years ago)

Hiroshima, John Hersey, in an old hardcover edition that may be a first printing, for $1 at a charity shop. A nice find.

― Aimless (Aimless), Thursday, 1 February 2007 21:36 (eighteen years ago)

today i bought
'ice station zebra'
'open secrets' by alice munro
and a second copy of 'end zone' by don delillo because it was only $4 and i am tired of waiting for it back from a friend.

― derrick harder (derrick.h), Monday, 5 February 2007 07:34 (eighteen years ago)

This weekend I grabbed:

Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman

The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce (why oh why do they abridge books like this)

White Teeth, Zadie Smith

Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon

― August (August), Monday, 5 February 2007 20:06 (eighteen years ago)

Ok, I cracked. BUT! I was in London and had finished reading the book I was reading and didn't have another book with me, and we were in the bookshop in the British Library. And I only bought one book, about the Trial of Queen Caroline.

OK, OK, I bought Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar as well, but they were on two for the price of one, and we were seeing Antony and Cleopatra that night!

Bah. I am weak.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 00:21 (eighteen years ago)

Antony and Cleopatra is my favourite. How was the play?

― franny (frannyglass), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 15:16 (eighteen years ago)

Well, Patrick Stewart and Harriet Walter were amazing and funny and sweet and crazy and all the things you want Antony and Cleopatra to be, but I thought the supporting cast was a little too shouty. But all in all, really very good.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 16:50 (eighteen years ago)

the supporting cast was a little too shouty

Ah, but as we all know Shakespeare was a dramatist, and many actors think that shouting is dramatic, therefore they fervently believe a bit of shouting never comes amiss in any Shakespeare play.

― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 17:52 (eighteen years ago)

in waterstones, needing to get my credit card spend over ten pounds, i put down two books at a total of 23.98 and bought a 6.99 notebook instead. the two books i did not buy were:

arendt, 'eichmann in jerusalem'; priced at £10.99, list price $15.00
pessoa's selected poems; price at £12.99, list price $16

― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 8 February 2007 06:13 (eighteen years ago)

Huh, I bought that Arendt book on Monday.

― Øystein (Øystein), Thursday, 8 February 2007 08:33 (eighteen years ago)

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