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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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!
I've read a few chapters of it and so far it does succeed at that- it's like Holly Golightly telling her story in the first person. Although maybe that is a cause for worry, that all will not end well.
the book sale was this weekend! three days. it's quite the affair. went the first day and spent about 30 bucks. but today, monday, everything is free! believe you me, they have a LOT left. anyway, here is what i have picked up in the last couple of weeks at the book sale/thrift store/dump:
this is on martha's vineyard, chris! i believe you are as far as jaq, no? and yeah, i made out like a bandit today when everything was free. and i was in such a book fog that i completely forgot about the art/architecture/photography section at the front of the gymnasium! oh well. next time. i'm not greedy. much.
if you haven't read this yet you're in for ahem a "treat" the rockcritic character is beyond perverse. on the whole I found this book profoundly moving and utterly twisted...long after I thought there were no taboos left to be violated "try" proved me wrong (again)
It is of course mentioned in Bartleby & Co, by Enrique Vila-Matas which I recommend to you, Chris. I tried to take it out of the library, but they only had another called something like Get Rid Of This Book Quick!, so I reserved that instead.
Yes, Bartleby & Co. is fantastic. Montano's Malady i'm still working on, as i don't want the two books conflated in my memory. The friend who recommended it is not so keen on it as he was on the first. He's slathering for Nazi Literature in the Americas.
Anyone have any idea when that Borges biography by Bioy Casares is going to make it into English translation? although i picked up the Williamson one, i have no intention of reading it. Him hanging with Bioy Casares and Ocampo slagging everyone seems more fun... at least in small doses. The TLS review interested me.
From neighborhood junk store:
Jean Cocteau - Beauty and the Beast: Diary of a Film
William J. Schnell - 30 Years a Watchtower Slave
Anna Deavere Smith - Fires in the Mirror
Atul Gawande - Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
C. Vann Woodward - The Strange Career of Jim Crow
online book-buying will be the death of me:
spitting off tall buildings - dan fante
the heart is a lonely hunter - carson mccullers
the magus - john fowles
mister dog: the dog who belonged to himself - margaret wise brown
Poems and Translations, Ezra Pound, in the hardcover American Library edition. This has the works: 1200pp of poems, including his uncollected chaff, plus a chronology, notes and index (those indispensible aids to time wastage). It was in great shape for a mere $32. Now I can sell my paperback edition of Personae and recoup a couple of dollars on this extravagence.
The Journal of Cardan: Together with The Quest of the Opal and The Probelm of Form, J.V. Cunningham, for $5.95. A hardcover with dust jacket, most probably a first printing, because Cunningham is presently so obscure. These are essays by a mostly-forgotten, but quite good poet.
Collected Poems in English, Joseph Brodsky, 'first edition', hardcover with dust jacket, in excellent condition for $9.95. Flipping through this he seemed to have some interesting licks - good enough to justify the Nobel he won.
Collected Poems, Stevie Smith, in an xlib hardcover with dust jacket, Oxford U. Press, for $7.95. Not a solid favorite poet of mine. She wavers between the faux-naive and the genuinely charming. The price sold me on this one.
One World, Ready or Not, Wm. Greider, trade paper in good shape, $4.00. I've read it already, but I kind of bought it as a tribute to Greider, who I still think has sussed out the tenor of the times better than far more celebrated pundits.
Anyway, I just bought another 1150pp. of scintillating prolixity that I shall someday feel obligated to read: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West, in a massive Penguin paperback edition that would choke an anaconda, for $5. Shoot me now.
It seems odd to me that the foremost inventor of twentieth-century modernist fiction wrote poetry as a pastiche of Elizabethan lyricism and Celtic Twilight romanticism. It's hard to say where he would have gone with it, had he stuck to poetry. He wasn't terribly bad at it, but I suspect he made the right choice in abandoning it.
Book purchase or no, I imagine Ned beamed upon you. Being as he is the patron saint of ILE, I imagine Ned beams aplenty upon his flock. I have been the recipient of one or two electron-composed nedbeams. May he live and prosper.
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.)
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.
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