We've mentioned this in passing on other reads, but it's about time it had one of its own... Picked up any good books recently?
I've just been to the charity shop and bought cheap:
- an omnibus edition of Henry Green's
Living,
Loving and
Partygoing-
Shifts, a collection of short fiction by Adam Thorpe
Brought home a big load of stuff from our town library book sale. Two huge books of Penguin history by J.M. Roberts, the complete short stories of J.G. Ballard...and I'm waiting for the arrival of Andre Breton's surreal classic,
MAGNETIC FIELDS, which I've ordered from England.
Ah, I love library book sales.
These are from about a month ago.
Message edited by its author, May 12, 2009, 9:59am.
VERY nice...
On a number of occasions I've had a dream where I'm in a book store; there's some kind of massive sale on and everywhere I look there are titles I've wanted for years, discounted 75% or what have you. I'm snatching up handfuls of books--
--but then the alarm goes off and I wake up. You know the story.
This spring the dream came true--albeit in a very modest fashion. On the way to visiting the folks we stopped off at a mini-mall in Yorkton to stretch our legs. When I popped into a chain bookstore for a quick glance, I found a scattered pile of books "5 for $10". And the first tomes I spotted were by two of my faves, James Crumley and Nicholas Christopher.
I tensed, waiting for the alarm to go off.
But it never did--at least, so far...
Message edited by its author, May 12, 2009, 12:06pm.
Good reading, Harry!
Really great hauls, everyone. Major library sale in my area this weekend. Here's hoping.
Oooo, I've been after
ORCHARD KEEPER for awhile meself. Cormac's first...and I think the only major novel of his I don't own. Lucky devil...
waiting on the 8 books i bought last week from Small Beer Press' $1.00/book -really $2.00/book w/ shipping- sale.
Huh. I ordered seven....
maybe i only ordered 7 too. i'll need to check. 8 books, $10. shipping - one book: Kings Last Song soldfor $12
maybe they felt a little guilty since their web page wasn't calculating shipping rates at all properly @ the start. i dunno.
#12 Likewise for me, Cliff!
Dammit! Now I really want to get a job! Oh well, I have 2500+ books to keep me occupied until Adam Smith's Invisible Hand stop pummeling me in the torso.
I recently grabbed a nice two-volume hardcover edition of stories by Georges Simenon for less than $4.
Was handed a carrier bag of books this lunch time by Eric Brown. He was on his way to Bradford and stopped off in Sheffield to change coaches, so we met up. In the bag were:
Nights of Villjamur, Mark Charan Newton
Deadstock, Jeffrey Thomas
Winterstrike, Liz Williams
Specimen Days, Michael Cunningham
Journey into Space, Toby Litt
Xenopath by Eric himself.
All new copies he'd received for review. Well, except ofr
Xenopath, of course.
Not a bad haul for a tenner.
Especially curious about the Litt--it was reviewed in the same issue of INTERZONE as your piece on Bruce Sterling. Cunningham has never much interested me.
Obviously you'd better link to any reviews you post or we'll nail your knees to your forehead...
Haven't read any Eric Brown--ya like him lots? Anybody who hands over a stack of books can't be all THAT bad.
It was the review in Interzone that made me want to read the Litt. The Cunningham sounded interesting. And he was selling both very cheap...
I've known Eric for years, and yes, he's an excellent writer. He's never made it big because he writes character-driven sf. His last few books, all for Solaris, have seen him move int oa slightly bigger market, although of them
Kéthani is perhaps closest to his other stuff.
Helix I thought was a bit disappointing.
Went into a bargain store yesterday, looking for some stuff for my son Liam's school project and came across the loose pile of books. Glanced at them, as any bibliophile would, and my eyes nearly bugged out of my head.
For $1.50 (Canadian, yet), I picked up a beautiful hardcover edition of
LES BRAVADES, a book of watercolours Orson Welles put together for his daughter (with Rita Hayworth). Managed to peel off the ugly sale sticker and carefully rubbed away the underlying goo. Thrilled to own this book--lovely to look at AND it's by one of my maverick heroes, the great Orson himself...
Message edited by its author, Jun 12, 2009, 2:29pm.
Not a haul, but definitely a bargain: a signed first edition of Iain Banks's
Walking on Glass... for £20.
Very nice. D'you like the book (that, of course, makes it doubly pleasurable)?
P.S. Must have been tired this morning: spelled "peel" wrong in the previous message. This word nut humbly apologizes...
Peals of laughter all around at the writer who didn't know a peal from a peel. Hahahahahah. (I'm jealous of you, Cliff. I'm sure you know that. You too, Ian, and Wolffie.)
There was a fellow who brought to church one day an autographed Bible published in the 16th Century. He collected autographed Bibles.
Message edited by its author, Jun 12, 2009, 4:32pm.
Autographed by whom? Obviously not its authors...
Okay, what's
The Hasidic Anthology? I just clicked on it and looked at the available descriptions and reviews. Then I clicked Barnes and Noble to see what they had to say about it. Is it something I should be looking for?
Robert
There is a used book store located next to my office and I shop there regularly. Yesterday I bought ten books including a complete 3 volume edition of Sir Richard Burton's translation of the 1001 Nights and a four volume slipcase edition of the works of Lu Xun who was an influential Chinese writer from 1918 to 1936. All of the books I bought were hard covers. I paid an average of $7.00 a book. The store owners do give me a 20% discount for being a regular shopper. When I buy used hard covers I am always amazed at the quality of the books. At least 50 to 75 percent of what I get are in like new condition.
Buying used books is a bit of an adventure. You can't go into the store with a list and expect to find everything you are looking for. You can go into the store or other venue and find something like the Lu Xun or 3 volume 1001 Nights.
Message edited by its author, Jun 13, 2009, 10:53am.
Now THAT'S a book store. But I have to wonder sometimes what all these big discounts mean to profits and how long a business--particularly an indie--can stay alive marking books down so much. Good for readers but what about longterm viability?
Message edited by its author, Jun 13, 2009, 11:38am.
>28: It was published by Schocken Books before Schocken was bought by Random House and is now out of print.
It's a collection of Hasidic stories and aphorisms. Quite wonderful.
Thank you. I am sorry that it is out of print. I have only rudimentary search skills, but I'll have to have a try on Google.
Robert
Cool!
Robert
And just to toss it out there - if anyone has a bunch of pre-Random House Schocken books, I would love to take them off your hands...
Just arrived today...
Four Freedoms, John Crowley
Apollo 11: Owner's Workshop Manual, Chris Riley (touchstone not working - it's
this book)
Eclipse Corona, John Shirley (signed)
Message edited by its author, Jun 16, 2009, 12:52pm.
Not completely sold on Shirley (but it's signed so that makes the difference) but the other two are more than worthy. I'd definitely steal them from you if I ever get the chance.
Thieving, rotten bastard that I am.
i liked
city come a-walkin - the writing wasn't great but i did enjoy the book a good deal. I thought he was might have been an influence on Jack Womack, whom i really like.
Yeah, I know some folks claim Shirley as the father of cyberpunk but I've read a bit of his stuff and it just didn't knock my socks off. Ian, post a review, will ya? Once you finish
ECLIPSE CORONA?
Will be a while - it's the 3rd book of a trilogy and I don't have the 2nd yet.
Earlier this month I ordered a bunch of discounted books from B&N; today they had a table of 50% off books. I hauled away:
The Penland Book of Homemade Books
Birds of the World (photographs taken by Gilles Martin, if I recall)
General Chemistry by
Linus PaulingThe Guide for the Perplexed by
Moses MaimonidesTenting on the Plains: General Custer in Kansas and Texas by
Elizabeth B. CusterThe Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest by
John Allan WyethThe Return of the Soldier by
Rebecca WestPersonal Memoirs of P.H. Sheridan by
Philip H. SheridanAncient Egyptian Myths and Legends by Lewis Spence
The Essence of Christianity by
Ludwig FeuerbachCharacters and Events of Roman History: From Caesar to Nero by
Guglielmo FerreroThe Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by
Alfred Thayer MahanTragic Sense of Life by
Miguel de UnamunoAmerica Now by
Harold E. Stearns (I don't remember if he's the author or if he collected material together to form the book, though.)
Not bad, I think.
That's a pretty brainy roster of tomes. Good on you...
>42 - Oh, indeed. Worst of all, the day after that, I got at least as many books from another B&N. The half-off table can be so generous, but its timing is bad.
Funny thing is I wouldn't expect most of the books I got to be half-off; the majority are published by B&N (and at the second B&N, they had a huge chemistry dictionary. It was lovely, but alas, I could not get it), after all.
Side note: no one seemed to be looking at those books, either. Maybe that's why they had to be half-off...
Message edited by its author, Jul 2, 2009, 10:41am.
also because they're B&N imprints of material that's out of copyright, all they really need to do is cover production/distribution costs.
I more or less divide equally between library book sale purchases, Amazon and used bookstores online, and for comix i support a local store @ full price. The owner is v. geeky and knowledgeable and after i told him what I liked, he is v. good @ picking out other material i'd like.
But probably half my reading comes from our library which is great when i come across a surprise that i really liked ie
the wasted vigil and even better when i read a book that i might have bought, given reviews and general opinion, and found myself disliking
the savage detectives.
I just bought a beautiful, hardcover, slipcased edition of
In Our Time by Hemingway. It was printed in the 90s, I think. Got it on sale for $10 and it's just beautiful.
Found
Rumours of Rain by Andre Brink and
Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone at the local Savers (kinda sorta like Goodwill). I want to dip into some South African lit sometime soon.
I have a question for the group. what do you think of those people with scanners who are now showing up at library and charity sales ?The big sale in Gainesville, the best I.ve encountered so far in Florida, doesnt allow them.
>47 - Scanners?
Checking the value/availability of a particular title? Is that what you mean? A wolf among the sheep? Some greedhead seeking books for profit instead of a dedicated bibliophile snooping for a bargain?
Yes. these are like the things you see clerks in grocery or convenience stores using to take inventory by scanning the barcodes. For books they are set to scan ISBN numbers which are linked to prices and other info. In effect you have something like Amazon or Abe search engines on a hand held scanner. The people who use these haul away boxes full of books. Unlike the George Carlin "Stuff" routine they dont seem to always get the "good stuff". At one sale they left very good books on the specials table, some with ISBN numbers. Some of them may be looking for textbooks for which there is a big market on the net and in college town book stores.
I hate the notion. But that's capitalism, at its most cold-blooded.
Big SIGH.
This message has been deleted by its author.
>52 - Well, as long as the books are being bought I don't really see the problem. Maybe that's because I view anyone and everyone who buys something I had wanted to get for myself as the enemy, so it doesn't matter if they have scanners or not.
let me add a big sigh for all those bookstores which are closed because the landlord would rather rent to a trendy restaurant or boutique.I lost my store because of that. Meanwhile life goes on: Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, the Pill Versus Springhill Mine Disaster, and In Watermelon Sugar.pb
Frank Whitford Bauhaus pb
Franz Kafka The Castle pb
E Annie Proulx The Shipping News.pb
The best of a bad lot from a library sale shelf. no scanner needed
i commented on the horde of used booksellers w/ scanners pushing their way through the last Pittsboro library book sale. Usually I'm uber polite in crowds, but if someone was scanning a box of books and i had finished my visual scanning of the box next to it, I'd just look over and take out books i might be interested in. The whole group of speed scanners was awfully rude.
Message edited by its author, Jul 17, 2009, 9:37am.
Ooh. I forgot to post here. A few weeks ago, but I spotted a nice copy of
Sebastian by Lawrence Durrell. Caught my eye, b/c the dustjacket looked very nice and was in an unmarred dj protector. Flipped it open, sure enough it was the American 1st. Hmmm... oh look. It appears to be signed. Paid the $5 and thought of this group.
Nice one. Only my
Livia is signed.
>58 - Six dollars TOTAL?
Why do none of my neighbours have book sales?
Not a neighbor - there's a charity bookstore nearby, and they do half-off sales now and then. All the books are just $1-$2 anyway, so with half-off they almost give them away.
Hmmm, well, scanners. The fact is that a barcode scanner ain't worth doodly if the book lacks a barcode, and the used book market is full of books that predate widespread retail barcoding ... which was, by an odd coincidence, the subject of conversation when I dropped into Pulp Fiction in Vancouver on a business trip a few weeks back and scored a (barcoded) first edition, first printing
Rock Springs by Richard Ford.
I'm in favor of more people using their psychic powers to blow up people's heads.
Oh wait ... not that kind of scanners.
Carry on.
>60 - Ah. Oh, well; my point still stands. I don't find sales with books that cheap...
Maybe I should get out of the house more. That could help.
I've been collecting romance novels. I am amassing a nice collection of smut with unintentionally humorous covers. I guess some would call these pictures "erotic." My latest find is my new favorite:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images...>61thats why I dont feel at all threatened by them. But, if I owned a large general interest used book store and saw these guys waking off with books I needed for general stock, I would probably feel differently. A good tolchuk on their gullivers or in their rots , to use the Nadsat of Clockwork Orange.
>64 My all time favorite book cover appeared on an early pb edition of
Pnin. A bald headed, bespeckled Pnin is depicted strolling through campus with some cute little Lolitas in the foreground and background.
Message edited by its author, Jul 18, 2009, 9:46pm.
the scanners annoy me for two reasons: 1. they are VERY rude and pushy; 2. goddamnit...it takes the fun out of looking for used books to be frantic about it all. (actually these are the same points phrased differently).
Message edited by its author, Jul 21, 2009, 6:39pm.
>66
I agree completely. I find the same behaviour by the three or four book dealers who haunt local library book sales infuriating. Running, pushing, grabbing, elbowing as they all fight over the hardcover non-fiction. Like watching crows fight over a dead possum. Nauseating.
>66,67 - So if they were calm and civil you probably wouldn't mind?
>66 I have heard from booksellers about a sale at which everyone applauded when one particularly obnoxious fellow was thrown out. I dont know if he was a dealer or not. Dealers and scanners are not the only offenders.
Message edited by its author, Jul 21, 2009, 11:13pm.
#68
I'm not opposed to contact sports or physical roughness in principle. I just don't think book buying falls into either category.
So, I guess my answer is yes, I wouldn't mind so much if they could manage some civility.
#68 totally agree. I know the goal is to raise money for the library...but it hardly matters if it's MY money or a used book dealers. And, perhaps, my money has a slight moral edge since i've contributed 100s of books to the book sales overs the years.
Maybe the "friends of the library" should get first pick (UNC does their sales this way)
If book dealers didn't exploit library book sales to sell books at obscene mark-ups, I wouldn't really care. This is like stock market speculation or Mafia resale. Buy a
Michener book at a library book sale for 50 cents -- for a hardcover -- then turn it around and sell the same book for $8+ at your used book store. You reap a $7.50 profit, even though the "intrinsic value" of said book has not changed.
Ayn Rand Objectivist Fanboy: But capitalism is good and the dealers are acting in their own self-interest.
Decent Caring Human Being: Those stocks you sold me that lost all their value, I want my money back.
AROF: It's your own fault. Stop begging, you commie parasite. (Gives 70 page speech on the virtues of selfishness ... abridged.)
AROF then punches a baby, sets fire to a hobo, and tells Bush there are WMDs in Iraq.
DCHB: That's the last time I let my uncle try and sell me stocks in artichoke futures.
I was once a part owner of a bookstore in Milwaukee and probably never sold a Michener hardcover for more than half the cover price. That was pretty standard in used bookstores before the internet. As for profit, we payed the previous owner $1100 a month and we paid the same in rent, so we had to make $2200 before we saw any profit every month. As I mentioned in a previous posting, it is common for landlords to boot used bookstores inorder to rent to a trendy new shop or restaurant. It happened to me and it happened to two of the largest used bookstores in Madison. It didnt happen to the oldest of the stores because she owns the building. If she didnt she would have lost the lease to Wendy's or Pizza Pit or Burger King. To the best of my knowledge none of them has ever set a State Street pandhandler on fire, punched a baby or approved of GW's war.
Message edited by its author, Jul 23, 2009, 8:49pm.
I wonder what the ghost of
Jane Jacobs would think of that? The profit of gentrification vs. the more nebulous aspect of "neighborhood character." I'm not an urban planner, so I don't have any answers.
>72 - But isn't that the risk you run with stocks?
But you're implying that the stocks had any intrinsic value to begin with. Our current Capitalist Apocalypse has occurred because the amoral geniuses on Wall Street -- and card-carrying members of the Rough-Sex-For-John-Galt Fan Club -- have hyperinflated stocks that were worth nothing. In a word: sub-prime. Mmmm, delicious sub-prime rib. The ropey gristle means it's yummier. Coupled with the derivatives market -- and deregulating derivatives to the point where brokers were selling things too complicated to comprehend -- was another aspect that has led to the Cell Death of Laissez Faire Capitalism.
That said, what do we do next? All the great 20th century -isms have proven resounding failures: Communism, Capitalism, Fascism, including the ism left on blue dresses.
Any ideas, geniuses?
Bartering works. When it doesn't, pillaging hasn't failed me yet.
Message edited by its author, Jul 23, 2009, 10:24pm.
>76 - Apologies for my lack of economic knowledge.
>77 - And I doubt it ever will.
For those of you in the United States, Dalkey Archive is having a summer sale. It only runs until the 29th of this month so if you're interested, you have until Wednesday.
If you aren't familiar with the Dalkey Archive, I'd suggest taking some time to browse their backlist. A non-profit publisher that focuses on quality U.S. and World Literature in translation.
http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/Only in the US of A? Canadians get hooped again. Dalkey's an excellent press...
While on a trip up the Shenandoah Valley to Philadelphia and back through Virginia again, I picked up a bunch of Dover Thrift Editions at various museum gift stores (Uncle Tom's Cabin, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Autobiography of Ben Franklin, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The First Men in the Moon, At the Earth's Core), one Penguin Classic (Our Nig, very excited to find that at Gettysburg), several used books (a collection of short stories by Voltaire, Humphry Clinker, Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited, The Tin Princess, The Woman in White) at a used book store in Valley Forge, a Ruth Fielding book at an antique store in Fredericksburg, and perhaps (and most exciting) the eighth volume of The Spectator from 1803 at a used book store, also in Fredericksburg. All of these cost the grand total of $60.
Well the sale still applies, it just isn't quite as attractive for us.
I think its 20 books for $120 (shipping included) in the U.S. Shipping isn't included for those outside the USA.
There are some other configurations, with less books on offer, as well.
I had a quick glance through their roster of authors--a very, very excellent selection. Snobs based in the USA, check out that sale! And, again, kudos to Dalkey...
>79-83 - If only I hadn't gone hog-wild with the Folio Society sales...
Though even if I hadn't, I still wouldn't be allowed to get more. Just as well.
One question, though: how are Dalkey Archive's books in terms of paper and binding?
If you were to take advantage of the sale, what authors would you look at?
I'm very grateful that you mentioned this opportunity, beardo - I've heard good things about Dalkey but have never gotten around to buying anything from them, so this seems like a good time. But so many of the authors are unfamiliar and enticing, so I just don't know where to start!
As far as I know, Dalkey puts out well-bound, good quality books. No fear on that front. Not too many places where you're going to find writing by Harry Matthews, et all. It would be pretty hard to find decent translations of a good number of the authors in Dalkey's catalogue elsewhere. Give 'em all the support you can...
>86 - Ah, thanks. I'll try and support them when I can!
Our local library's fall sale today (started yesterday, but the crowd was just too damn big to fight. $19.50, 17 books (as a member of FoTL get a $3.00 discount.) 1st ed, w/ dust jacket of Auster's
In the country of last things, poetry chapbooks by James Merrill, Donald Hall and someone new to me, Mona Van Duyn, vol that won the Pulitzer in 1991.
a good day to die - Jim Harrison, the rebel angels,
the pianist, thriller
rose by Cruz, several books i've read lib. copies of -
shadow of the silk road,
the history of love, a second copy to give to a friend of
a philosophical investigation , Carroll
After silence,
lux the poet by one of my favorite authors of light pleasure reading, Millar,
Cracking India by a Pakistani author i was unfamiliar with, Bapsi Sidwa, and some other odds and ends (eg - Scandinavian Proverbs to give to our close Swedish friend who provides us w/ our fix of Danish wedding cookies (and much more) each holiday season..). The dealers took ALL the SF/Fantasy yesterday and i was a bit disappointed in the amount of poetry, but wtf, will keep me going for a good while, and can't beat the price. It's a grocery bag for $5.00 tomorrow, but this is defn. enough till i donate our next set of books for the next sale.
Oooo, Robert, there's some goooood stuff there.
My greedy, acquisitive nature is definitely aroused by those prize catches.
And today, on the bag of books for $5.00 Saturday, picked up another 17 or so. Mostly trade ARC's but the one that, in some wise, looks to be the most interesting, is the 1936 volume of Eliot's collected verse 1909-1935. The book had belonged to an English prof. Many poems are very heavily annotated. Inserted was a lengthy set of typed notes for a lecture on the Wasteland, and...dated 1950, was a student essay, marked down substantially, awarded a 70. I can understand the person who gave the book to the booksale (probably one the prof's kids) carefully cutting out the teacher's name, but not having it there IS a shame. Some better poetry was out today, too: Donald Hall, James Merrill, Mona van Duyn
near changes won the 1991 Pulitzer and i'm quite sure i'd never heard of her.
Only a wee haul, but yesterday I popped into a couple of local charity shops on my way to the supermarket and picked up
number9dream, David Mitchell,
The Woman and the Ape, Peter Høeg and
Live and Let Die, Ian Fleming - all for about a quid each.
A "quid" being a particularly revolting sexual act peculiar to the Brits. Don't ask.
Giving Mitchell another shot, are you? Lovely. That one's set in Japan, if I remember; for some reason, when I picture Japan, I imagine something out of "Blade Runner"...
Nah. A quid is spondulicks innit.
Another visit to the charity shops...
A Fool's Alphabet and
Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks, and
Moonraker by Ian Fleming. 69p each. That's about $51 in American money, or $76.23 in Canadian money.
I had no idea Britain's finances had improved that sharply.
The sun never sets...on Ian Sales' imagination.
Message edited by its author, Sep 17, 2009, 2:10pm.
A quid is a squid after it loses its suction.
Yesterday my local library had a book sale; for $1.50 I got His Dark Materials trilogy, The Odyssey, and (this surprised me)
The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Now THAT's a good mix--which translation of
ODYSSEY?
While in the big city, found a number of books, library book sale, other cheap venues.
Michael Curtis Ford is one of my favorite historical novelists and I was pleased to come across
THE FALL OF ROME. Also a couple of volumes of THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES; the editions edited by Salman Rushdie and Michael Chabon. They had the Stephen King edited BEST AMERICAN STORIES there (2007?) but I just couldn't bring myself to buy it. With his aesthetic and mentality toward writing, I have no respect for the man's views. Other neat finds included, Algernon Blackwood's
THE COMPLETE JOHN SILENCE STORIES, Steve Aylett's neo-noir/cyberpunk collection
TOXICOLOGY, Jared Diamond's
GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL and a couple of cool erotic titles from Taschen (Publishing)
Message edited by its author, Sep 26, 2009, 11:13am.
One small footnote, I went into a news stand and bought the Atlantic Monthly Fiction issue (I do that now and then) and was appalled by the high prices on many of the magazines. With the free stuff available on the internet, charging twelve to fifteen bucks (or more) for a magazine seems like suicide to me. These people are pricing themselves right out of existence. I know it probably has to do with rising costs and falling advertising $$ but I wonder how long that sort of this can be sustained.
Also, there are no longer any major bookstores (chains or otherwise) in downtown Regina, you have to drive to the north or south end of town to have a chance to buy a decent new book. Wow...
I think I have you all beat on this one. I work at a public library, and when we get donations or weed from our collection, employees get first crack at the books for 50 cents apiece. My classics collection has quadrupled since I've started working here. Not to mention the awesome nonfiction that constantly gets weeded because hardly anyone reads serious nonfiction these days. Library booksales are some of the best deals in town.
Aahh...gah....smrkk...
(Sorry, your post has rendered me temporarily inarticulate with envy and rage.)
i dunno - i figured that my books from our most recent library sale came to $0.22 each. But the last day is a grocery bag of books for $5.00, for anything but the "collector's table" where it's let's make a deal. That included a first hb ed. of Auster's
in the country of last things for $5.50 which inflated my expenses considerably ;-)
It's not a recent haul, by any means, but perhaps
this also counts.
Velly, velly nice.
I had no idea you were such a Lucius Shepard fan. I know some stories that would--never mind.
And Lewis Shiner. I remember him from an anthology of nuclear (nucular?) war stories back in the early 80's.
And wasn't there a rock 'n roll novel (I refuse to open a tab to check Google)? What's he been up to?
You can tell from that impressive pile o' books that you're not married, Sales. You've got some actual fucking income to dispose of at the end of the month.
Of course, I hate you...
The rock & roll novel was
Glimpses, and it's bloody excellent. His last novel was
Black and White, published last year by Subterranean, and they're also publishing his Collected Stories in November (it's on the wants list).
At another library sale I got
Wieland (I was surprised about that one, too), No Thoroughfare and The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens from 1900,
The Way of All Flesh, and
The Lost World for a total of $1.75.
#100: E.V. Rieu's translation (Penguin Classics)
I really like
glimpses. One of those fantasies that i've foisted on a bunch of friends who usually avoid the genre like the plague, and they've uniformly enjoyed it. Of course these folk ARE rock and roll fans and the whole recreation of lost albums is great fun.
See, the title alone sells it for me.
It's bound to be more amusing and worthy of respect than Obama's Nobel Prize speech...
Check and mate.
But I counter by stating that my closing sentence was more of a quip/rejoinder than an attempt to lead us off-topic. Of course, had someone taken exception the conversation would have shifted to the thread you indicate.
Just sayin'. It's these political non sequiturs (what on earth did your second sentence have to do with your first?) that lead to pointless arguments & hijacking.
But this sort of thing hasn't happened in the group lately (not that I've noticed, anyhow), and for that I'm quite glad.
115:
what on earth did your second sentence have to do with your first?Isn't that the classic definition of a non sequitor? Latin for "it does not follow," for those of you playing the home game.
http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch...What have you been doing? Robbing libraries?
There's an amazing used book warehouse/store near me that has half-off sales a few times a year, and all the books are priced at one or two dollars to begin with. They also have an unsorted section of the warehouse that is $2 for whatever you can fit in a bag.
Can't match that haul but when I was in Regina, I picked up cheap library copies of Alessandro Baricco's
OCEAN SEA and Iain Banks'
WHIT.
Oh, I'm jealous.... my health problems make it hard to leave the house, but even if I did, the used bookstores here in SF are fairly pricey, and the library sales are notoriously crowded. I used to visit Portland and make pilgrimages to Powell's, where I felt the selection and the ability to page thru a book made up for the prices.
I used to volunteer for a library in Montgomery County, Maryland, and picked up many treasures for minimal money. They thought my tastes were so strange that sometimes they would just give me the books I wanted. (This must be true, because until I entered a bunch of fiction, no other LTers had even 10% of my library. Even now it's under 12%.)
I got a bag of free books once from Freecycle--it's a wonderful resource for giving and getting, if you don't know about it already--
http://www.freecycle.org/It was a mixture of dogs and gems. The best one was
Alias Grace, which turned me into an Atwood fan. The dogs went to BookMooch.
My financial, uh, stuff, hit the fan recently, so I can't buy
anything (except beans), but before that happened I ordered a pile of remaindered books, which got here last week and made me very happy:
Female of the SpeciesCalifornia Fashion: From the Old West to New HollywoodMistress Masham's ReposeSilver: My Own Tale as Written by Me With a Goodly Amount of MurderThe Abduction of SitaThe Manual of DetectionGentlemen of the RoadGormenghastGreat Short Works of Mark TwainTo the Ends of the Earth: A Sea TrilogyAlive in NecropolisOf Gold and GrassThe Ruby in Her NavelThe Jewel Trader of PeguPersian FireThe Barbary PlagueAll for under $100, including S&H.
Irene, I'm sorry to hear you have CFS. My dad has had that for more than a decade now.
Cheers for odd book tastes!
inaudible--
Thanks for the sympathy. I'm sorry about your dad. I hope something comes from the discovery of a retrovirus in cfs patients.
I took an antiviral for nine months. It helped me cognitively, but zilch otherwise. Now I can read entire books, at least some of the time. Before I couldn't concentrate on something as short as a newspaper article.
Woohoo, just picked up the complete box set of Remembrance of things past (1934 hardback editions) for $2. The book gods are smiling on me today!
Yoicks, that IS a steal. Congrats!
There are many editors and people in the publishing biz I am acquainted with who would qualify for a place in that book, Karl...
There is a picture of a lynx licking itself ... if that's what you mean?
In a nutshell. Must be someone from ______________ (publisher's name deleted at the insistence of my attorney, J.S. Squeen & Associates).
My parents popped down for a visit, so we went into the city centre. Waterstone's are doing a "buy one get one free". I bought David Lodge's
Deaf Sentence and got Roberto Bolaño's
2666 free. Or was it the other way round? My father wanted a book that was in the "3 for 2" promotion, but he could only find two books he wanted. I tried to persuade him to get me Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones as his third book, but he found something he'd sooner read himself instead...
I'm green, Sales, and that's only partially because of me Irish blood. Good snags.
Our local library had a charity fundraiser in which they asked a number of Country & Western celebrities to donate CDs plus copies of their favourite books. They then auctioned these off on eBay. I know nothing about C&W music but decided to bid on a few items just to support the library and I won the packs from Canadian musicians Jamie Warren and The Higgins.
Here's what I got: 3 signed CDs, 2 signed photographs, 2 t-shirts, 2 canvas library bags, 1 signed water bottle, 1 shortbread cookie in the shape of a cowboy hat, 1 giraffe pen and the best part:
1984,
Wuthering Heights,
Demian,
This is Your Brain on Music and
Go, Dog, Go. Not bad for a $50 donation to the library. Most of the other celebrities chose Clive Cussler and the like. Guess I found the literate ones.
I think, Cliff, you might be surprised how much literate people like roots kinds of white boy blues (country music, to all you sophisticates out there). Give me some good old bluegrass, tell me again about what
Uncle Pen could make that fiddle do. There's no place I'd rather be than some
honky tonk road house with
hardwood floors.
Message edited by its author, Nov 7, 2009, 3:58pm.
I don't mind bluegrass, Gene, me lad. Stanley Bros. are jes' fine with me. My mom was married before she was fifteen. You're talking to a dyed-in-the-wool hillbilly here...
Dear me, you New World types with your limited gene pools...
Uncle Pen, my oh my. Me, I like the fiddle tunes. Bill Cheatham, Whiskey Before Breakfast, Fiddler's Dram. Bluegrass is best when not a spectator sport.
And on topic,
This is Your Brain on Music, good book.
Off topic: Sales, one of these days I'm gonna tie a slipknot in your trachea.
138: Limited gene pools? The houses of Windsor and Hapsburg ... inbred hemophiliacs of limited brain capacity seem pretty limited. Then again, go to Appalachia or a town hall meeting and you meet the same type, minus the hemophilia.
Went to "Savers" today, a bargain Goodwill-ish type store, and found:
Duluth by Vidal
The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch. Looks interesting. I've been curious about this book for a while.
From Dawn to Decadence by Barzun
The Radiant Future by Alexander Zinoviev. Looks funny. Gotta love satires of the Soviet system.
Small Appalachian towns aren't that bad. Even when you are related to at least half the people.
It's awful when phone books contain only 3 last names...and 500 people.
Try doing genealogy research in Western NCarolina counties. On Patty's dad's side, most everyone is either a Carter,a Gibbs or a Blanton and yup...lots of cousins getting hitched. Death certificates from the end of the 19th and early 20th C are both sad and fascinating. "supposed to be heart attack. dropped down dead. didn't say a word." was one female relative. Another, much sadder, was a 16 yr old girl dying of pellagra in 1916 (niacin deficiency - very common in the American south w/ a diet based on corn and pork).
A bit of a haul today--as in hauling two bulging bags of used, mainly ex-library books from the Sports Hall of Fame book sale. I missed the first few days so the selection was pretty picked through. Still, managed to snag a newer copy of
IN COLD BLOOD,
THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF JAY GOULD, Thomas Cahill's biography of Pope John XXIII, Nicholas Negroponte's
BEING DIGITAL and, um, Rowse's
SHAKESPEARE THE MAN.
And a bunch of other stuff for family & pals. My shoulders are killing me...
Just the one book, but it's taken me years to track down a copy -
Dinosaur Junction by Ann Halam. Halam is the pseudonym Gwyneth Jones uses for her YA novels. This one apparently "got lost in the shuffle" when she moved publishers from Orchard to Dolphin, which explains why copies are so rare.
Incidentally, I'd rate Halam's Inland trilogy -
The Daymaker, Transformations* and
The Skybreaker - alongside Le Guin's original
Earthsea trilogy any day of the week.
(* no touchstone, of course. Because LT would sooner return 100 titles vaguely related to the one I want instead of the
actual exact title)
Picked up Peter Ackroyd's
The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein and
Beirut Blues by Hanan al-Shaykh in a local charity shop yesterday. I thought Al-Shaykh's
Women of Sand and Myrrh was very good, altho I was less impressed by her
Only in London. We'll see what
Beirut Blues is like.
(wtf - the LT touchstone gives the author for
Beirut Blues as "Hanaan as-Sjakh", which is bizarre. Yes, it's a long "a" in Hanan, and
sheen is a "sun letter" so the definite article elides into the noun and the "l" disappears... but it's only the Swedes who pronounce "sj" as "sh". Besides, the English translations of her novel all spell her name as I have above. Still, this is what happens when you crowd-source data...)
Almost done with
the secret history of moscow - a far more conventional bit of the fantastic set inside the mundane than her exquisitely original steampunkish
the alchemy of stone. All the same i'm enjoying the vision of Moscow which is both satirical and bleak as the epoch of "robber barons" gets reinvented in Russia during the 1990s. A good deal of Russian folklore is incorporated - which I aooreciate. But there's no question in my mind, at least, that this novel pales in comparison, whether one considers plot, character development, originality and just plain good writing to her later novel. If you enjoy Pelevin (which i do), i think this short novel might well appeal.
Empire Falls - Russo - Picked this up mostly because of Cliff's outspoken love for Russo, we'll see how it goes
The Plague - Camus - haven't ever read any Camus so this should be interesting
The Shadow Rising - Jordan - aw hell, I need my guilty pleasure fantasy reading
Friday Night Lights - Bissinger - Love the TV show, figured I might give the book a chance
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