What did you buy Today? March Edition.

I received these monographs on esoteric USN warplanes yesterday in the mail Curtiss XBT2C-1 and Kaiser Fleetwings XBTK-1.

These were used from amazon.com or thriftshops;
Ulverton by adam thorpe
the silent prophet by joseph roth
what i saw by joseph roth
the moro affair by leonardo sciascia
mr. vertigo by paul auster
summerland by michael chabon
equal danger by leonardo sciascia
from a high place-a life of arshile gorky by mathew spender
love and friendship by alison lurie

there wasn't room to finish so here is the rest of this week's haul:
tell me lies by jennifer crusie
the birds fall down by rebecca west
stories by dorothy parker
norton introduction to literature
the stone angel by margaret laurence
four letters of love by niall williams
swimming in the volcano by bob shacochis
breathing lessons by anne tyler
the truest pleasure by robert morgan
the dancing wu-li masters by gary Zukav

almigwin, how nice to see Leonardo Sciascia in your list! And also Rebecca West and Dorothy Parker, of whom I am a great fan.

aluvalibri-I just found out about leonardo sciascia a few weeks ago. I don't remember the review or article
but I feel like an idiot when i miss a great author for years. I have bought everything i could get my hands on. He is my project right now. I'm a fan of verga, pavese, lampedusa, silone, moravia, berti and now sciascia.

Almigwin, you should also add Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg, Rosetta Loy, Elsa Morante, among the ones that come to mind right now.
Elsa Morante is my favourite Italian writer, absolutely fenomenal!

My birthday was last week and my wonderful husband gave me a buying spree on Amazon (in part because I spent most of the Christmas buying spree on the toddler daughter), which I spent almost entirely on used books from the Marketplace. The shipping charges added up even though the books were cheap, so I still sorta blew the budget. And then I found about a dozen books for the daughter and got them too. I think I'll report on them as they actually arrive as I've already had one seller contact me that the book was not in stock.

The last book to arrive was Starting with Ingredients which I have been lusting after since the fall.

You must understand that my husband helped move every last one of my many many book boxes on two different occasions, both times *before* he was my husband. And since the house we live in is only marginally larger than my microscopic bungalow, the vast majority of them are still in boxes in the garage. He's getting used to asking about some SF title or another and being told "Yeah, I have a copy of that in a box"

I received my first edition copy of Philip K. Dick's, Solar Lottery in the mail yesterday from a woman in CA.

I picked up used copies of Albert Camus's, Exile and the Kingdom and Robert Silverberg's, The Mountains of Majipoor yesterday.

aluvalibri-thanks for the response. I have read them all except Rosetta Loy. I found calvino too idiosynchratic for my taste , and Ginzburg too tame allthough I recognize their greatness- it's just a question of personal feelings. I only know and loved aracoeli and history of Morante. Are there other books? There is also Bassani and whoever wrote the conformist-was it bertolucci?

almigwin, yes, Elsa Morante wrote other books. My favourite are House of liars and Arturo's island. The first is actually my very favourite Italian book.
The conformist was written by Alberto Moravia, and the movie directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.

aluvalibri-thanks so much for the fast response. i will look for the other Morante books, but please tell me about rosetta loy. I never heard of her.

Almigwin, Rosetta Loy is a contemporary writer. I have read two of her books: The dust roads of Monferrato and Cioccolata da Hanselmann (I am sorry, I do not know the title of the English translation). Her prose is beautiful. I particularly recommend the first.

:-))

Today I went into a bookstore that I like and found a half-price sale! I bought
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Liberated Bride by A.B. Yehoshua
and
Six Plays by Jason Sherman

shipment rec'd today from various used dealers thru amazon:
three novellas by joseph roth: fallmerayer the station master,the bust of the emperor and the legend of the holy drinker;also by roth: rebellion tr by michael hoffman
to each his own by leonardo sciascia tr. by adrienne foulke, intro by w.s.piero;
also by sciascia: the wine dark sea, intro by albert mobilio;
selected stories by sylvia townsend warner;
half-finished heaven the best poems of tomas transtromer,tr. by robert bly;
khodasevich his life and art by david m. bethea ;
a drizzle of honey -the lives and recipes of spain's secret jews by david m gitlitz & linda k. davidsonwhich won the nat'l jewish book award and the iacp cookbook award;
italian slow and savory by joyce goldstein

n.b. The study of Khodasevich is the first book I have found with dual language versions of his poetry in addition to biographical material and I have been looking for years since i read Berberova's autobiography the italics are mine. "o frabjous day, calloo, callay!!!"

The Farewell Chronicles: How We Really Respond to Death by Anneli S. Rufus
The Fabric of the Cosmos (Space, time, and the texture of reality) by Brian Greene
Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan
State of Denial : Bush at War, Part III by Bob Woodward
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman
Rincewind the Wizzard by Terry Pratchett

Ordered through my bookclubs a little while ago. They arrived today.

From Zooba.com -- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

From Paperbackswap.com -- The Sea for Breakfast by Lillian Beckwith (a beautiful 1962 vintage hardcover edition with a pretty illustrated dust jacket -- lucky me!)

-- Lisa

The Great Plague: The Story of London's Most Deadly year. Sort of a followup for me on the Black Plague of the 14th century. I had written a long paper on that one.

Sea Eagles and Latin American Air Wars arrived via half.com today.

I picked up The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove today off of the half-price table at the book store. Hopefully I'll get Christopher Moore's sense of humor. Sometimes what everybody else thinks is hilarious goes right over my head.

Also picked up Chicken Soup for the Mother and Son Soul for my friend for her upcoming birthday.

arrived today:
Rosie's Chocolate-Packed, Jam-Filled, Butter-Rich No-Holds-Barred Cookie Book and The Wind in the Willows: Mr Toad, the second volume of Michel Plessix's graphic novel inperpretation.

Texas Mammals East of the Balcones Fault Zone. This was today's budget-breaker at Half-Price. I also picked up The Autobiography of Malcom X, Black Like Me, and The Alien Animals, but those were all fifty cents each, so they were covered by what I was selling back. I'm particularly excited about Texas Mammals and The Alien Animals.

I need to resist the temptation to keep buying books. I can't seem to leave a bookstore without buying something.

I picked up Jorge Luis Borges's, The Book of Imaginary Beings.

A real doorstop in today's mail from Amazon, a copy of Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by Clive James, and it looks terrific too.

Far from being a doorstop, today in the mail (from Ebay) Bedknob and broomstick by Mary Norton, first American edition!!!

I picked up "Last Call for HMS Edinburgh" at a library book sale today.

In the mail: A sultan in Palermo by Tariq Ali. It promises to be good. Let's hope so!

Oh books, glorious books!

In the mail:

Thieves & Kings, volume 3 by Mark Oakley
Thieves & Kings, volume 4 by Mark Oakley
Thieves & Kings, volume 5 by Mark Oakley
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling (adult cover)

From a free book swap:

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
one lone copy of Bust magazine

Did it again. Today I got a haircut and two books.

Customs and Characters: Contemporary Portraits, by Peter Quennell, and In Defense of Sin, edited by John Portmann.

Today I discovered that I had a $5 off certificate for a bookstore that I use . So I bought A Royal Affair; George 111 and his Troublesome Siblings by Stella Tillyard and In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant I love historical fiction and biographies!

China Mieville's Perdido Street Station for the munificent sum of $2.95 at the local used bookstore. It's in wonderful condition, too.

I've heard so much about it that when I saw it I thought "why not?" It's got 20-something reviews on LT alone.

Things Fall Apart.
The Oedipus Cycle.
Invisible Man.
The Sun Also Rises.
The Sound and the Fury.
As I Lay Dying.
Heart of Darkness.
Moll Flanders.

haha. I like books.

Hotel Savoy by Joseph Roth
Selected Poems by Giuseppe Ungaretti translated by Andrew Frisardi
Sephardic Flavors-Jewish cooking of the mediterranean by Joyce Goldstein
and a great find for me on the internet-the catalog of a retrospective exhibit by my first art teacher (in 1958 at Purdue).I hadn't seen him or his work since 1959.
-Richard Callner
Selected Works 1957-1988.

Luckily, my retirement money was saved for books. I hope it lasts as long as I do. I seem to be awfully healthy at 75.

And a nite owl too, judging from the time of your posting!

...or an early bird????
Almigwin, I am sure we ALL wish you a LOOOONG and VERY healthy life!

:-))

March edition, she says.

I think I need one of these weekly. No, that wouldn't help. Last posted on Thursday, and here it is only Saturday, and I'm back.

Best Gay Love Stories 2005, edited by Nick Street.

It's not my fault that there's a Borders between my house and the post office.

(places tongue firmly in cheek)

lilithcat, you could take an alternative route.

To #34 aluvalibri : thank you for the very kind wishes. i sleep very well, but in chunks, so I live in between. With retirement and a totally flexible husband, i can sleep till noon, or get up at 3 a.m. As you age, you don't need as much sleep, so there is more time to read! yay!. The downside of glasses, hearing aids, white hair and wrinkles, we won't discuss.

Todayish (Technically Saturday, but as it's after midnight...):
Sharpe's rifles : Richard Sharpe and the French invasion of Galicia, January 1809 by Bernard Cornwall
Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading by Maureen Corrigan
Trawler by Redmond O'Hanlon
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
and Chasing Che by Patrick Symmes

I'm a big A.L. Kennedy fan, and today I ordered a copy of her new war novel Day, due April 5 in the UK.

Today I went to Borders armed with a list of books from my wishlist and a 25% off coupon. I came out with City of Bones, a new release that was recommended to me a while back by a librarian who had read the ARC. Sounds like it's going to be a great book, I just wish it had come out in paperback instead of hardcover *sigh*

I ran across this while doing some research:

The Economic Evolution of American Health Care: From Marcus Welby to Managed Care"
David Dranove

and (sigh) "Dear Reader, she bought it."

I received "Aston Martin" by Anthony Pritchard and "Battle" by John Lynn via half.com today.

I just ordered a copy of Andrew Biswell's 2005 biography The Real Life of Anthony Burgess.

I can't quite believe it, but checking my posts I think I actually made nearly a month without book shopping. I think the fact that I started tagging the date I bought books shamed me into slowing down (so far this year I've been buying books at twice the rate I've been reading them). But I fell off the wagon last night when I picked up two Elizabeth Taylor's At Mrs Lippencote's and Blaming and Venice: Tales of the City by Michelle Lovric, all half price. I feel so much better now.....

i just purchased the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy - im looking forward to reading it

Willem Kloos, 1859-1938, a short biography of the Dutch poet Willem Kloos by Hubert Michaël, with selections of his poems, critical essays and letters. Found it in the case with € 1,00 books at De Boekenbeurs (our local antiquarian bookshop). Had to think about whether to file it under Michaël or under Kloos. Decided for Kloos, because the biography took up only 100 out of 384 pages.

went out and bought Doghouse Roses by Steve Earle after seeing his amazing performance at SXSW. short stories. partially autobigraphical. 101% from the heart. the man can write songs AND stories.

I just won an e-bay bid on 13 Vintage H.G. Wells paperbacks! I lost all my nails, anxiously awaiting the outcome. I can't wait to smell those dusty pages, as I have already read most of them. But the cover art is all new to me!

Walking the dogs, I went to our local bookstore to ask about the books I ordered from Germany. They still haven't arrived, I'm getting impatient. I didn't buy any books, only the latest issue of The New York Review of Books. Sometimes I think I spend too much time reading about books, instead of reading books.

hi all- over the last two days i have ordered the following books-then we came to the end;the thirteenth tale;the history of love; whitehorn woods; snowflower and the secret fan; the emperor's children and the three volumes of the hitchhikers series- why, oh why, does amazon have to be so easy

The german books I ordered did arrive later this day:
Werke by Georg Heym;
Gedichte, Dramen, Prosa, Briefe by August Stramm;
Das dichterische Werk by Georg Trakl.
At a reading by four poets tonight I bought a book by one of them: Roep de rottweiler op! by Elmar Kuiper, a book of Frisian poems with Dutch translations.

Browsed the $0.50 shelf of paperbacks at the local library and found three I thought were worth the price:

Rebellion by Nora Roberts
Edge of Danger by Jack Higgins
Midnight Runner by Jack Higgins

Then stopped by the mall for other reasons and made the mistake of going into Borders. Since I occasionally read John Scalzi's blog I thought I'd see if I could find one of his books. I came away with the paperback version of Old Man's War.

If you're an SFWA member, by the way, Scalzi's running for President as a write-in candidate.

Today, in the mail, Thousand pieces of gold by Ruthanne Lum McCunn (the title touchstones as something else....of course!).
Also, I am waiting for a package from Edward Hamilton Bookseller....I can't wait!!!!

Nostos, poems by V. Penelope Pelizzon

De geschiedenis van de St. Lucasgilden in Nederland by G.J. Hoogewerff, a study of the painters' guilds in the Netherlands; published in 1947. One of the reasons for buying it was the fact that in the preface mention is made of De ambachtsgilden van 's-Hertogenbosch vóór 1629 by N.H.L. van den Heuvel, one of the books I inherited from my father.

Guys OMG. I went a lil crazy today. The good news is I got nearly all of them at like 5 bazillion % off. I'm just gonna copy the list from where I typed it in instant messenger, though, so excuse the no-caps.

the book of lost tales 1 & 2, the shaping of middle earth, the victorian sages an anthology of prose, i'm ok you're ok a practical guide to transactional analysis, jurassic park, the lost world, the terminal man, congo, dune, raise the titanic, black hawk down, pearl harbor, (a short anthology of short stories by some sci fi guys), a widow for one year, sahara, the joy luck club, FOURTEEN star wars series books, a patriots history of the united states, the six remaining ender books (i had enders game and enders shadow), 20000 leagues under the sea, hamlet, macbeth, midsummer nights dream, the giver, AND david copperfield

YES FOR REAL.

Went on vacation last week and as I always do, I paid a visit to one of the best used bookstores in the world, Coas Books in Las Cruces, NM. I'd ruthlessly (well...for me) culled my shelves, which were full to bursting, so that I would have room for new books (and also so I'd have stuff to trade). Usually I cling tightly to my books, so letting some go in order to have room for more was a big girl step for me. :-)

So, I came home with some great stuff, all hardcovers except one (I tend to prefer HC books), mostly all 1st ed., 1st printing:

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Requiem by Graham Joyce
East by Edith Pattou
Dark Cities Underground by Lisa Goldstein
Robin and The King by Parke Godwin
The Alchemist's Door by Lisa Goldstein
Alamo House by Sarah Bird (this was kind of a Holy Grail book find for me)
Close Friends by Peter Jenkins
Clockwork by Philip Pullman
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
The Innkeeper's Song by Peter S. Beagle
Cinnabar, The One O'Clock Fox by Marguerite Henry (signed!)
The Brownies and Other Stories by J.H. Ewing

And in Bisbee, AZ (where my fun vacation was), while my friends were buying jewelry, I went for a few books (and some vintage cameras too) instead:

Bisbee (Images of America) by Ethel Jackson Price
Bisbee, Arizona, Then and Now by Boyd Nicholl

A library a couple towns away was having a $2.00 per bag of books sale. I got a bit of an eclectic collection, but they were mostly romance:

Stargazer by Colby Hodge
Immortality which is a short story by Maggie Shayne
The Snow Bride by Debbie Macomber
Walking After Midnight by Karen Robards
2 Avalon romances (they seemed to have a huge amount of these for sale)
3 Series paperback romances, you know the kind LOL

The non-fiction and fantasies I picked up are:

Fire by Sebastian Junger which looked interesting
Your Seven-Year-Old by Louise Bates Ames, Ph.D.
Other Lives The Story of Reincarnation by I.G. Edmonds
Bio of an Ogre by Piers Anthony
The 10th Kingdom by Kathryn Wesley
Pigs Don't Fly by Mary Brown
The Children of Hamlin A Star Trek TNG novel by Carmen Carter
Galax-Arena, a YA novel by Gillian Rubinstein

and two for my son

Jump! The New jump rope book and
Ideals Wok Cookbook

and yes, I fit them all into one bag! Now I just have to find room for them all.

Today I bought Farewell My Queen by Chantal Thomas It is a story about Marie Antoinette and July 14-16, 1789. I also picked up Granta 96 War Zones and Trickster Travels by Natalie Zemon Davis
I really like reading Granta- it comes out 4 times a year and introduces authors I wouldn't have known about.

I ordered from Amazon a few days ago, and they've started dribbling in:

The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers
The Debian System: Concepts and Techniques, Martin F. Krafft

Crying is my first Pynchon. I'm astonished it's such a 'slender volume'. I remember seeing Gravity's Rainbow on store shelves, shortly after it was published. It's massive enough to have a gravitational field of its own, an atmosphere, and a small satellite cloud of untenured assistant professors orbiting it.

Yesterday, at my favourite used bookshop:

A thousand pieces of gold: a memoir of China's past through its proverbs by Adeline Yen Mah
Daughters by Paule Marshall. When I got home, I realized it is signed!
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

plus many more for my children (the two who were with me), mostly theatre for my son and a mixture of fiction and non fiction for my daughter. They love to go shopping with mom!! (Guess who is paying...)

:-))

hi all- i just got three volumes of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and based on some reviews here i ordered some books by gregory maguire- looking forward to those coming in

Armed Rovers and "Luftwaffe Torpedo Aircraft and Operations in World War Two" showed up via half.com.

I picked up, Zoran Živković's, Hidden Camera (Eastern European Literature yesterday.

Received from Amazon sellers today:

Mister Roberts, by Thomas Heggen, a novel-of-short-stories about the backwaters of WWII in the Pacific.

Idoru, William Gibson.

Today I bought an old copy of Starship Troopers, the actual Heinlein book, not a movie novelization (BLECH!) for $3 from Half-Price Books. Yesterday I bought a copy of the Atman Project by Ken Wilber.

De herfst van Zorro by Al Galidi. A book of Dutch poems by an Iraqi who has been living in the Netherlands since 1998. He speaks Dutch with beautiful Arabic ah's.

A Century of Humour edited by P.G. Wodehouse;
American Notes - Pictures from Italy by Charles Dickens;
Sketches by "Boz" by Charles Dickens;
Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann

In the mail, from Edward Hamilton:

The book of Saladin by Tariq Ali
The Clerkenwell Tales by Peter Ackroyd
Frangipani by Celestine Vaite
The Virago Book of Christmas edited by Michelle Lovric
Clever Maids by Valerie Paradiz
Melymbrosia by Virginia Woolf
The game is afoot edited by Marvin Kaye
The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow

Copied from the "What are you reading now" group:

I've GOT to stop going to the bookstore - my TBR pile is about to take over the house. But, I have to pass the bookstore at least twice a day (walking to work from the bus stop and walking back to the bus stop) - more if I go out to lunch!

Anyway, I fed some guilty pleasures today. Most of these titles are things I feel a little ashamed to admit I read. After all, I'm a law firm librarian. I should be reading "Great Literature". :-)

Kitty takes a holiday by Carrie Vaughn
Dangerous Games by Keri Arthur
Danse Macabre by Laurell K. Hamilton - (I agree with other folks, her newer works just aren't as good - but I've GOT to have the complete set!)
Every inch a king by Harry Turtledove, and
The Freedom Writers Diary - (my one 'serious' title, so I don't feel so bad about the other 'fluff')

(edited to say: Touchstones for Dangerous Games and Danse Macabre a little wonky this afternoon. I'll try to fix them later.)

(edited again: Touchstones are still wonky. Guess I'll leave it alone. Y'all know what books I mean anyway!)

I haven't bought anything since christmas, but just recently something called 'The Creative Girls Club' sent a book called Danger After Dark in the mail for some unfathomable purpose. I put it on an out-of-the-way shelf, and have been debating if I should add it to my library or not. Since I didn't buy it, I think not.

#71 - dulcibelle, I sympathize wholeheartedly. I have the same problem, only in my case I pass two bookstores. And today, because I am weak, weak, weak, I stopped at one and bought Tantalize, by Cynthia Leitich Smith, The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor and City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare. Sigh.

I'm over halfway through Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers and in the last few days the remaining 4 books in the Barsetshire series have all arrived from Amazon: Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington, and The Last Chronicle of Barset, along with a new copy of the Everyman's Library edition of Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, a true monster at 1500-plus pages.

In addition there arrived from various booksellers, a very nice US first edition of Mann's 1955 novel The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, a UK edition of Anthony Biswell's 2005 biography The Real Life of Anthony Burgess, a very fine US 1st ed of Jim Harrison's 1988 novel Dalva, and an almost-new copy of Jack Butler's 1993 comic novel Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock, all great stuff. (And if you've not yet read Butler's small masterpiece Jujitsu for Christ, it's highly recommended.)

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Graphic novel, steampunk/Victoriana/Sherlockiana.

xxxHOLiC, by CLAMP. 1st volume of the manga by the famous CLAMP group. Supernatural hijinks, mixing comedy with serious themes. Human psychology and traditional Japanese legends.

Redwall, by Brian Jacques. YA (or middle-grade?) talking-animal fiction. No idea whether I'll like this, but it's famous, so I thought I'd try it.

Light Infantry Tactics: For Small Teams, by Christopher E. Larsen.

Yesterday I bought a.o. Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus. A beautiful edition by Fischer Verlag, published in 1986. They had several other volumes of the series it was part of, but most of those I already owned (in other editions). This morning I woke up with the nagging question why I hadn't also bought the two volumes with Joseph und seine Brüder. So I returned to the shop as early as possible; fortunately they were still there and I could buy them.
Later this day I bought De magie van Rome by Andrea Vreede, a book with walks in Rome (my favourite city).

hello all- well today i bought oprah's latest selection- the road by cormac mccarthy- looking forward to getting it

Yesterday, in the mail, Beautiful Death, with text by Dean Koontz and splendid photographs from various world cemeteries by David Robinson, the reason why I bought the book (the photos, I mean).

Yesterday I bought Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell. I'm kind of in a wizard/magic phase in terms of reading I guess. I'm in the middle of the Bartimaeus Trilogy (just started the Golem's Eye) and I'm also reading the Dresden Files series (I'm in the middle of Storm Front at the moment.)

Today I bought a copy of the Sarajevo Haggadah - copies don't surface very often-mine was published in 1983-but the bookstore had only two left. I also bought The Year of Reading Proust a memoir by Phyllis Rose I read her Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages a number of years ago and really like it.

Bookmooched:
Key of Valor by Nora Roberts
Key of Knowledge by Nora Roberts
Key of Light by Nora Roberts

From an Amazon reseller:
ACT OF DARKNESS (Holiday Mystery, No 3) by Jane Haddam

From Thriftbooks:
Precious Blood by Jane Haddam
A Stillness in Bethlehem (Gregor Demarkian Holiday Mysteries) by Jane Haddam
Honest Illusions by Nora Roberts

That completes the Demarkian series for me other than the new one coming out later this spring. That's nice. One backlist down, a few hundred to go. ;)

I just reurned from one of the biggest book sales in the nation. Our Planned Parenthood Book Sale and it was half price day.

I got four large type books to donate to our library:

Two Dollar Bill by Stuart Woods
Visions in Death by J. D. Robb
Camel Club by David Baldacci
Secrets on the Wind by Stephanie Grace Whitson

I also got two books we will tape for our library:

Encylopedia Brown The Case of the Mysterious Hand prints

Haunted Island byJoan Lowery Nixon

I got several books for myself also.

Watch out, all books are 25 cents tomorrow.

I just bought Haruki Murakami's Dance Dance Dance during my lunch break today.

Consider this thread closed, post to the new April thread.