Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion
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Archived Chit Chat & All That
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What Book(s) have you just Bought, Ordered or Taken Delivery Of?
Michele wrote: "I was complaining to my mom that I'd re-read the first 9 Holmes/Russell books but didn't have the 10th one. Today I got a priority-mail package from her, with her copy of it on loan.I love my mom."
😊
I am working my way through Verne's works - The Mysterious Island will be next up for me soon... I just ordered a couple of books, one being a July choice for the Guardian 1000 Group, namely Javier Marias' A Heart So White, and also couldn't resist a bargain copy of a book I've been after for a while, namely Dino Buzatti's The Tartar Steppe
I liked Marías, Darren! I've heard (disparaging) comments by his Spanish fellow authors that he's Anglophile and all-too-like English novelists - but that's a recommendation to me, personally =)
I've just received two children's books - I seem to buy only those since my kid was born.
Both are sweet and the second one is absolutely inspiring - it's a book about unusual drawing techniques, with examples, helpful hints, and verses on the subject of each drawing. The techniques include making prints of absolutely anything, from leaves covered with paint to old children's boots ditto =) and drawing with absolutely anything, such as old toothbrushes, bits of string, and soap bubbles. My kid is only old enough for the simpler ideas, but I'll sure have some fun with this.
My husband and I just had a 2-week vacation in England and I bought as many books as I could fit in the luggage including:Love and Freindship [sic] and Other Youthful Writings by Jane Austen (purchased at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath)
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature by Linda Lear (purchased at Hilltop Farm)
At a little bookshop near Kew Gardens I bought:
Mrs. Dalloway
A Room With A View
Howards End
Pamela (in 2 volumes) by Samuel Richardson
Barchester Towers
Our Mutual Friend
Love is Blue: A Wartime Diary by Joan Wyndham
The Oxford Book of English Verse
Wow, Pamela what a great selection of books. I love how you say where you bought them and they are from interesting places - not the nearest Walmart! :p
I found Silas Marner at my local Humane Society for .25. I also found The Master. A fictionalized life of Henry James. I found a bunch of others too but not all of them classic :-)
Pamela wrote: "My husband and I just had a 2-week vacation in England and I bought as many books as I could fit in the luggage including:Love and Freindship [sic] and Other Youthful Writings by Jane Austen (pur..."
I love this, Pamela. Each time you pick one of them up, you'll remember your trip!
I had a delivery via Amazon of two second-hand books in very good 😊 condition. They are 'Little House in the Big Woods' and 'Little House on the Prairie' by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Not being an American these were not part of my childhood so I felt that I was missing out! We did, however, have 'Little House on the Prairie' on TV which I loved. I always ended up in tears! :-( Unfortunately, I photographed the books, but could not figure out how to get them to transfer.
Picked up 'Night's Master' by Tanith Lee, as I have been wanting to read a book by her for some time. I read it quickly, and found it really enjoyable, with vivid descriptions and fascinating mythology. I immediately bought 'Death's Master,' the second book in the same series ('Flat Earth Series'). I'm about 60 pages in, and enjoying it, although it seems slightly less inspired than the first, but it still has some great moments. However, I am committed to reading through the remaining three books in this series, as I find stories inspired by mythology quite interesting.Also, I have had my eye on one of her short story collections, but unfortunately, it is out of print, and I am living in a country where Amazon does not ship. However, a family member has ordered said book and is sending it to me. It is called 'Sounds and Furies: Seven Faces of Darkness.' Along with this book, I am being sent my own copy of 'The Satanic Verses' by Salmon Rushdie, which I had left in the States and not been able to read yet.
I'm pretty excited for both books.
I stopped after work at a local independent bookstore and paid a visit to my favorite bookstore cat. My feline friend convinced me to pick up used copies of The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, The Complete Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, and So Big by Edna Ferber.And there is a used book sale at the library this weekend, so I might have to be bad again and buy more books. :)
OMG so happy :oDbeen after a copy of Elsa Morante's Arturo's Island
copies in English are rare/expensive
spotted a copy going for an absolute bargain on Amazon Marketplace
assumed it must be an Italian/French/Spanish copy (which are all a lot cheaper) which had been listed against an English edition by mistake, but took a chance and bought it
and er... it is indeed the 1991 Picador Classics ENGLISH edition!
not only that, but it's got a lovely cover:
I stopped in at my fave used bookstore. Rationalization of excess purchases ensued. The following are now mine:My Antonia by Willa Cather
Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion
Broken April by Ismail Kadare
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and
A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
I am delighted.
Yesterday the Half Price Books near me was having a clearance sale (everything $2 or less). I managed to restrain myself and only buy 20 books. :)Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
Close Range by Annie Proulx
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Collected Stories by Eudora Welty
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Cavedweller by Dorothy Allison
I haven't bought any books for myself but a couple of months back before the summer break I did help is purchasing books for our school library and they included the entire Harry Potter series (FINALLY), The Famous Five series, books in the Alex Rider series and Percy Jackson series, plus quite a few Roald Dahl books :) :)!!
Sarah wrote: "Yesterday the Half Price Books near me was having a clearance sale (everything $2 or less). I managed to restrain myself and only buy 20 books. :)..."
LOL
Sounds like my kind of restraint.
LOL
Sounds like my kind of restraint.
We went on a trip to the bookstore today, and my youngest got
,
, and
. I got myself The Bell Jar, and my sister is getting Horns for her birthday.
Well i didn't buy, order, or get delivered but i have acquired a couple of ebooks i've been looking for.The Journal of Madame Giovanni: A Novel
by Alexandre Dumasand The Devil In Love
by Jacques Cazotte .Both of these and their translations are out of copyright but that still didn't make them easy to find.
And when i did get them they were both pdf files which my old e-reader hates.
When you run a pdf on my reader each page takes up the entire screen and you can't zoom in, meaning the writing is really small.
So with 'Devil in Love' i got some free OCR software and was able to convert it to a text file and then into an epub format.
The text in 'Madame Giovanni' unfortunately was too old and foggy for OCR so i'm stuck with the pdf version BUT the pages have an awful lot of border.
Remove the border and text would obviously be relatively bigger. So i used a free online tool to extract everypage as an image file then used a batch image editor to crop all of the excess border, and then used windows print function to put all the files back in a new pdf..... phew!
So i now should have readable versions of both books.
I should probably just buy a new ereader :P .
I have just ordered The Handmaid's Tale. I got sick of waiting for it to become available at the library!
currently on hols, so obviously no chance of adding to TBR pile...(?)walking through seaside town on way down to beach, daughter went into clothes shop...
while waiting had "quick look" in charity shop across road...
Like New copy of Nick Hornby's About a Boy for 50p!
Sarah wrote: "Yesterday the Half Price Books near me was having a clearance sale (everything $2 or less). I managed to restrain myself and only buy 20 books. :)Zorba the Greek by [author:Nikos Kaz..."
Oh how I miss having a Half Price Books!! Great batch.
I have recently bought a Russian translation of one of the tales by Kenji Miyazawa:
Well, to be honest, it was the only one I could find in print, but I'll keep a sharp lookout for more.
As for this edition, there's a special reason to love it. The illustrations were made by an artist who works in one of the Russian decorative craft traditions, and you can actually see how mixing two absolutely unrelated cultures enhances the impression from both.
(I was so glad that they didn't go instead for some "imitation Japanese", so popular these days. That would have belittled both the Japanese and the Russians.)
I went to one of our local university bookstores and bought a used The Norton Shakespeare. The four used copies they had were all pristine which made me and my husband think the students hardly cracked them open. Maybe the students use online editions for their Shakespeare classes, but that just meant a wonderful condition book for me. I like that it comes with digital content that I can access with a PIN number. Whatever student had this book didn't even use that resource because the scratch off card with the pin is untouched. I look forward to using this to tackle many plays I haven't read.
How's that in terms of footnotes, introductory essays, etc? and, yeah, when I was in college, carrying around a 3000+ page book when I could just pull it up on my tablet or have a little paperback? I would have gone for options 2 and 3 all day long, until I had to write my papers and cite stuff.
Melanti wrote: "How's that in terms of footnotes, introductory essays, etc? and, yeah, when I was in college, carrying around a 3000+ page book when I could just pull it up on my tablet or have a little paperbac..."
The general introduction is great. Quite a lengthy overview of England in Shakespeare's day such as the distribution of wealth, the status of women, the monarchy, etc. Then each play has a 6-8 page introduction. I took a peek at the one for Romeo and Juliet, and it seemed too advanced for most high school students but decent for college students.
The footnotes are disappointing. They are very brief and mostly explain the meaning of words or phrases. I used the Riverside Shakespeare in college and it's footnotes had a lot of historical information that was extremely helpful. This looks less helpful with some of the humorous references, but I know that I will benefit from the notes that are there.
I agree that I wouldn't carry this to class, but I would read it at home. I'm not so sure its been read at all. What a different world the college students today have from my experience since they can read a digital version or listen to audio. I had to lug a gigantic hardback to class.
just bought August read for Guardian 1000 group, namely Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Thingsand cos the eBay seller was offering buy-1-get-1-half-price I also picked a book that I have penciled in for 2018: Everything Is Illuminated
Just got three items i ordered from the library, luckily two of them are short, the play Andorra
by Max Frisch and a children's book by the author of Gormenghast, Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor
.And my long read is another by Michael Moorcock who i'm already reading (i think this is the first time i've ever read books by the same author at the same time :) ), and that is King of the City
.No idea what that ones about.
Waiting and watching tracking for my newest WPA State Guide - Minnesota. It will be the 8th in my collection. I try to get the 1st editions, but settle for 2nd or 3rd. 43 more to go!
I caught a sale at Barnes and Noble tonight through 4 September 2017 in which one item per person per day is 20% off; and Barnes and Noble Classics, normally $US9.95 to 11.95, are just $5 each. Though my wife paid cash, we each made a purchase so we were able to use the 20% off coupon twice. She'll return tomorrow for some cookbooks.The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Vintage Books, a division of Random House. Regularly $15.00; sale, after 20% off promo, 20% coupon and 10% member discount $8.64.
Barnes and Noble Classics
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). Sale $5.00; after 20% coupon and 10% member discount, I paid $3.60.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1818-48). I think I have another edition of this book hiding in a box.
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (1802-70).
Paradise Lost by John Milton (1608-74).
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (1815-82).
These last five classics were $4.50 each after my 10% member discount, and the total bill with 7% New Jersey sales tax was $37.12. I asked the lady at the customer service desk if they had John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men in a Barnes and Noble Classics edition, and she said they do not because the book is still in copyright.
I've read neither Milton nor Trollope. Any thoughts?
Jim
Laurie wrote: "Melanti wrote: "How's that in terms of footnotes, introductory essays, etc? and, yeah, when I was in college, carrying around a 3000+ page book when I could just pull it up on my tablet or have a..."
I have been trying to find a Riverside in a condition and price I am willing to pay. Someday I will just have breakdown and one. My Bevington is okay, but not like Riverside. I have tried paperback Norton. I believe I had the Romances for awhile. I just love the tome that Riverside is with all its scholarship.
Cynda wrote: "Laurie wrote: "Melanti wrote: "How's that in terms of footnotes, introductory essays, etc? and, yeah, when I was in college, carrying around a 3000+ page book when I could just pull it up on my t..."
I used a Riverside edition in my college Shakespeare class and it was wonderful. Enormous but the notes were so informative and helpful. Unfortunately it belonged to my sister and she wanted it back when the semester was over. I'm willing to bet she still has it and has never read any of it again.
Jim wrote: "I caught a sale at Barnes and Noble tonight through 4 September 2017 in which one item per person per day is 20% off; and Barnes and Noble Classics, normally $US9.95 to 11.95, are just $5 each. Tho..."You make me want to run over to B&N tomorrow and look for some $5 classics. I would like a paper copy of War and Peace and $5 is a real bargain for such a tome. I enjoyed it enough that I would like to read it again someday.
I haven't read Trollope either, but Paradise Lost is great. And The Curious Incident of the Dog is very good too.
I just bought some Barnes and Noble classics online, as I saw they were on sale and I had a couple of gift cards burning a hole in my pocket. I got the second volume of the Complete Sherlock Holmes, The Woman in White, and the Collected Oscar Wilde. I also got the Haunting of Hill House, which was not on sale, but which I have been wanting to get a copy of since I first read it a couple of months ago.
yesterday received The Haunting of Hill Housethe GoodReads entry has the cover looking like this:
however, that has obviously just been copied from the Amazon website, where if you do the "Look Inside" the cover looks subtly different (and nicer imo), as per that for the Kindle version:
and this is indeed the cover I received - hoorah!
Darren wrote: "yesterday received The Haunting of Hill Housethe GoodReads entry has the cover looking like this:

however, that has obviously just bee..."
And the cover is just the beginning. :-) I love this book--hope you do too.
Bought The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann ShafferI'm from Jersey, I'm in Jersey right now, it's kinda shameful that I've only just picked this up. I am really looking forward to it though ^_^
Jen - hmmm... you pro-obably don't want to read my Guernsey-born friend's 1-Star review then:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Cynda wrote: "I have been trying to find a Riverside in a condition and price I am willing to pay. ..."I lucked out and found a copy at the used book store a couple of months ago for fairly cheap. Since everyone always compliments the notes, I figured it was worth the shot.
So now I have a First Folio reprint, the Riverside, and have about 75% of the individual Folger Library editions. I'm spoiled for choices.
Jen wrote: "Bought The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann ShafferI'm from Jersey, I'm in Jersey right now, it's kinda shameful that I've only just picked..."
I read it a few years ago and still remember it as being really good (& funny). How realistic it may or not be is another matter - different perspectives on something/someplace you know well can be quite bizarre sometimes! It's like when there's a film adaptation of a favourite book...
Kathleen wrote: "Darren wrote: "yesterday received The Haunting of Hill Housethe GoodReads entry has the cover looking like this:

however, that has obv..."
I think you'll like it. I thought it was pretty funny in parts.
So this is my birthday haul for the year. I'm pretty happy with them :)
,
,
,
,
,
, and
Thought of getting this one as a present to myself :)
Happy birthday, Renee!Yesterday, I plucked The Moonstone from the bargains shelf in my favourite bookshop. It is in that same pretty Oxford World's Classics edition as your Alexandre Dumas :)
yesterday bought 3 books on Kindle that were going cheaper than usual:Blue Room, The Simenon, Georges - £1.99
Blood Meridian McCarthy, Cormac - £1.19
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Clarke, Susanna - £1.99
lethe wrote: "Happy birthday, Renee!Yesterday, I plucked The Moonstone from the bargains shelf in my favourite bookshop. It is in that same pretty Oxford World's Classics edition as your Alexandre ..."
Thank you!
Nice! I read The Moonstone last year and loved it. I hope you enjoy it too!
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I love my mom.