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?


https://100greatestnovelsofalltimeque...

https://100greatestnovelsofalltimeque......"
I bought that one a few years ago when I saw it in the bookstore. It was such a great book of letters to his children from
Father Christmas. I loved it, and the illustrations were amusing. I hope you enjoy it!

I couldn't wait, I already started Wives and Daughters, I'll tell you more in a few days!







Renee - a good selection there!
I tend to buy second-hand books, so always nice to receive brand-new ones as pressies - I got 3 off Santa:
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Neverwhere
4 3 2 1 - just the 1070 pages :oO





bagged a 1947 Penguin paperback on eBay:

not much to look at, but I'm well happy :oD


I got Moon Tiger: Modern Adventures Along China's Ancient Silk Road by Penelope Lively. Very excited to start it, but into too many others at the moment. :-/

I got Moon Tiger: Modern Adventures Along China's Ancient Silk Road by Penelope Lively..."
Kundera is one the writers that i can read over and over again and yet not getting tired. i remember when finished reading The book of laughter and forgetting and wanted to start it once again

I got Moon Tiger: Modern Adventures Along China's Ancient Silk Road by [author:Pene..."
I need to read that one, Josue. I'll think I'll make that my next of his!


I was debating on whether or not to get it when I happened to notice the inscription:
"Good intentions guided by ignorance and blasphemy leads only to frustration and futility.
Not worth the read.
CB"
That is such a fun inscription to have on a Vonnegut book that I just had to get it. There's GOT to be a story behind this! Who is CB, and did he write this in the book before gifting it to someone? Or did he write it to ward off any unwary potential readers?


I'd be disappointed in it if it weren't weird! It's by Vonnegut, after all.

The complete volume set of Pilgrimage by Dorothy M. Richardson (!)
The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart
The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi
Oreo by Fran Ross
A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story by Elaine Brown
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich
The World and Africa: Inquiry Into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History by W.E.B. Du Bois
The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill

Indeed. The edition makes the volumes look like cheap chick lit on the outside, but that won't have affected the writing.

meanwhile, I recently spotted a nice cheap copy of an edition of a title that had the cover I was holding out for... would it be the right one when I opened the package... no - BETTER!
a cover with no text! not the title, not the author, just this:

not too difficult to guess though is it...? ;o)

My wife Susie and I went to Barnes & Noble today and spent, in the clearance bins and bargain shelves, $US31.08 on the following books.
For Susie we got some cookbooks:






For me:
Great Historical Blunders by Pere Romanillos.





The Custom of the Country & Other Classic Novels by

Edited to add:

Jim

Wild guess, but all those dots look a bit like oranges, so Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit?

Wild guess, but all those dots look a bit like oranges, so Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit?"
I believe you got it. It's this edition Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit only without the title and author on the bottom. I'm not sure if I have ever seen a novel without writing on the cover before.

There it is!
My cover looked like this: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Not the same as Darren's, but still a vague similarity.
It's possible the title/author were printed on a separate slip of paper, which was discarded or damaged. It looks better without, IMO.

Laurie - mine has the same ISBN as that one and is the one I was expecting - must be an alternative cover? - I also like the orange book-mark, nice touch :oD


meanwhile, I just received 2 books, one that was definitely a film:

and a lovely 1970's cover for one that I'm pretty sure isn't:

Gary wrote: "I just ordered In the Heat of the Night from Amazon. The book is by Ball and it was once made in to a movie staring Sidney Poitier who will be 91 in February. It's time for a remake..."
I need to read that one.
I need to read that one.

one where I'm happy to ignore my "no movie tie-in covers" rule, as trying to find a copy of Boris Vian's "L'Ecume Des Jours" was practically impossible/v.expensive before it was made as the film Mood Indigo:

and one quite scarce/expensive in UK where I found an inexpensive copy in US and just had to be patient while it slowboat-shipped its way over here... and it's a Like New US First Edition Hardback! :oD
All Souls Day


one where I'm happy to ignore my "no movie tie-in covers" rule, as trying to find a copy of Boris Vian's "L'Ecume Des Jours" was practically impossible/v.expensive before it was made as..."
Is Vian good? I have Autumn in Peking on my to-do list but i'll have to buy a copy to read it.

I came across L'Ecume Des Jours on a list of "Cult" books (it was translated into English in the 1960's as Froth On The Daydream or Foam Of The Daze) and sounded intriguing to me, but it was only when I realised I could get it cheap as Mood Indigo that I made my move!

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
1984 by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Iron Gold by Pierce Brown
The Dry by Jane Harper



Hopefully it will arrive in the mail tomorrow. It will be followed by the publication of an unbelievable series of titles fom NYRB Classics, even by their own high standards.
Berlin Alexanderplatz - Alfred Döblin (March)
The Kremlin Ball - Curzio Malaparte (April)
Kolyma Stories, vol. 1 - Varlam Shalamov (May)
The Seventh Cross - Anna Seghers (May)
The second volume of Kolyma Stories will be released in 2019, and it will be the first unabridged version to be published in English.

obviously we know what that's going on ;o)
2 books ordered:
The Little Golden Calf - new (supposedly definitive) translation of the follow-up to The Twelve Chairs which was one of my fave reads of last year.

The Snatchers / Clean Break - two early pulp-crime stories by Lionel White, my interest being that Clean Beak was adapted for one of my fave films, namely Kubrick's "The Killing"


I'm not generally a poetry person, but this one looks like a lot of fun.

Which translation did you get, Melanti? I have the Walter Kaufmann, so will be reading that for our group read, and hope it's good!

I got the same. I browsed around and he seems to be highly regarded so I figured I'd give it a try. I attempted to read it a few years ago with an older translation and just couldn't get into it, so I figured I'd splurge for a better translation this time around.
Kaufmann didn't translate all of Part 2, so any of his translations are going to be abridged by default. Apparently there's some difficulties translating German that's attempting to sound Greek and Kaufmann didn't even try. But after what Petrichor said in the poll threads, I'm not too concerned about getting all of Part 2 anyway. If I get really interested in it, I can switch to another translation for those portions.

I got the same. I browsed around and he seem..."
Great info--thank you Melanti!

The Obscene Bird of Nightby José Donoso
Extinction by Thomas Bernhard
A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Steps by Jerzy Kosiński

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Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
and
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf