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?
Great books, Gabrielle. I really enjoyed A Room of One's Own and Vanity Fair. Wives and Daughters is waiting to be read in 2018.
In a used bookstore this week I found The Father Christmas Letters with illustrations by Prof Tolkien.https://100greatestnovelsofalltimeque...
Joseph wrote: "In a used bookstore this week I found The Father Christmas Letters with illustrations by Prof Tolkien.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!
Rosemarie wrote: "Great books, Gabrielle. I really enjoyed A Room of One's Own and Vanity Fair. Wives and Daughters is waiting to be read in 2018."I couldn't wait, I already started Wives and Daughters, I'll tell you more in a few days!
For Christmas I got
,
,
, and
. Pretty happy with them. Happy Holidays everyone! I hope you all have a great day.
Don't our friends and family have it easy...regarding gift ideas? I received several books, but most notably a Leatherbound edition of Deliverance by James Dickey...signed by the author.
Joseph - Deliverance is one of my faves, and to have a signed copy would be awesome!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
I'm very jealous of all the good books people got. I didn't get any! That signed Deliverance is making me drool, and Darren looks like he got himself some good ones, too! Maybe I should put some books on my birthday wish list. Happy reading to all!
recently read superb 30's noir crime thriller called They Drive By Night and wanted more from same author (James Curtis)bagged a 1947 Penguin paperback on eBay:

not much to look at, but I'm well happy :oD
I received last week 4,3,2,1 by Paul Auster . Just ordered Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak and The festival of insignificance by Milan Kundera(i'd read almost his entire work)
Oh, I enjoyed The Festival of Insignificance, Josue. I need to read more Kundera.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. :-/
Kathleen wrote: "Oh, I enjoyed The Festival of Insignificance, Josue. I need to read more Kundera.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
Josue wrote: "Kathleen wrote: "Oh, I enjoyed The Festival of Insignificance, Josue. I need to read more Kundera.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 recently bought Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. I started reading/re-reading the Classics last year but didn't actually buy any of them. This year, I want to start a library of the Classics I read/intend to read this year. I hope to have a nice little library started by the end of the year.
I was wandering through the bookstore yesterday and found an interesting copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Happy Birthday, Wanda June. 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 have read Happy Birthday, Wanda June. The book is definitely a product of its time-- and really weird. It is a fast read too, so that warning seems strange.
Rosemarie wrote: "and really weird"I'd be disappointed in it if it weren't weird! It's by Vonnegut, after all.
Books snagged at my regular library sale: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
Rosemarie wrote: "That set of Pilgrimage is a real find."Indeed. The edition makes the volumes look like cheap chick lit on the outside, but that won't have affected the writing.
ooh thanks for reminding me about The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break - that's on a list of cult books I've got - duly TBR'd!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)
Good evening,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:
Betty Crocker 300 Calorie Comfort Food: 300 Favorite Recipes for Eating Healthy Every Day by
Betty Crocker.
Taste of Home Slow Cooker Throughout the Year: 475+Family Favorite Recipes Simmering for Every Season by Taste of Home.
Betty Crocker Healthy Heart Cookbook by
Betty Crocker.
Foods that Harm and Foods that Heal Cookbook by Editors of Reader's Digest.For me:
Great Historical Blunders by Pere Romanillos.
The Greatest Adventures of Sherlock Homes by
Arthur Conan Doyle.
Classical Mythology by Various.
William Shakespeare: Complete Plays by
William Shakespeare.The Custom of the Country & Other Classic Novels by
Edith Wharton.Edited to add:
A History of the World in Numbers by Emma Marriott.Jim
Darren wrote: "not too difficult to guess though is it...? ;o) ..."Wild guess, but all those dots look a bit like oranges, so Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit?
Melanti wrote: "Darren wrote: "not too difficult to guess though is it...? ;o) ..."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.
Laurie wrote: "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.
Melanti - Well Guessed! and I love the cover of your edition too btwLaurie - 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
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 of this classic film.
Gary - another one of my fave films that I didn't know was adapted from a book! the interplay between Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier are what makes the film for me though, and would be difficult to top in any remake!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.
couple moreone 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
Darren wrote: "couple moreone 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 have not yet read any Vian!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!
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray BradburyCatch-22 by Joseph Heller
1984 by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Iron Gold by Pierce Brown
The Dry by Jane Harper
Starting last month, inspired by the challenges and J.G. Keely’s list of recommended fantasy, I’ve been collecting the books I plan to read this year from Amazon and a local used-book store (plus some additional deals on classics that I couldn’t pass up!): Prometheus Bound and Other Plays, The Conquest of Gaul, Plutarch's Lives, Vol 2, The Canterbury Tales, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Three Musketeers, Les Misérables, Anna Karenina, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Name of the Rose, The World's Favourite: And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, the Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Dune, The King of Elfland's Daughter, The Charwoman's Shadow, A Wizard of Earthsea, Perdido Street Station, Suldrun's Garden, Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 Words, The Gormenghast Novels and Viriconium.
Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, 1768-1800 - François-René de Chateaubriand
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.
got some money for my birthdayobviously 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 was at the store picking up a good translation (I hope) of Faust, and ran across The Fabliaux, which is a collection of 69 bawdy French poems dated to before 1500. The editors claim that they're the inspiration for some of the stories in The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron.I'm not generally a poetry person, but this one looks like a lot of fun.
Melanti wrote: "I was at the store picking up a good translation (I hope) of Faust, and ran across The Fabliaux, which is a collection of 69 bawdy French poems dated to before 1500. T..."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!
Kathleen wrote: "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.
Melanti wrote: "Kathleen wrote: "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 seem..."
Great info--thank you Melanti!
I have pretty much written off buying books but that doesn't mean I don't like getting them as gifts now and then. I received some last weekend that my library doesn't have (and that makes me happy):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
I just received a cute little children's book that a friend's husband wrote. The Little Crow That Didn't Know How to Fly was obtained by purchase suggestion at my local library. It has a nice wholesome message to it and is fun to read aloud. This is Don Adolphson's first book and I was the first in the Library system to receive it. I recalled that a little feature was similar to a toy he donated to the book sale. I called it a flapping ducky push toy. You'll have to read the book to find out how it played into the plot. It is a fun for kids book and I'm glad I read it.
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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