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?
Aubrey...I want to read them so badly but I have 15 library books that I have to get to first. Books are like food. Everything looks so good that I just want to try them all. If you read them let me know how you like them!
Tammy - Wasp Factory is one of my faves, so enjoy - and Extinction is nearing the top of my TBR pile so we might be able to compare notes on that one...
Darren wrote: "Tammy - Wasp Factory is one of my faves, so enjoy - and Extinction is nearing the top of my TBR pile so we might be able to compare notes on that one...
"I forgot to bring in Nabokov's Pale Fire for lunch time reading so I guess I'll just have to read The Wasp Factory instead!
I recently used up a B&M gift certificate and ordered the following:The Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith
The Line Between, by Peter S. Beagle
Mythmakers and Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction
And then I got a birthday package from my mom with these!!
Archive Everything: Mapping the Everyday
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
Wonder
Good stuff...
few more recentlyone where I've been biding my time waiting for an inexpensive copy:
Mihail Sebastian's For Two Thousand Years
and three where I was keeping my fingers crossed for the cover I wanted: Mother London, The Feast of the Goat and The Forever War
Darren wrote: "few more recentlyone where I've been biding my time waiting for an inexpensive copy:
Mihail Sebastian's For Two Thousand Years
"Good stuff. Really, really good stuff. I hope more of his work will be translated into English.
Also The Feast of the Goat is another great choice. I will read literally anything written by Mario Vargas Llosa, and The Feast of the Goat is one of my favorites of his.
Yesterday I actually found a used copy of Rafael Bernal's noir masterpiece The Mongolian Conspiracy at the monthly book sale put on by my local library.
This is one of those books that I've heard about for years but never actually expected to read, least of all because I didn't know that it had been translated into English and I just about bowled over a woman in crutches to get to it before anybody else did.
Hello, probably my first comment in this group! I have just read 'Life of Pi', which was fascinating. Over the half term, I am planning to read Jane Austen's first book 'Sense and Sensibility.' Obviously, she didn't write many books, so I will be interested to see how the works she did write make her so popular to this day. :) Enjoy your day.
Hi Noah, thanks for taking the time to post :) I enjoyed Life of Pi too. Have you seen the film? It chokes me up every time!
I hope you enjoy Sense and Sensibility. You're right that she didn't write many books, compared to how enduring she's become. I'm a fan of her work overall, but like some of her books more than others.
Hi Noah, I've wanted to read Life of Pi for a while, but for some reason I just haven't picked it up. Good to know that it is a good read.
I just received The War Bride's Scrapbook by Caroline Preston. It takes place during WWII. I absolutely LOVED her first book, The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, which took place during the Roaring 20's. Both of these novels by Preston are I guess what could be called graphic novels. She wrote both novels using memorabilia from the stories' eras. They're both so unique!I also just ordered the Folger Shakespeare Library version of Macbeth for our February Old Schools Classics read.
This month's book sale haul:Idu - Flora Nwapa
Love Poems - Anne Sexton
A Natural History of the Senses - Diane Ackerman
The Collected Writings - Zelda Fitzgerald (mainly got for the Save Me the Waltz contained within)
The Pope's Daughter - Dario Fo
Red Earth and Pouring Rain - Vikram Chandra
The Invisibility Cloak - Ge Fei
Petals of Blood - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
The Chinese in America: A Narrative History - Iris Chang
another book I was keeping fingers crossed for cover, but this time didn't get the one I wanted :o(but instead got a cover I'd never even seen before and which is the first edition paperback of the first English translation of Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual
it is a large page-size and has wide margins, so the whole thing is like a giant brick/doorstop and really does look like some sort of text-book manual!
I became stupid at my local bookshop and got these:
Vimy: The Battle and the Legend by Tim Cook
Vimy by Pierre Berton
The Halifax Explosion: Canada's Worst Disaster by Ken Cuthbertson
Le Collier de la Reine by Alexandre Dumas This Dumas book, I've been looking forever for, but when I saw that for once my little town's bookshop had the books (they are separated in three books). I bought them. I don't even know if I got the entire book, or if there are more.
I also got these:
The Fall of Arthur by J.R.R. Tolkien
King Arthur in Legend and History by Richard White
The Discovery of King Arthur by Geoffrey Ashe
1066: A New History of the Norman Conquest by Peter Rex
La Chanson de Roland by Pierre Jonin (the edition through Gaillimard)
La Belle et la Bête by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve
The Old Regime and the French Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville
The last book I bought, I am a little unsure of as it is an English translation of the work. If anyone knows about the Old Regime and the French Revolution, then please tell me if this copy is worth the read.
I have another book haul coming later this week. The library had alerted me yesterday that they have weeded out the French history shelves, and that I am allowed to go through the boxes to get what I'd like before they are sent to the monthly Friends of the Library book sale. I admit that I am a little excited, but at the same time, a little peeved that so many good books are being thrown out just because they are French history books.
Vimy: The Battle and the Legend by Tim Cook
Vimy by Pierre Berton
The Halifax Explosion: Canada's Worst Disaster by Ken Cuthbertson
Le Collier de la Reine by Alexandre Dumas This Dumas book, I've been looking forever for, but when I saw that for once my little town's bookshop had the books (they are separated in three books). I bought them. I don't even know if I got the entire book, or if there are more.
I also got these:
The Fall of Arthur by J.R.R. Tolkien
King Arthur in Legend and History by Richard White
The Discovery of King Arthur by Geoffrey Ashe
1066: A New History of the Norman Conquest by Peter Rex
La Chanson de Roland by Pierre Jonin (the edition through Gaillimard)
La Belle et la Bête by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve
The Old Regime and the French Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville
The last book I bought, I am a little unsure of as it is an English translation of the work. If anyone knows about the Old Regime and the French Revolution, then please tell me if this copy is worth the read.
I have another book haul coming later this week. The library had alerted me yesterday that they have weeded out the French history shelves, and that I am allowed to go through the boxes to get what I'd like before they are sent to the monthly Friends of the Library book sale. I admit that I am a little excited, but at the same time, a little peeved that so many good books are being thrown out just because they are French history books.
Tiffany wrote: "I became stupid at my local bookshop and got these..."LOL! I get stupid at the bookstore all the time XD That's a great combination of titles.
bagged a copy of La Regenta on eBay recently (Leopoldo Alas ''Clarín'''s classic of 19th century Spanish literature) and it arrived yesterday - in absolutely superb condition! :oDand with alternative cover to the Goodreads listing for the ISBN
this is mine:

supposedly a cross between Madame Bovary and Barchester Chronicles, and deemed an "irreligious abomination" in Spain for many years after its initial publication - so quite looking forward to it!
Darren wrote: "bagged a copy of La Regenta on eBay recently (Leopoldo Alas ''Clarín'''s classic of 19th century Spanish literature) and it arrived yesterday - in absolutely superb c..."Sounds interesting, and I like the cover for your book much better than the GR default! Where do you find these?
Renee - do you mean where do I find the actual books (careful monitoring of eBay and Amazon!) or
where do find the awareness of the title in the first place? (that varies, usually some sort of list (hooray for lists!) and sometimes just a GR suggestion)
in this case, the "Guardian 1000" list (which is the main one I'm working from) did NOT have La Regenta on, but when the list was originally published in 2008 they obviously had people writing in complaining that their favourite books hadn't been included, so a supplementary "Ones That Got Away" list appeared... and La Regenta was in that extra list!
I've seen the Guardian List, but am unfamiliar with the Ones That Got Away list. Do you have a link?
there are links to the seven "Ones That Got Away" lists near the top of the main page here:https://www.theguardian.com/books/ser...
Darren wrote: "there are links to the seven "Ones That Got Away" lists near the top of the main page here:https://www.theguardian.com/books/ser..."
Thanks for the link to that list Darren.
I'm hoping to one day read enough books to be able to compile a 1000 list composed entirely of my five star books. Maybe a few fours if my list is found lacking on my death bed.
Did pretty well this week...Finally got my hands on Carlo Levi's Christ Stopped at Eboli and I was able to pick up Mr. Mani by A.B. Yehoshua, The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer, and A Fifth of November by Paul West at the same time.
And a couple of days before that I'd found Mary Morris's The Bus of Dreams: Stories , The Writing Class: A Novel by Jincy Willett, Dirt: A Novel by David Vann, and Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy at the same bookstore. And Jorge Volpi's Season of Ash .
So yeah. Really well, actually.
OM
G
just unwrapped:

1944 edition of 1942 noir crime thriller Phantom Lady by Cornell Woolrich (writing as William Irish)
so happy :oD
Darren wrote: "supposedly a cross between Madame Bovary and Barchester Chronicles, and deemed an "irreligious abomination" in Spain for many years after its initial publication "You had me at "religious abomination" XD
Darren wrote: "OM
G
just unwrapped:
1944 edition of 1942 noir crime thriller Phantom Lady by Cornell Woolrich (writing as William Irish)
so happy :oD"
Ahhh. Those old Pocket Books can be surprisingly sturdy.
Have taken delivery of - The SleeperThree To Get Deadly
Before Lunch
waiting for - Miss Buncle Married
The Two Mrs. Abbotts
I just bought the Kindle version of The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of a Literary Family by Juliet Barker. It was offered as a Goodreads deal today for $1.99. At 1,184 pages, this book is deemed the definitive biography of all the Brontes (father and children). It sounded really interesting!
Ordered it today:
I've waited years to get my hands on an unabridged English translation of this book.
And even though I'm currently (technically) reading something like a dozen books at the moment, I'm going to add one more to the stack, because I won't be able to wait once it arrives.
Made one of my best purchases of all time today: I was able to pick up Graham Robb's lavishly praised
Victor Hugo: A Biography
, which won the 1997 Whitbread Award, for 75¢ today. It's almost a shock to see a trade paperback in such good condition on sale for so cheap, but that's why I'm forever prowling my local library's permanent 'for sale' section.In addition, I was also able to pick up The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols and Edith Wharton's biography A Backward Glance for the same price. And to cap it off, I also found John Ashbery's April Galleons: Poems .
So today was another very good day.
Rosemarie wrote: "Not only did you get great books, you also supported the library."Yay libraries!! I recently got (and started) Mythmakers and Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction.
Recently bought from Amazon:
I do wish that I could find some stylish editions of books by Daphne du Maurier!
Erin wrote: "Recently bought from Amazon:

I do wish that I could find some stylish editions of books by Daphne du Maurier!"
those are groovy covers Erin!
I quite like my 1990's compact hardback for Rebecca:
Erin wrote: "I do wish that I could find some stylish editions of books by Daphne du Maurier!"The Folio Society did a pretty cool edition of Rebecca.
Easton Press also did a nice leather-bound version.
Darren wrote: "I do wish that I could find some stylish editions of books by Daphne du Maurie..."I think NYRB Classics produce some of the best looking trade paperbacks around. They are by no means cheap, but they're worth every penny if you're willing to pay the money.
They also just happen to publish a collection of her short stories, selected and introduced by the excellent Patrick McGrath called Don't Look Now: Stories .
Erin wrote: "Recently bought from Amazon:

I do wish that I could find some stylish editions of books by Daphne du Maurier!"
I love Daphne du Maurier but I have never seen her mentioned until now. I was thinking about re-reading Frenchman's Creek which is my fave by her.
Michele wrote: "Rosemarie wrote: "Not only did you get great books, you also supported the library."Yay libraries!! I recently got (and started) [book:Mythmakers and Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction|657..."
Thanks for mentioning this, Michele--I gotta read this one!
I was given
for my birthday. The cover on my copy is a wonderful azur blue. I haven't read Suzanne Joinson. Isn't it great when someone chooses a new author for you? Looking forward to it.
Today I received this lovely book after reading several recommendations of this particular translation:
In other news, I really need to get an additional bookshelf... 😅
Erin wrote: "In other news, I really need to get an additional bookshelf... "Time to buy, order, or take delivery of some storage space?
Finally, finally it arrived in the mail today:
Berlin Alexanderplatz
by Alfred Döblin
So that's yet another added to the currently reading shelf...
I finally got my hands on the final two books in the Templar Trilogy by Canadian writer, Jack Whyte.
I got Standard of Honour and Order in Chaos. I am the sort of person that if I feel like I'll enjoy the series (even if I don't) that I need the entire series before I tackle the first book. That way if I like the first book or not, I can get everything out of the way and binge read, especially since I know I'll grow attached to one or more of the characters, and I want to see how everything ends for them.
It's a nasty excuse for getting books, but there you go. Those books are going to be my next reads after I am done with Macbeth.
I also got myself a new edition of The Woman in Black by Susan Hill and the last three books in Maurice Druon's 'The Accursed Kings Series'. I mean, I am a huge fan of Druon, and his seven book series focused on the last Capetian kings. Which is kind of funny as it sort of ties into the Templar Trilogy.
I also got myself a new copy of The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle. I don't have Nigel, and I wonder if I should because I don't remember The White Company, and of course I worry about missing things if it is part of a series.
I got Standard of Honour and Order in Chaos. I am the sort of person that if I feel like I'll enjoy the series (even if I don't) that I need the entire series before I tackle the first book. That way if I like the first book or not, I can get everything out of the way and binge read, especially since I know I'll grow attached to one or more of the characters, and I want to see how everything ends for them.
It's a nasty excuse for getting books, but there you go. Those books are going to be my next reads after I am done with Macbeth.
I also got myself a new edition of The Woman in Black by Susan Hill and the last three books in Maurice Druon's 'The Accursed Kings Series'. I mean, I am a huge fan of Druon, and his seven book series focused on the last Capetian kings. Which is kind of funny as it sort of ties into the Templar Trilogy.
I also got myself a new copy of The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle. I don't have Nigel, and I wonder if I should because I don't remember The White Company, and of course I worry about missing things if it is part of a series.
Pillsonista wrote: "Finally, finally it arrived in the mail today: Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
So that's yet another added to the ..."
I have my eye on this too!
maybe go on my xmas list or might just get it on Kindle as it's reasonably inexpensive...
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I have both The Obscene Bird of Night and A Personal Matter, and I am hoping to get to them sooner rather than later.