What Book(s) have you just Bought, Ordered or Taken Delivery Of? Showing 951-1,000 of 2,344

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

Aubrey, you find the best books at your library. My library-not so much lol

[Luke]

BAM wrote: "Aubrey, you find the best books at your library. My library-not so much lol"

The secret to my success is that I usually only visit the sales of libraries located in the cities where I can't afford to live. Rich people are sometimes generous with their library donations :p

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

Haha great secret!

[Carol]

Aubrey wrote: "BAM wrote: "Aubrey, you find the best books at your library. My library-not so much lol"

The secret to my success is that I usually only visit the sales of libraries located in the cities where I ..."

Absolutely. For me, I would add to that, university towns. The books that are sold to used book stores or donated to library sales are far more interesting and diverse than one finds elsewhere, on average.

[Darren]

Aubrey - so now you need to get Ancillary Justice!

(actually, that statement applies to everybody! ;o) )

[Pillsonista]

Carol wrote: "Absolutely. For me, I would add to that, university towns. The books that are sold to used book stores or donated to library sales are far more interesting and diverse than one finds elsewhere, on average. "

Yup. Where I live, the university, the community college, and the local libraries all have a symbiotic relationship and work together to share the profits.

I once managed to pick up Mimesis for 25 cents at one of the university's book sales, among other bargains and finds (although that one still remains one of my best).

[ALLEN]

Pillsonista said: "I once managed to pick up Mimesis for 25 cents . . . "

That's fun, isn't it? I got THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION in Evanston for fifty cents about 15 years ago.

[Pillsonista]

ALLEN wrote: "Pillsonista said: "I once managed to pick up Mimesis for 25 cents . . . "

That's fun, isn't it? I got THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION in Evanston for fifty cents about 15 years ago."

Wow Allen, that really was a bargain! I actually coughed up the full price for my copy of The Liberal Imagination.

But I have to admit, the fact that Mimesis was such a deal added to my enjoyment of the book.

[ALLEN]

I have to say, you got more book for the money. Trilling's little opus came in a heavily taped mass-market pbk.

Auerbach -- Oh yeah. Reading him has changed people's lives.

Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature - Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition

[Pillsonista]

ALLEN wrote: "Auerbach -- Oh yeah. Reading him has changed people's lives.

Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature - Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition "

What's even more amazing is that he wrote it largely from memory while living in exile.

And I enjoyed it so much that as soon as I was finished, I ordered his earlier work, Dante: Poet of the Secular World. It's on my TBR shelf for now.

[Christopher]

Pillsonista wrote: "ALLEN wrote: "Auerbach -- Oh yeah. Reading him has changed people's lives.

Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature - Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition "

What's even more amazing ..."

I can't really speak to the excellence of Mimesis, except that literally everyone who's read it is wild about it, but the fact that he wrote it from memory while in exile was probably good for the writing, not bad for it.

“There are many modern biographies and histories, full of carefully authenticated fact, which afflict the reader with a weight of indigestion. The author has no right to his facts, no ownership in them. They have flitted through his mind on a calm five minutes'
passage from the notebook to the immortality of the printed page. But no man can hope to make much impression on a reader with facts which he has not thought it worth his own while to remember. Every considerable book, in literature or science, is an engine whereby, mind operates on mind. It is an ignorant
worship of Science which treats it as residing in books, and reduces the mind to a mechanism of transfer. The measure of an author's power would be best found in the book which he should sit down to write the day after his library was burnt to the ground.”
― Walter Alexander Raleigh, Six Essays On Johnson

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

I get my Audible credits tonight
What to buy, what to buy?

[Pillsonista]

Christopher wrote: "I can't really speak to the excellence of Mimesis, except that literally everyone who's read it is wild about it, but the fact that he wrote it from memory while in exile was probably good for the writing, not bad for it."

That's actually a very good point, but that's also what makes it all the more impressive, given the circumstances.

So many writers who were fortunate enough just to get out in time (Auerbach's appointment by the University of Istanbul was at the expense of, among others, Victor Klemperer) struggled to even function through such upheaval and uncertainty. Auerbach was one of the very few during that time who not only functioned, but flourished.

[Karen]

A Pale View Of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro. $7 at The Book Grocer closing down sale - fab, cos its been on my TBR for absolutely ages.

[ALLEN]

Christopher wrote: "Pillsonista wrote: "ALLEN wrote: "Auerbach -- Oh yeah. Reading him has changed people's lives.

Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature - Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition."

Chris, I wonder what Clive James has had to say about Eric Auerbach?

[Pillsonista]

ALLEN wrote: "Chris, I wonder what Clive James has had to say about Eric Auerbach?"

Does anybody know if he has written anything specifically dedicated to Auerbach?

He praises Mimesis briefly in Cultural Amnesia, but the essay itself was originally centered upon Ernst Junger. I enjoy reading just about anything James writes, but I think an essay specifically dedicated to Auerbach would be utterly fascinating.

[ALLEN]

I admit I'm a little curious about that, too.
So many people I know around these parts are huge C.J. fans.

[Pillsonista]

ALLEN wrote: "I admit I'm a little curious about that, too.
Nonetheless it's self-evident to me that Eric Auerbach will live forever with or without Clive James' imprimatur."

Absolutely.

Although based upon what he wrote in Cultural Amnesia, there's a very good chance that it would be glowing with praise.

[ALLEN]

Let's hope so. I felt so insecure about the part of my message #971 that you referenced that I struck it for something a little more conciliatory. I must wonder, though, that since Auerbach does draw nearly unqualified praise, what could James add other than a glittering, "Me too"? I say this because James just doesn't seem like a "me, too" kind of guy.

[Aprilleigh]

I have two problems using Goodreads to avoid buying duplicates: 1) most of the time the connection is so bad, or the server is so slow, that it times out before it actually loads so I can't check my shelves anyway, and 2) sometimes I want to replace a paperback with a hardcover, or a damaged book that I picked up for 10 cents with a better copy once I've read it and decide I want to add it to my library.

[Melanti]

Aprilleigh wrote: "I have two problems using Goodreads to avoid buying duplicates: 1) most of the time the connection is so bad, or the server is so slow, that it times out before it actually loads so I can't check m..."

I agree with the both points. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to walk to the front of a store to get a better connection and load my shelves.

For the second point, I also have a "look for at store" shelf, and if I have a copy but want to replace it with a better one, I put it on that shelf

[ALLEN]

Yes, GR can be poky but when I'm in stores, Yahoo itself gets all twirly.

[Carol]

this is interesting. I have zero problems with GR loading when I'm in stores, except for one single store that doesn't have public wifi. For that one, I need to step to a window. It isn't GR problem that I'm shopping in a strip center dungeon, though. :)

I don't know what I'd do without GR to prevent my buying dupes. My shelf, books-I-own, is the most important one I maintain. YMMV

[ALLEN]

Somewhere I hear my father's voice telling me, "Allen, if you read every book you buy when you buy them, duplicates would not be such a problem."

He's right of course, but he never lived to see the 21st Century . . .

[Melanti]

Ah, I don't trust public wi-fi and rarely connect to it. I make do with the cellular connection.


Allen, I've bought dups of books I've already read before. It's rare, but it does happen - especially in those genres where books all kind of sound the same.

[Carol]

ALLEN wrote: "Somewhere I hear my father's voice telling me, "Allen, if you read every book you buy when you buy them, duplicates would not be such a problem."

He's right of course, but he never lived to see th..."

He also hasn't experienced books being reissued with different titles, lol. I bought and read (partially - maybe 25 pages the second time) the same mediocre Scandi mystery twice. A pox on the reissuing publisher's soul.

[ALLEN]

Remember not all that many years ago, when Scan Noir into US English was a rare and precious commodity? Now, it's just a commodity.

I think Kindle and its kindred should post: "Satisfaction guaranteed, or double your Kilobytes back."

You may say I'm a dreamer . . .

[Jim]

But I'm not the only one. John Lennon, "Imagine".

Today my wife dropped me off at Barnes and Noble for an hour and called me at the end of that time and returned with the $25 gift card that my brother in-law gave me for my 55th birthday, combined with a 20% educator's discount from her best friend. In the interim I got four books:

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass (1818-95)
The Story of King Arthur and His Knights by Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
The Federalist by Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804); James Madison (1751-1836); and John Jay (1745-1829)
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)

I have $2.20 left on the gift card.

[ALLEN]

Smart customer! Sounds like you may have taken advantage of the sale on B&N classics in pbk.

Received in the mail today.

[Jim]

Good morning!

I did exactly that, Allen. I got The Federalist and The Jungle off a table that had a sign stating "B & N Classics 2 for $10" (the latter book resonates with my wife--who is not a reader--because she worked in the meat industry with her father when she was in her 20's). The King Arthur was on a shelf labelled "Build Your Classics Library" for $7.98. It also contained several Collectible Editions. The Knickerbocker Classics Frederick Douglass is bound in a brown plaid pattern and published by Quarto/Race Publishing. Regularly $9.98, it was on sale for $5.00.

The Federalist contains all 85 Federalist Papers written 1787-8, not just a few, which satisfies my completest tendencies.

Jim

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

Oh what luck on that Federalist Papers edition! I’ve been looking for that. I’m obsessed with the Founding Fathers right now. Such an amazing historical period

[ALLEN]

Hi, BAM!

@984: Howard Pyle was a late-Victorian author who wrote primarily for kids, but is enjoyed by adults too. I read the book you mentioned about fifteen years ago. If THE STORY OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS KNIGHTS moves you to pick up T.H. White's The Once and Future King, so much the better. There's a lively discussion, full of digressions of the kind I like, of that tetralogy's first book (THE SWORD IN STONE) going on here at "Catching Up on Classics."

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Darren]

snapped up a couple more Kindle 99p offers recently:
On the Road and Bonjour Tristesse

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

I’ve been so busy at work this week, but I wanted to tell y’all about a special delivery from a little birdy friend in Chicago. I received Restoration London trivia, Life in a Medieval Castle, and Life in a Medieval Village. These are perfect reference material reads for me as I have an obsession with all things England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿. My birdy spoils me,

[ALLEN]

Sounds like a terrific human being!

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

He is, ALLEN! He is

[Pillsonista]

Just ordered it yesterday:



Parallel Stories: A Novel by Péter Nádas

Ordered a collection of his essays not long ago and loved it. Having read his Book of Memories beforehand, I knew I would. So in for a penny, in for a pound (which is about what this book probably weighs).

[Wreade1872]

Aha, Broad Arrow Jack has finally been found.
The last major piece in my League of Extraordinary Gentlemen puzzle.
Thanks very much to Melanti for the kind offer of assistance and a HUGE thanks to... (eh.. actually are we being discreet about who got me a copy? In case we are) i will just say a HUGE thanks to my mysterious benefactor :) :) :D .

[Luke]

Books from a bonus library sale of the month:

Home and Exile by Chinua Achebe
Clotel: or, The President's Daughter by William Wells Brown (!!!)
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
The Laramie Project and The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later by Moisés Kaufman
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox (!)
The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up by Liao Yiwu (discard from my favorite public library :( )

All of these were already on my TBR list! Score! Barring my sadness over how the last book came into my possession, this was a very good haul. I'd nominate Clotel: or, The President's Daughter as a pre-1900s group read, but alas. It's not nearly mainstream and/or apolitical enough.

[Pillsonista]

Not the usual stacks that I come away with when I shop at this particular bookshop, but what it lacks in numbers it makes up for in quality...

Swansong 1945 "by" Walter Kempowski 😍
The Collected Poems of Galway Kinnell
The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems by Tomas Tranströmer
New Collected Poems of Marianne Moore

I'm thrilled with all four (particularly Galway Kinnell), but Swansong is absolutely the pick of the bunch.

It's a very small selection from Kempowski's monumental magnum opus, Echolot ('sonar' in German, but sometimes called Echo Soundings in English), focusing on the year 1945. It's an accumulation of autobiographical documents that chronicle just about every facet of German life during the years of the Second World War. In German, it runs to over 10 volumes and I've been desperate to get my hands on any piece of it, even if it wasn't translated, and now I finally have, regardless if it's just a sliver (and in English, too!).

Hopefully this is just the beginning, and one day this masterwork in its full entirety will be translated. There's an entire section of my bookshelf just waiting for it.

[Michele]

BAM wrote: "Allen what is your favorite used books site? "

I know you didn't ask me :) but my favorite is abebooks. Great selection, vendors from all over the world, each listing allows you to ask the seller questions about the item, etc.

[Michele]

ALLEN wrote: "Right now we are watching THE LION IN WINTER (1968) for a bit of that period flavor. ."

I love that movie!

Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

Eleanor of Aquitaine: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

And this:

John: A knife! He's got a knife!

Eleanor of Aquitaine: Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little - that's how peace begins..

[ALLEN]

: )

[Lois]

N.K. Jemisin's complete (current) works! I'm going to meet her at a signing this weekend!!!

[Michele]

Lois wrote: "N.K. Jemisin's complete (current) works! I'm going to meet her at a signing this weekend!!!"

Lucky you :)

[Jim]

On Tuesday, 21 August, I went to Barnes and Noble and put on hold until Saturday, 25 August (when I get paid next) the following books:

The Art of War by Sun Tzu (544-496 BC)
The Constitution and Other Documents of the Founding Fathers by Andrew S. Trees
Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau (1817-62)
Leaves of Grass: First and "Death-Bed" Editions by Walt Whitman (1819-92)

Jim

[Pillsonista]

Finally they released it, and I just finished ordering it:



Charles Bovary, Country Doctor: Portrait of a Simple Man by Jean Améry

After such a tremendous sequence of titles they published earlier this year, I felt that some of the NYRB Classics' summer releases lulled a bit in comparison, but this is one that I've been waiting for.

[Jim]

My wife dropped me off at the library for two hours earlier this afternoon/evening while she visited her mom. Though this morning I had renewed Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock And Out (published in 1992) by Bill Graham (1931-91) and Robert Greenfield, which is now due September 14, 2018, I couldn't resist getting more books.

I was browsing the shelves when I came upon The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Ultimate Reading List by Shelley Mosley. While I didn't check it out, I did use it to pick up my next reads. Each chapter is devoted to a different genre and lists the authors' picks for classics and other great reads. I had not read any mysteries for awhile and was confused as to where to start. So I went to the chapter "Get a Clue" which covers mysteries, and got a few detective novels, namely:

Murder at the Vicarage (1930) and The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1921) by Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976). Christie (the name is not a pseudonym; she actually married a man named Robert Christie) wrote the latter book when her sister Martha told her that she (Christie) couldn't write a detective novel. It's the first Hercule Poirot mystery.

Fer-de-Lance (1934)/The League of Frightened Men (1935), the first two Nero Wolfe mysteries, by Rex Stout (1886-1975).

I also borrowed *Autumn* by the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard. This is the first of four books, translated into English from the Norwegian, that he wrote to his daughter, consisting of a letter and several short essays about nature and the world she will face in each season. I found it in the biography section on the library's second floor, and the other three books (Spring, Summer and Winter) on the New Books shelf on the first floor.

How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein. An interesting bit of US history.

Jim

[Allison]

Jim wrote: "My wife dropped me off at the library for two hours earlier this afternoon/evening while she visited her mom. Though this morning I had renewed [book:Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock And O..."

I love looking at those types of books as reference. It’s always interesting to see what people picked as “you must read these”...

I happen to find Agatha Christie overrated (I know, I know, blah blah blah. Same goes for Stephen King).

I have a few Nero Wolfe stories on my Kindle. They were freebies :)

[Aprilleigh]

Thanks to a sale at the library book sale (yes, I meant to say it that way), I just picked up 19 titles by a new favorite mystery writer (Patricia Cornwell), plus the first two titles in Ken Follett's Century trilogy, and a Peter Straub I hadn't read yet, all in hardcover for $22.

Considering the weight of the books sitting on the dining room table (homeschool resources, books my dad just gave me, and textbooks I'm evaluating, in addition to all my book sale finds) actually broke my dining room table yesterday, I'll be lucky if my husband doesn't kill me. Of course, he is fixing the table (the finger joints in the supports underneath gave way because they were never glued properly - only a minor ding to one chair after he repairs and reinforces the joints).