What Book(s) have you just Bought, Ordered or Taken Delivery Of? Showing 1,151-1,200 of 2,344

[Pillsonista]

Oh man, here we go. Just finished ordering these two:


Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson and Ivo Andrić's Omer Pasha Latas

This is the first time Uwe Johnson's magnum opus has been fully translated into English, all 1700+ pages of it (originally, in the German, it was published in four volumes).

If he'd been born a generation or two earlier, the great triumvirate of the supreme modernist masterpieces would have been a quartet, and Anniversaries would have stood alongside Joyce's Ulysses, Proust's In Search of Lost Time, and Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities. But thankfully that wasn't the case, because if it had been, then the book would never have been written. But nevertheless, even though it was written during "post-modern" (a word I loathe and despise, along with everything it represents) times, it is still considered worthy of that kind of company.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

Guru I swear I never recognize the books you order. I has the dumbs.

[Pillsonista]

BAM wrote: "Guru I swear I never recognize the books you order. I has the dumbs."

Well to be fair, BAM, Omer Pasha Latas hasn't even been translated into English until now, so don't be too hard on yourself. 😉

[ALLEN]

... and Uwe Johnson's reputation has grown over the years.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

Guru! I looked and I may be getting Pasha as my October selection!

[Pillsonista]

BAM wrote: "Guru! I looked and I may be getting Pasha as my October selection!"

That's fantastic, Bren!

Might you be interested in a mini buddy read once we get our copies? I know I won't be able to stop myself from reading it once I have it in my hands.

Incidentally, have you ever read Andrić's The Bridge on the Drina? If you want to get a feel for his style, look no farther than that book. It is universally considered his masterpiece and it is easily the work for which he is most renowned.

That being said, there's a description in the book that is arguably the most disturbing that I have ever read, at least in fiction.

[Pillsonista]

Just recently made one of my best purchases ever:



The boxed-set of Elizabeth Bishop's Poems/Prose and Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected and New Poems, 1950-2013 by Robert Bly.

Not quite as good as when I was able to get The Complete Works of Primo Levi for $20 (retail price $100), but pretty close. I got the Bishop boxed-set for the same price, but it retails at $75. That being said, I hate to see such wonderful books remaindered.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

Just added Bridge to my tbr list. And yes buddy read most definitely if I get Pasha

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

Bought Bridge tonight, so if I don’t get Pasha we can read that one

[Cendaquenta]

Treated myself a bit this week - had to go into Glasgow for an appointment so visited Caledonia Books, a secondhand bookshop I'm particularly fond of, and Waterstones.
At Caledonia, picked up Salt and Saffron by Kamila Shamsie (I'm really interested in reading more by her after Home Fire won the Women's Prize), The Elephant's Journey and The Gift of the Magi and Other Short Stories.
At Waterstones, Melmoth, Rosewater, and The Girl Who Drank The Moon.

[ALLEN]

My lands! We used to have a Waterstones in Chicago. The inventory was outstanding, prices never below retail, staff uninformed.

But ever since then I don't know where to buy PARIS-MATCH or DAS BESTE here in town.

[Kirsten]

Vox by Christina Dalcher has just arrived at the library.

[Cendaquenta]

ALLEN wrote: "My lands! We used to have a Waterstones in Chicago. The inventory was outstanding, prices never below retail, staff uninformed. "

Yeahhhh, they're more than a bit pricey, admittedly. But I do enjoy the occasional bit of retail therapy there as a special treat. These days I mostly only go in when they're hosting a signing and those nights are always great fun.

[Graham]

As a college student, I don't have much money to throw around. However, I have been using the library pretty much daily (for both school assignments and recreation). The two books I just got are A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry and The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World by Harlan Ellison.

[ALLEN]

Cendaquenta wrote: "ALLEN wrote: "My lands! We used to have a Waterstones in Chicago. The inventory was outstanding, prices never below retail, staff uninformed. "

Yeahhhh, they're more than a bit pricey, admittedly....
These days I mostly only go in when they're hosting a signing and those nights are always great fun."

That does sound like fun. In Chicago, an ocean and half a continent away from Waterstones-London, they applied "Mall theory" and hired cheapest presentable people. (It was at the time our first vertical mall, and a whopper). Unfortunately, when I asked for "Paris-Match" (Paree-Match) the young man masquerading a clerk asked me what it is. I tell them it's a magazine from France about the size of LIFE (which still existed, though as a monthly), and he tells me he's.... upshot - I paid for the mag and got out without telling the young man what I thought he ought to do with his sex life.

Chicago attitude -- nothin' like it. I did go back to Waterstones at Water Tower Place, but the anglophilic gloss it never had was gone for me. The store closed three years later, a victim of customers who expect respect.

[Pillsonista]

So this is probably my last haul for the foreseeable future.

I just don't see the point with much of contemporary fiction, let's just put it that way, but I still did pretty damn well today:



The Poems of Dylan Thomas, ed. John Goodby
The Complete Plays of Sophocles: A New Translation, tr. Robert Bagg & James Scully
Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
Codex 1962: A Trilogy by Sjón
Like a Sword Wound, Volume 1 of the great Ahmet Altan's Ottoman Quartet
Nick Arvin's Mad Boy: An Account of Henry Phipps in the War of 1812
The Parting Gift: A Novel by Evan Fallenberg
Iago: The Strategies of Evil by Harold Bloom

And finally a replacement for my misplaced copy of East of Eden by John Steinbeck because for the life of me I have no idea where I put it, and it's irritating the hell out of me because I'm usually never that careless with any of my books.

[Luke]

My latest haul (quite a good one):

Hope Leslie: or, Early Times in the Massachusetts - Catharine Maria Sedgwick (!)
Sing, Unburied, Sing - Jesmyn Ward
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide - Carol Anderson (!)
Blueprints of the Afterlife - Ryan Boudinot
Women, Race, and Class - Angela Y. Davis
A Voice from the South - Anna Julia Cooper (!!!)
Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution - Priya Satia (!)

A number of these are new enough or obscure enough to be a surprise to come across, especially 'A Voice from the South', which I expected I would have to check out from my university library. I bought a couple of them for the sake of a challenge or for the sake of buying, but they're both by authors I planned on reading other works of previously, so it isn't that much of a personal indulgence.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

I can’t believe Sung Unburied was already on offer

[Luke]

BAM wrote: "I can’t believe Sung Unburied was already on offer"

Rich neighborhoods are quite cavalier with their donations. This wasn't the only copy on the shelf, and I snagged a hardcover of another work published in 2018. I wish I could be that careless with money.

[Pillsonista]

So this will officially be my last binge. The bookstore that usually plays host to my best purchases won't be restocking until Christmas (my bank account, at least, will breathe a sigh of relief).

Nonetheless, a worthy haul. Scored some serious Simenon:

Mr. Hire's Engagement
Maigret, Lognon, and the Gangsters
Maigret Takes a Room
Maigret and the Man on the Bench
Maigret's Failure
A Man's Head

And the rest:

The Way to Paradise: A Novel by Mario Vargas Llosa
Wendell Berry's Standing by Words: Essays (!!!)
A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence (!!!)
The MacGuffin by Stanley Elkin (!!!)
Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach
God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam
The Sons by Franz Kafka
Sunstroke and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley
My First Loves by Ivan Klíma

Stanley Elkin and Margaret Laurence in the same haul... for me, that's Christmas in October.

[Wreade1872]

Got a bunch of graphic novels as a present. Since i had literally only heard of one of them i couldn't stop myself asking if they had just been chosen randomly?
And yes they were completely random, if its 'the thought that counts' then i guess this utterly failed as a present ;) .
However the same person did once buy me (one of my favourties) randomly, so maybe this will work out well :D .
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Since they were chosen randomly i decided to roll dice to see which to read first and its Paper Girls, Vol. 1 :) .

[Darren]

two more for me:
a nice little hardback for Around the World in Eighty Days (undated - paper smells like 1960s!)
and a very good condition copy of a 2003 edition of The Golem


which has 8 beautiful illustrations, e.g.:

[ALLEN]

Hardly a classic, and not likely ever to be, but day before yesterday I received from Thrftbooks a copy of Charlotte and Karen Pence's book, published this Spring, about their rabbit "Marlon Bundo" and his journey with V.P. Mike Pence through a day's work in Washington, D.C. I think the only reason the T'books people called the condition "Good" was that it had been marked upon -- really the physical condition was what I'd call "Very Good." The markings, if that's what counted against it, were Charlotte and Karen Pence's autographs -- so I'm tickled, though highly conflicted about the book.

My GR review, for those who want to see it, can be found here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I wrote it in verse, to mimic Charlotte Pence's versifying. However, my poetry came out a little better in spite of myself.

[Carol]

Pillsonista wrote: "So this will officially be my last binge. The bookstore that usually plays host to my best purchases won't be restocking until Christmas (my bank account, at least, will breathe a sigh of relief).
..."

Wow. That is a worthy bunch.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

Guru, I don't believe you. You'll buy something else. Just as I've been buying when I said I wouldn't. Lol

[Pillsonista]

BAM wrote: "Guru, I don't believe you. You'll buy something else. Just as I've been buying when I said I wouldn't. Lol"

The only chance I stand is if I go nowhere near the other two used bookstores that I fallback on if my primary bookstore fails me. Pray for me, BAM. 😉😂

[Pillsonista]

WOW... I have been waiting for this book to exist ever since I'd first encountered Sexual Personae late in my high school "career." And once it is in my hands, everything that I'm currently reading is on the back-burner:


Provocations: Collected Essays by Camille Paglia.

I actually paid to fast-track this book's delivery, and I have never done that before ever. But whatever Paglia writes is a priority for me.

Even when I severely disagree with her (which is more often than not), I take such joy from her passion for art and literature. She is a person whose study and opinions are wholly her own and you can tell from the way she writes about these subjects that they are not just some hyper-specialized tenure venture for some careerist academician. For her, it begins and ends with love, just as it does for her mentor, Harold Bloom, and that is why I hold both in such high esteem.

EDIT: And I also picked up her anthology Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism:



Because I've just never been able to get enough of her writing.

[Jim]

My latest haul came yesterday on the final day of my library's three-day semi-annual (June and October) book sale. In the last half hour my wife Susie and I got about 12 cookbooks (for her) and 8 nonfiction and history books (for me) for $5. I got:

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman
The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea by Sebastian Junger
Education Of A Wandering Man Intro by Daniel Boorstin by Louis L'Amour (1908-88)
The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria

[ALLEN]

Oh, I really like the first two (Tuchman, Junger) -- among my favorites!
Have not read the second two (Boorstin, Zakaria) -- keep us apprised, please!

Just received Nevertheless, We Persisted: 48 Voices of Defiance, Strength, and Couragein the mail. I do wish the editors had given a key to all those fresh faces on the cover, whose essays appear inside the book:

[Darren]

so my TBR pile is wildly out of control
it is unlikely I can clear it in under 4 years
so I was feeling quite virtuous recently to have cleared 6 in 17 days...
er...
but then...
(and I'm not exactly sure how this happened)
I've put in an online order for 6 books
(holds head in hands and weeps)

[ALLEN]

Darren wrote: "so my TBR pile is wildly out of control
it is unlikely I can clear it in under 4 years
so I was feeling quite virtuous recently to have cleared 6 in 17 days...
er...
but then...
(and I'm not exactl..."

There, there, Darren, it's your curse.
You are more to be pitied than censured.
What you're going to tell the Environment Fairy when you shuffle off this polluted globe is beyond me, but you have my support, nonetheless.
You have met the enemy and we are each other.

[ALLEN]

But at least paper books cannot go in one ear and out the other, either literally or metaphorically.

[Jim]

Good afternoon,

As a follow-up to my message #1188, there were actually 11 books for me. Susie gave most of the cookbooks to her best friend. The one she kept was Lighten Up: Low-Fat Versions of More Than 100 of America's Best-Known and Best-Loved Recipes by Elaine Magee.

The others I got were:

Nolan Ryan: The Making of a Pitcher by Rob Goldman
The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All by Gareth Evans
Fearful Majesty: The Life and Reign of Ivan the Terrible by Benson Bobrick
Miracle in the Making: The Adam Taliaferro Story by Scott T. Brown and Sam Carchidi
Bill Campbell: The Voice of Philadelphia With CD by Sam Carchidi
Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember by John Feinstein
Economy And Society In Ancient Greece by Moses I. Finley

[Darren]

books are carbon capture
I see myself as part of the solution
:oD

[Luke]

Darren wrote: "so my TBR pile is wildly out of control
it is unlikely I can clear it in under 4 years
so I was feeling quite virtuous recently to have cleared 6 in 17 days...
er...
but then...
(and I'm not exactl..."

If I kept to my current pace and added no new books, I could clear my TBR list before I hit 50. I personally don't find that a comforting thought, as all that comes after the thought of finishing are waves of preemptive boredom.

[Christopher]

Wreade1872 wrote: "Got a bunch of graphic novels as a present. Since i had literally only heard of one of them i couldn't stop myself asking if they had just been chosen randomly?
And yes they were completely random..."

I suspect it's downhill from Paper Girls, but, as they say, YMMV.

Actually, it looks like an interesting assortment.

[Pillsonista]

Another absolute gem by NYRB Classics:



Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp by Józef Czapski.

They're going to publish his Inhuman Lands in December and I can't wait to read that one. In part it's about Czapski's investigation into what would eventually be revealed as the Katyn massacre.

Then next year, even more amazing titles: Victor Serge's Notebooks in February, and even more importantly, the May publication of the prequel (under its originally intended title) to Vasily Grossman's masterpiece, Life and Fate, called Stalingrad.

Interspersed between those two publications we'll get Jean Giono's A King Alone and a newly commissioned translation (which the book desperately needed) of Gregor von Rezzori's The Death of my Brother Abel and Cain, published as a single volume. And then in July of next year they'll publish Kurt Tucholsky's Castle Gripsholm. For me, that's Christmas in July.

[Graham]

I just preordered the English version of The Frolic of the Beasts by Yukio Mishima. I am BEYOND excited! I thought I was never going to read another Mishima novel for the first time. This novel finally being released in English is living proof that I was wrong.

[Carol]

Based on a conversation and discussion going on in another group this month, I ordered The Rider on the White Horse, a collection of short stories by a new-to-me author, Theodor Storm. It arrived yesterday.

[Pillsonista]

Okay, I splurged, but I didn't binge. And that's only because I was able to get the book on discount:

Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by e.e. cummings.

[ALLEN]

Carol wrote: "Based on a conversation and discussion going on in another group this month, I ordered The Rider on the White Horse, a collection of short stories by a new-to-me author, [author:Theodor Storm..."

Bless you, Carol! As part of my German studies, we had to take a course in German Realism. Now, German-lit is renowned for its achievements in Romanticism (ETA Hoffman, Brueder Grimm) before this movement, and Naturliasm/early Modern after that (Gerhart Hauptmann, Hugo von Hoffmansthal, Arthur Schnitzler, early Thomas Mann) after that, but you've probably noticed German novels and short stories do not customarily crop up in league with writers like Flaubert, Dickens, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.

Not that there is no good German Realism -- and you hit an important lode in Theodor Storm, who wrote not only the collection called "The Rider on the White Horse" in English, but many other things too. You might also want to keep your eyes peeled for his "Immensee" (which, in English, translate "Bees' Lake" I think.)

Not that there are NO good German Realist novels (the novels EFFI BRIEST and DER STECHLIN ("The Dagger") by Theodor Fontane come to mind. But only v-e-e-r-y careful comp lit courses include such German novels in translation in their syllabi, when there are likes of THE RED AND THE BLACK, BLEAK HOUSE, THE IDIOT, or THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE to deal with.

Thanks for letting me show off my painfully acquired German major, Carol. That malkin who ran your and my alma mater did her level best to abolish the department, thinking that literature served no pecuniary purpose and thus had to be inferior to aspects of the language that put coin in graduates' pockets, things like translation.
You've heard it before, I'm sure: If I had wanted to go to Tech, I'd have gone to Tech . . .

[Michele]

Pillsonista wrote: "Damn, did I score today. I think this is the most productive prowling I've ever enjoyed. I mean, I've lucked out with some serious finds in the past, but even by that standard I did ridiculously we..."

OK, I think we need to see photos of your shelves lol

[Michele]

BAM wrote: "I’ve recently discovered that I’ve been a fan of magical realism most of my life; I just didn’t know it had a name."

Ha! I discovered that a few years back. Quite the revelation :)

[Michele]

Rita wrote: "Like you, BAM, I have amassed large credit card debt. I will not buy any new books. I have started using Overdrive a lot. Also if you don't mind audiobooks, YouTube offers a lot of free audiobooks...."

Also try LibriVox

[Michele]

Pillsonista wrote: "I cannot believe it; I have finally found it, both volumes, in my local used bookstore. After so many painstaking years of building my own library, now it's finally mine: I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years..."

I bought that set a few years ago. It is AMAZING. I've never heard of the Mandelstam book but it's now on my list - thanks :)

[Michele]

BAM wrote: "I got secret history for the library today. I'm a bit afraid to start it"

Donna Tartt? A tricksy and elegantly written book. You will enjoy.

[Michele]

Pillsonista wrote: "Finally got around to using a gift card I got from my last birthday, and it's a bit a divergence from what I usually go for..."

Le Guin is an unusual, deep, thoughtful and thought-provoking author. You may become a fan ;)

[Carol]

ALLEN wrote: "Carol wrote: "Based on a conversation and discussion going on in another group this month, I ordered The Rider on the White Horse, a collection of short stories by a new-to-me author..."

Thanks for the mini-overview of classic German Lit, Allen! Much appreciated.

[Michele]

Pillsonista wrote: "Okay, I splurged, but I didn't binge. And that's only because I was able to get the book on discount:

Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by e.e. cummings."

"what if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer’s lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
—when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man…"

[Michele]

I recently bought several books as gifts:

Astrid Lindgren, The Brothers Lionheart for my mom
Andre Norton, Breed to Come for my nephew
John Kendrick Bangs, A House-Boat on the Styx for a friend who is a Victorian gentleman manqué
Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House for my dad
Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones for my husband