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?


Nice. Are you going to be reading it soon?

And thanks Aubrey I think it was you who brought it back to
my attention."
Good to hear, and my pleasure. You can't have a good sci-fi collection if there's no Delany, and Dhalgren is his magnum opus.

Matt wrote: "From my local library sale shelf - .50 cents for paperbacks:
Just got a copy of The Once and Future King by T.H. White and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque - can’t beat 2 book..."
I love library sales. They are both great books.
Just got a copy of The Once and Future King by T.H. White and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque - can’t beat 2 book..."
I love library sales. They are both great books.

Just got a copy of The Once and Future King by T.H. White and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque - can’t beat 2 book..."
What a fabulous bargain. All Quiet is one of my favorite books.




Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman
A King Alone by Jean Giono
and the Selected Poems of Vasko Popa, translated by Charles Simic
Stalingrad is the prequel to Grossman's masterpiece, Life and Fate. Originally published as For a Just Cause, this is the first time the book will be given its intended title.

I screwed up my courage and just bought Part 2 (view spoiler)
Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began


The Book of Lamentations - Rosario Castellanos
In the Depths - Hahn Moo-Sook (this one wasn't even in the GR system yet; lucky find)
Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind, Vol. 1 - Hayao Miyazaki
If I added all the volumes of non-Anglo cartoons/manga/manhwa I've read, I'd have at least twice as many read works in my GR library. Coming across that last work made me decide that I would add some of them, but only the great ones that I plan to incorporate into my permanent physical library.



Surrender to Night: Collected Poems by Georg Trakl
I've been waiting for a book of his poems for a long, long time.



[bookcover:Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind Volume ..."
Ha ha, glad to see the Miyazaki love.




nice cover artwork too



I love PALE FIRE. How sad that so many Nabokov devotees have not experienced this delightful (and relatively short) book! I voted for it for August, and hope it is slated.



Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki
I'd never heard of this book, but Albert Camus wrote a glowing letter to Margarita Liberaki praising it (probably helped that the author was a woman), so that was enough for me.

I blame it on the library sale. It's their fault selling everything for between 25-50¢:










Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, eds. Thomas Travisano & Saskia Hamilton
Loitering with Intent: The Child by Peter O'Toole, a God who needs no introduction.
Freud: A Life for Our Time by Peter Gay
The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War by Thaddeus Holt
Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize by Sean B. Carroll
Simon Schama's The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age
Stalin: A Political Biography by Isaac Deutscher
Dust to Dust: A Memoir by Benjamin Busch
Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark
Paintings in the Louvre by Lawrence Gowing
And whole lot of unbelievably good stuff...










Journey Into the Whirlwind by Evgenia Ginzburg !!!
The Collected Poetry and Prose of Dante Gabriel Rossetti !!!
The Tale of the 1002nd Night by Joseph Roth, tr. Michael Hofmann !!!
Belle du Seigneur by Albert Cohen !!!
Selected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert, tr. by Czesław Miłosz !!!
Paul Muldoon: Poems: 1968-1998 !!!
Jean Giono's The Straw Man
The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing by Richard Hugo
The Redress of Poetry by Seamus Heaney
Leap by Terry Tempest Williams
The Trial of Dr. Adams by Sybille Beford
The Wonders of the Invisible World: Stories by David Gates
The Magic Orange Tree and Other Haitian Folktales by Diane Wolkstein, forward by Edwidge Danticat
Affections: A Novel by Rodrigo Hasbún
What Jung Really Said by E.A. Bennet, intro. Anthony Storr
Oh, I also ordered The Storyteller Essays by Walter Benjamin and Gabriele Tergit's Käsebier Takes Berlin:




and

I have almost stopped reading adult poetry, but good poetry for kids is a real enjoyment.


I actually ended my no-buy streak. I ordered Pale Fire, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and Goodbye to Berlin.

I actually ended my no-buy streak. I ordered Pale Fire, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and Goodbye to Berlin."
I actually thought of you, B, when I was in line preparing to pay for my five book bags, all filled to the brim. I knew you'd be proud. 😉




The best part was when I checked out and the sticker price was reduced to $1 each. I see myself going back soon to rescue more homeless books.


Life with Picasso by Françoise Gilot
I know the fact that this was written by a woman is somehow supposed to make this a particularly important memoir, but I haven't been this unenthusiastic/uninterested in an NYRB title for several years.
It probably doesn't help that I couldn't care less about Picasso, despite his art (Matisse all the way), let alone a person who would actually denigrate themselves to screw somebody so much older and so physically repulsive "for the sake of their own art".
But hey, NYRB Classics gets the money, and that's a worthy cause. After all, it's not like I have to read the thing; it just goes to back of the queue.





The Queen's Necklace, The Pendragon Legend, Oliver VII, & The Third Tower: Journeys in Italy all by Antal Szerb




The Spectre of Alexander Wolf, The Buddha's Return, The Flight, & The Beggar and Other Stories by Gaito Gazdanov



Casanova's Return to Venice by Arthur Schnitzler
The Man Who Sees Ghosts by Friedrich Schiller
The Man Who Walked Through Walls by Marcel Aymé


I bought to re-read
Miss Marple The Complete Short Stories.
I bought to read
The Life and Times of Miss Jane Marple by Anne Hart.

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar is one of my most favorite non-fiction books. Can't wait to read how Montefiore handles the historical prelude which finally gave way to that era of nightmarish totalitarianism.



Thanks for posting the link. I was interested to read how Feinberg won back the publishing rights to the book and chose to provide it free on hir website. I love the idea that no publisher can make money any longer on the book.

Thanks to your resounding praise B, I'm going to start reading it as soon as it's in my hands. I was originally going to wait and finish the novel I'm currently reading before starting it, but now I'm too excited.
I already had high hopes for this book based on what I've read of his already (which was also tremendously well researched), but now I'm predisposed to believe it's going to be at least as good as The Court of the Red Tsar.
Can't wait.






I also ordered books for upcoming reads. I have copies of



I am going to be busy!

I'm loving it. It reads like hyper-sophisticated thriller.
Having already read Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, it makes some of the most outlandish behaviors not quite as astonishing as they would have otherwise been (now those people-Lavrentiy Beria-were some frightening mother*******), but still... oh my God. And yet they managed to rule for 300 years? What kind of "country" is this?!?!
You can see how the Bolsheviks were eventually born and cradled from generations of this autocracy, but even by these crazy standards, they were a different breed. And they. did. not. play. Like, at all.


and with amazing dustcover artwork that spans the spine/back-cover thusly:




A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 by Vasily Grossman, ed. Antony Beevor

Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann



Love in a Bottle and Other Stories by Antal Szerb
In Search of the Essence of Place by Petr Král
Things Look Different in the Light and Other Stories by Medardo Fraile
I think I now have just about everything of Szerb's that has been translated into English.
And I'm really interested in Malina. It's the only novel that Bachmann ever wrote and even though it was technically completed at the time, she add chapters to it after Paul Celan's suicide in 1970.

Guru, I told you you’d love that book! I’m thinking of buying the hardback so I can have copies of those paintings. Just gorgeous.

Anyway I ordered the following tonight:
Gates of Fire a novel of the battle of Thermopylae
The Pope’s Daughter the life of Felice Della Rovere
My Stolen Son the Nick Markowitz story movie Alpha Dog I think
Imbibe! Stories of the pioneer of the American bar
A Venetian Affair forbidden love in 18th century
And The True History of the Elephant Man
Then I stopped myself. It was tough. My credit card said that was enough.
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Just ordered The Yiddish Policeman's Union (for John Green's book club, Life's Library), and a book on animal folktales/myths.