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?
It finally arrived!!!
Correspondence: Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann
What makes these letters fascinating is that they began their relationship in 1948, when they were both completely unknown to the literary or wider public, and became the two most important German-language poets of the post-War era.
It also possessed a symbolic significance, especially in Germany: she was the daughter of a prominent Austrian Nazi and he was a Romanian-born, German-speaking Jew who survived the Holocaust in a Romanian slave labor camp. His parents were not so lucky, and Celan never got over the guilt of surviving.
And practically nobody, with the exception of his wife and Max Frisch (who was prone to serious jealousy), knew about the extent of their relationship. Both of them took it to the grave (he by his own hand and she by accident- probably) and it's only because estate laws have been relaxed across Europe that these letters were published in the original German in 2008 (view spoiler).
And the relationship (and isn't that a small word for it) between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan made the marriage between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes look like a schoolyard game of playing house.
Pillsonista wrote: "Three gems from Scholastique Mukasonga just arrived:
[book:Our..."
Re your plan to read The Book of Matt: I've found that when "everybody knows" something to be true it's well worth the time to search out alternate points of view. We're not children; we're perfectly capable of learning how to evaluate and integrate disparate /conflicting information. That's the point of literacy, no? Cheers-
Wreade1872 wrote: "BAM wrote: "I will never read all of my owned unread books. I feel like that way I can never die.":lol You must be an optimist, i always assume i'll die while reading, just as its about to get to..."
How funny Wreade!! Now I have another fear to dread. Oh, I love how the quote broke off into an ellipse.
Margaret wrote: "Re your plan to read The Book of Matt: I've found that when "everybody knows" something to be true it's well worth the time to search out alternate points of view. We're not children; we're perfectly capable of learning how to evaluate and integrate disparate /conflicting information. That's the point of literacy, no? Cheers-"This is a bit of a late reply, but still: I agree with every bit of this 100%. If books can be said to have a purpose beyond sheer enjoyment, that would it.
There's that quote from 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance': 'When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.' The point of journalism is to sift the facts from the legend and reveal the truth. The truth remains the truth no matter who or how many want it to be otherwise.
I found a new-to-me used bookstore in an unanticipated location: a strip mall next to an outlet center in North Charleston, SC. Lucky me! Newfound companions accompanying me home are:An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie
La Femme de Gilles by Madeleine Bourdouxhe
The Samurai by Shūsaku Endō
Irretrievable by Theodor Fontane
Phoenix Fled by Attia Hosain
The Squire by Enid Bagnold
A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor
Carol wrote: "I found a new-to-me used bookstore in an unanticipated location: a strip mall next to an outlet center in North Charleston, SC. Lucky me! Newfound companions accompanying me home are:[book:An Afr..."
Nice! Very much looking forward to your review of the Kpomassie.
Aubrey wrote: "Carol wrote: "I found a new-to-me used bookstore in an unanticipated location: a strip mall next to an outlet center in North Charleston, SC. Lucky me! Newfound companions accompanying me home are:..."I’ve had that on my TBR for so long, and had never seen a copy in the wild. Im looking forward to it.
Carol wrote: "I found a new-to-me used bookstore in an unanticipated location: a strip mall next to an outlet center in North Charleston, SC. Lucky me! Newfound companions accompanying me home are:"A Time to Keep Silence is such a gorgeous book. Might even be my favorite of his, although he couldn't write a bad sentence if he tried.
And in keeping with the same publishing house, I just ordered The Bad Side of Books: The Selected Essays of D.H. Lawrence and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra: Selected Poems and Translations from them today.
I can't wait for the Mehrotra collection. I thought the last publication in their Poets series, Telescope, was tremendous.
Carol wrote: "I’ve had that in my TBR for so long, and had never seen a copy in the wild."That's the feeling I'm always in pursuit of whenever I visit a book sale, especially when it's a sale that I haven't been able to make it to for a while.
Tami wrote: "Love the Fall Used Book Sale held by the Friends of Multnomah County Library...Big History - by, DK Publishing
Building Great Sentences - by, Brooks Landon
Literary Landscapes of The British Isle..."
I really like the B&N classics. I must own almost a hundred of them. The supplemental materials that they come with are usually quite nice.
Daniel wrote: "Tami wrote: "Love the Fall Used Book Sale held by the Friends of Multnomah County Library...Big History - by, DK Publishing
Building Great Sentences - by, Brooks Landon
Literary Landscapes of The..."
@ Daniel - I own fifty-seven of them. Collecting and reading all of them is on my list of things I'd like to accomplish, as far as my reading goals go.
I just ordered:Dune by Frank Herbert
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup
I'm so excited!
I picked up a very nice selection the other day:The Solitudes by Luis de Góngora y Argote, tr. Edith Grossman !!!!
Benvenuto Cellini's The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
Kabbalah by Gershom Sholem
Young Gerber by Friedrich Torberg !!!
The Curved Planks: Poems by Yves Bonnefoy
Julien Gracq's Château d'Argol
Light, Grass, and Letter in April by Inger Christensen
The Scent of Buenos Aires: Stories by Hebe Uhart
Singing School by Robert Pinsky
I'm not sure there will be a whole lot that I agree with in Pinsky's book, but that's also a pretty good reason to read it.
What is so special about YOUNG GERBER or its author that it rates extra exclamation marks? I really don't know.
ALLEN wrote: "What is so special about YOUNG GERBER or its author that it rates extra exclamation marks? I really don't know."It just means that I've finally found a book (or in this case, any work by Torberg) that I've been searching for for an extended period of time. Similarly with The Solitudes, only even more so with it.
Pillsonista wrote: "ALLEN wrote: "What is so special about YOUNG GERBER or its author that it rates extra exclamation marks? I really don't know."It just means that I've finally found a book (or in this case, any wo..."
Ah. Well, I hope you enjoy it. I majored in German in college.
Pillsonista wrote: "I picked up a very nice selection the other day:The Solitudes by Luis de Góngora y Argote, tr. Edith Grossman !!!!
Benvenuto Cellini..."
What a delightful haul. Congratulations.
Picked up a free hardback copy of Tom Clancy’s The Bear and the Dragon. I don’t remember what I may have read by Clancy, but think I have. His is not generally a genre which I enjoy, but hard to argue with free.
ALLEN wrote: "Pillsonista wrote: "Ah. Well, I hope you enjoy it. I majored in German in college."Maybe it gains something in translation.
And that's not a major for the faint of heart. As a philosophy major, Kant and Hegel were tortuous enough in English. Perhaps it may sound beautiful to some (and to native speakers, of course), but, to put it politely, it's not as overtly melodious as the Romance languages.
Due to a fortuitously timed visit to my sister, I was able to hit up both my favorite indie book store and a sale that I haven't been to in several years (two hours travel time for a book sale is a bit much, even for me), and boy, did I rake it in. Most of these were already in the TBR, and what wasn't is either of good repute or fills in a blank for my 2020 Quest for Women (it's never too early to start planning).Sonnets From The Portuguese - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
Sphinx - Anne Garréta
Company Parade - Storm Jameson
The Squire - Enid Bagnold
The Hearing Trumpet - Leonora Carrington (!!!)
"There Are Things I Want You to Know" about Stieg Larsson and Me - Eva Gabrielsson (!)
A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya - Anna Politkovskaya (!)
A Jury of Her Peers: Celebrating American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx - Elaine Showalter (!)
The Shutter of Snow - Emily Holmes Coleman (!!!)
All Things Censored - Mumia Abu-Jamal (!)
Flood of Fire - Amitav Ghosh (!) (gotta wait on this till I acquire the second one, though)
The Man Who Loved Dogs - Leonardo Padura (!)
Memoirs of an Anti-Semite: A Novel in Five Stories - Gregor von Rezzori
The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir - Josh Kilmer-Purcell
My thanks to whomever who actually shells out for Virago Modern Classics and ends up mass donating them.
Mod
I didn't order it, but I took delivery of it several weeks ago. It was a gift from my aunt and is now just about my most prized possession:
The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (in 3 volumes) by Robert Alter
It's even more gorgeous on the inside than it is on the outside.
Aubrey - YAY to The Hearing Trumpet one of my all-time faves - no wonder you gave it three !'s as it can be a bit tricky to obtain
Darren wrote: "Aubrey - YAY to The Hearing Trumpet one of my all-time faves - no wonder you gave it three !'s as it can be a bit tricky to obtain"Yep yep, for sure. I actually got a weird looking edition that was published by City Lights Books (of beat generation fame), which just enhances the serendipity of it all. Five years isn't the longest it's taken me to acquire a copy of something I'm interested in, but it's rather sizable.
I have this cover:
just realised I haven't done a proper review (cos I was so stunned after finishing it!)
I can feel a re-read coming on... ;o)
Between a trip to my favorite local used book store ($1-2 trade paperbacks), book trading websites (Paperbackswap and Bookmooch) and the NYRB "Flash Sales" I have acquired these gems in the last couple weeks: The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Magus by John Fowles
The Hunter and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett
The Doll: The Lost Short Stories by Daphne du Maurier
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
The Double by José Saramago
Z by Vassilis Vassilikos
The Other by Thomas Tryon
Soul by Andrei Platonov
Randall Jarrell's Book of Stories edited by Randall Jarrell
The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns
An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson
In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors by Doug Stanton
RJ wrote: "Between a trip to my favorite local used book store ($1-2 trade paperbacks), book trading websites (Paperbackswap and Bookmooch) and the NYRB "Flash Sales" I have acquired these gems in the last co..."Holy moly, what a great haul!
Second sale of the month wasn't as amazing as the first, but I got enough that was on the TBR already (including an extremely misplaced memoir that ended up being the best find of the day) to justify my picking up a few intriguing looking specimens whose authors I've either liked or have been liked by others.When Rain Clouds Gather - Bessie Head
Katalin Street - Magda Szabó
Don't Call Us Dead - Danez Smith
A Writer's House in Wales - Jan Morris (!!!) (the memoir in question)
River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh
Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak: Dictated by Himself - Black Hawk (!)
The Man With the Golden Arm - Nelson Algren
Great Fire of London: A Story with Interpolations and Bifurcations - Jacques Roubaud
Thrift store shopping, one (disappointing) library sale, and a quick look-in at a rather distant Half-Price Books = these November pick-upsThe History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours
Solar by Ian McEwan
Life with Picasso by Françoise Gilot
A Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson
The Secret History by Procopius
Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson
Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Jerome K. Jerome
The Selected Letters by John Keats
Euripides I: Alcestis/The Medea/The Heracleidae/Hippolytus
Spiral by Kōji Suzuki
The Boy's King Arthur: Sir Thomas Malory's History of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Sidney Lanier (Nicely illustrated by N.C. Wyeth)
Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
Troubles by J.G. Farrell
Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark
Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
The Guide for the Perplexed by Maimonides
Not too bad for 20 bucks
I may develop a similar situation of over buying. I am starting to stack up literary books. In 2021, I will be doing one year of mostly literature, so I am prepping. Yep, I am a literary prepper.Today I bought at used bookstore:
For my short story personal challenge 2021
The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales edited by Kate Bernheimer
For my Shakespeare Personal Challenge 2021
(English version/Spanish version/Retelling)
Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
(Retelling of The Taming of the Shrew)
For my general reading pleasure
My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl
The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
Cynda wrote: "I may develop a similar situation of over buying. I am starting to stack up literary books. In 2021, I will be doing one year of mostly literature, so I am prepping. Yep, I am a literary prepper...."
That’s it! You’re not over-buying; you’re intentionally pre-buying.
Carol wrote: "Cynda wrote: "I may develop a similar situation of over buying. I am starting to stack up literary books. In 2021, I will be doing one year of mostly literature, so I am prepping. Yep, I am a liter..."Thanks Carol 👍
I got an extremely odd mix this time around, but considering that half of them were already on my TBR and the other half will usefully provide interesting reading challenges material, I can't complain.Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel - Luo Guanzhong (I now have a one volume version in addition to my original four volume set, both unabridged, and I hope that cross comparison between the two will aid my read of this next year)
Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe - John Boswell (!)
Mein Kampf - Adolf Hitler (know thy enemy)
All This, and Heaven Too - Rachel Field (may have to do some swapping around for my 1938 spot in next year's Quest for Women)
High Rising - Angela Thirkell (this is going right into my 1933 QfW spot)
Nancy Cunard: A Biography - Anne Chisholm (!!!)
Aubrey wrote: "I got an extremely odd mix this time around, but considering that half of them were already on my TBR and the other half will usefully provide interesting reading challenges material, I can't compl..."I tried to read some of Mein Kampf last year. I got a Kindle download. Because I teach an Anne Frank unit, the students of course want to discuss Hitler. I gave up reading it at about the 30% mark. You would think that sheer morbid curiosity would make it readable, but I found it was just so boring. Completely unlikable and yet boring. Perhaps part of my problem is how much I hate politics, even historic politics.
Lynn wrote: "I tried to read some of Mein Kampf last year. I got a Kindle download. Because I teach an Anne Frank unit, the students of course want to discuss Hitler. I gave up reading it at about the 30% mark. You would think that sheer morbid curiosity would make it readable, but I found it was just so boring. Completely unlikable and yet boring. Perhaps part of my problem is how much I hate politics, even historic politics."I'm sure morbid curiosity was my initial motivation in adding the book to my TBR way back in 2012, but these days, I've become more aware of a trend called 'dog-whistling' wherein people in politics make bigoted remarks in a code that it's possible to interpret if one knows the context. Hitler didn't capture the popular imagination of millions of people through sheer luck, so I'm hoping that reading this, trying as it will be, will give me insight into whether whatever innocuous things he said has been showing up in today's politics. An action founded on depressing as well as paranoid logic, but these days, I'd rather be prepared than ignorantly blissful, and I might as well put my reading stamina to something useful that could help those who can't deal with reading something like this.
Aubrey wrote: "Lynn wrote: "I tried to read some of Mein Kampf last year. I got a Kindle download. Because I teach an Anne Frank unit, the students of course want to discuss Hitler. I gave up reading it at about ..."Aubrey, I agree that it has become so important to educate ourselves about this so we can read with awareness. Just when I think I can spot the dog whistles, I realize how many more I'm clueless about that must be out there.
On a lighter note, I picked up three for a pittance recently for my 2020 challenges:
The Country Girls
Palace Walk and
The Makioka Sisters
along with a lovely hardback copy of
The Feast of the Goat
On the very last day of the year (as is probably fitting), I managed to slip in one last trip to my fave indie bookstore and snatch up a pair of beauties.The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York - Patricia Cline Cohen (!)
The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature: Writings from the Mainland in the Long Twentieth Century - Yunte Huang (!!!)
The second was an especially marvelous find and resulted in a nice conversation with the two staff members on hand after I let out an audible 'Yes. upon spotting it. Didn't hurt one of them had majored in Chinese studies.
Kathleen wrote: "Aubrey wrote: "Lynn wrote: "I tried to read some of Mein Kampf last year. I got a Kindle download. Because I teach an Anne Frank unit, the students of course want to discuss Hitler. I gave up readi..."I heart Palace Walk, and Makioka is stellar. Good haul, that.
Carol wrote: "I heart Palace Walk, and Makioka is stellar. Good haul, that. "Yay! Glad to hear this, Carol.
I just bought Frankenstein and Lolita, I'm planning on starting to read one of them this weekend :-)
Not that many works from my library sale this time around, but what I got was well worth it, especially the work that I've been looking for for some time that was explicitly mentioned in the sale's email. I also got an unread work by a previously esteemed author and two works by two Latin American authors whose existence I hadn't known of, one of which will help me knock out another hole in my Century of Women plans.The Anatomy of Melancholy - Robert Burton (!!!)
Who Would Have Thought It? - María Amparo Ruiz de Burton (Century of Women - 1870s)
The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories - Horacio Quiroga
Voyage in the Dark - Jean Rhys
I have the anatomy of melancholy. I had wanted that awhile too. Boy what sizable book!
I have ordered and received some of the books I will need for my Old&New Challenge. The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
Eighteenth-Century Women Dramatists by Melinda Finberg
This collection of plays includes
The Innocent Mistress by Mary Pix
The Busie Body by Susanna Centlivre
The Times by Elizabeth Griffith
The Belle's Strategem by Hannah Cowley
And then because I need not want the complete works, I bought withdrawn copy from library:
The Best Short Stories by Guy de Maupassant
My dear friend Wendy from Antwerpen has sent me 20 euros for the holidays, so since it was half price, I bought the brand-new illustrated Folio Society edition of Empire Of The Sun by J.G. Ballard.
I also got the 50 year anniversary deluxe paperback of
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov from ebay.
As well as The Complete plays of Oscar Wilde, a very small and quite old pocket size edition with a leather cover from a charity shop.
I also ordered Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre - H.P. Lovecraft from Germany on ebay.
That is a nice friend, and a nice variety of books, Jazzy.
Can she be my friend too????
BAM wrote: "I have the anatomy of melancholy. I had wanted that awhile too. Boy what sizable book!"It may or may not be sizable enough to qualify as a futute contestant for my yearly long read. We shall see.
I've been filling my home classics library with some of "the basics" from a semi-local $5 or less used store. Next: to read them?I looked for The House of the Spirits but unfortunately they didn't have it. This trip's finds:
The Road
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
(both Oprah editions)
Agnes Grey
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:lol You must be an optimist, i always assume i'll die while reading, just as its about to get to the big reveal... damn you cruel Fate! :P . I think thats how most hauntings start ;) .