Recently Purchased/Borrowed

[Ronny]

Good idea, I am running out of creative places to stash my books, my husband is starting to comment on where they show up. After I filled all the shelves, a few drawes and baskets, I tried hiding the books under my cat but she moves around, under pillows but he reaches under and finds them, I guess I could put them under the dirty laundry (nobody touches that but me) but who wants smelly books.

 

[abecedarian]

Still,
Um, well yes, sorta.
I'm thinking of moving this chair out and just sitting on a carton of books instead. More space for books that way.
Peder

Don't do that unless you throw some cushions on top of the cartons. I bet they'd be pretty uncomfortable otherwise.
I'm not above giving books away; in fact, I'm going to my local library this afternoon and I think I'll ask if they're ready for more donations to their next sale.

 

[Ronny]

At the library book sale today I picked up Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, the Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield, Monkey King by Patricia Chao and Silk Road by Jeanne Larsen, all for $2.75

 

[Ms.]

Running with Scissors - Augusten Burroughs
A Man Without a Country - Kurt Vonnegut (I have not read any of his work but it was cheap)
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

 

[steffee]

the Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

That's a great book! And a bargain for those, too.

A few of my recent purchases:
The Annotated Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (finally! Yay!!)
Despair - Vladimir Nabokov
Speak, Memory - Vladimir Nabokov
Cloud, Castle, Lake - Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
Invitation to a Beheading - Vladimir Nabokov
Strong Opinions
Collected Stories - Vladimir Nabokov
(which makes my Nabokov collection now higher than any other author! But I've lost Glory, somehow, unless it is in my bed somewhere)

The Mirror of Ink - Jorge Luis Borges
Double Fault - Lionel Shriver
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
Set of 8 Paulo Coelho books
Lanark: Life in Four Books - Alasdair Gray
Blue Shoes and Happiness - Alexander Smith
Don't Let's Go To the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller

And er, a few more.

 

[pontalba]

A few of my recent purchases:
The Annotated Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (finally! Yay!!)
Despair - Vladimir Nabokov
Speak, Memory - Vladimir Nabokov
Cloud, Castle, Lake - Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
Invitation to a Beheading - Vladimir Nabokov
Strong Opinions
Collected Stories - Vladimir Nabokov
(which makes my Nabokov collection now higher than any other author! But I've lost Glory, somehow, unless it is in my bed somewhere)

RAH! RAH! RAH!!

 

[-Carlos-]

 

[ions]

Aquablue the images are nice and all but if everyone starts doing that soon the pages are a collage of images and not fun to look at. You could make a link to the image and still be as 1337.

Today I purchased Train Your Brain by Ryuta Kawashima. I don't feel as sharp as I used to. I stumble over simple statements and have trouble selecting words. I'm hoping this will help. I'm also hoping IT'S NOT A TUMOR!

 

[Stewart]

But I've lost Glory, somehow, unless it is in my bed somewhere)

Do you need any help looking for it?

Today I just went out for some pasta and came back with:

• Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys;
• A Clue To The Exit, Edward St Aubyn;
• Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon

As regards Sunset Song, I read it in school so my memory of it ten years later is reduced to the opening paragraph and a select number of scenes. But, since it was voted the best Scottish novel of all time in 2005 and another forum member has it on order, I thought it best to reaquaint myself with it and start a discussion on it.

 

[Sly]

Image may be a little too large, sorry

 

[Peder]

A few of my recent purchases:
...
Cloud, Castle, Lake - Vladimir Nabokov
....
(which makes my Nabokov collection now higher than any other author! But I've lost Glory, somehow, unless it is in my bed somewhere)
...
And er, a few more.

Way to go Steffee! Especially that "few more"
Cloud, Castle, Lake sounds interesting. VN?

But overall, that doesn't sound like book buying. It sounds more like an orgy -- but a nice orgy.
Toes! definite Toes!
Peder

 

[steffee]

But I've lost Glory, somehow, unless it is in my bed somewhere)

Do you need any help looking for it?

Absolutely! But it's mine. I would give anything to anyone, except the Nabokov stuff.

Way to go Steffee! Especially that "few more"
Cloud, Castle, Lake sounds interesting. VN?

Penguin have this short collection out to celebrate their 70th birthday. There's some very good authors, and the books are priced at £1.50 each (although I have seen the entire set of seventy titles selling for as little as £50).

From the Penguin page:

Cloud, Castle, Lake
Vladimir Nabokov
ISBN: 0141022353
Synopsis

A masterful novelist both in his native Russian and in English, Nabokov shocked a generation with the publication of Lolita in 1955. Penguin have published all of his stylish, intricate and sensuous writing, and the wickedly inventive stories in Cloud, Castle, Lake offer a rich combination of humour and horror, exploring questions of literature, love, madness and memory.
Extract from this book

You will please pardon me, dear Madam, but I am a rude and straightforward person, so I'll come right out with it: do not labor under any delusion: this is far from being a fan letter. On the contrary, as you will realize yourself in a minute, it is a rather odd little epistle that, who knows, might serve as a lesson of sorts not only for you but for other impetuous lady novelists as well. I hasten, first of all, to introduce myself, so that my visual image may show through like a watermark; this is much more honest than to encourage by silence the incorrect conclusions that the eye involuntarily draws from the calligraphy of penned lines. No, in spite of my slender handwriting and the youthful flourish of my commas, I am stout and middle-aged; true, my corpulence is not flabby, but has piquancy, zest, waspishness. It is far removed, Madam, from the turndown collars of the poet Apukhtin, the fat pet of ladies. But that will do. You, as a writer, have already collected these clues to fill in the rest of me. Bonjour Madame. And now let's get down to business.

Buy this book, or buy the boxed set
Further reading

If you like this book, you may also like these:

The Kiss - Anton Chekhov
The Mirror of Ink - Jorge Luis Borges
Young Austerlitz - W.G. Sebald

Or the entire list is here.

But overall, that doesn't sound like book buying. It sounds more like an orgy -- but a nice orgy.
Toes! definite Toes!
Peder

Toes!! Absolutely. And a nice orgy? Oooh, indeed.

 

[Stewart]

Forgot to mention my other two purchases:

Spies, Michael Frayn
Dreams Of My Russian Summers, Andrei Makine


And I take it there's no ticket to this orgy mentioned above?

 

[pontalba]

Steffee
When I saw Cloud, Castle, Lake, I thought you meant the short story by that name. I clicked on your link, and thats only for U.K., I tried the U.S. site and they don't have it! Crazy! I've e-mailed them about it.

btw, new aquisition:

The Great Deluge Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Douglas Brinkley

from the inner front flap:

In the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline. Yet those wind-torn hours represented only the first stage of the relentless triple tragedy that Katrina brought to the entire Gulf Coast, from Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama.
First came the hurricane, one of the three strongest ever to make landfall in the United States--150 mile-per-hour winds, with gusts measuring more than 180 miles per hour ripping buildings to pieces.
Second, the storm-surge flooding, which submerged a half million homes, creating the largest domestic refugee crisis since the Civil War. Eighty percent of New Orleans was under water, as debris and sewage coursed through the streets, and whole towns in southeastern Louisiana ceased to exist.
And third, the human tragedy of government mismanagement, which proved as cruel as the natural disaster itself.

 

[steffee]

Steffee
When I saw Cloud, Castle, Lake, I thought you meant the short story by that name. I clicked on your link, and thats only for U.K., I tried the U.S. site and they don't have it! Crazy! I've e-mailed them about it.

It most likely is a short story, Pontalba. It's a collection of "pocket" books brought out by Penguin to celebrate their 70th birthday. I have bought a few now, and two I have just fetched are The Great Wall of China by Franz Kafka and Caligula by Robert Graves. Both are only 56 pages long.

Just read the synopsis again though, and it says it's Cloud, Castle, Lake and other short stories? I'll let you know...

 

[Peder]

And I take it there's no ticket to this orgy mentioned above?

Stewart,
Just bring your own Lolita. Then it's free for all.
The girls get to bring their own Timofey. Or Martin.
Peder

 

[steffee]

Well if our darling Timofey will be there, count me in!

 

[pontalba]

Caligula by Robert Graves. Both are only 56 pages long.
Just read the synopsis again though, and it says it's Cloud, Castle, Lake and other short stories? I'll let you know...

I was eyeballing the Graves one as well.

Yes, CCL is a short story, I have it in a collection of VN's I have, thats what confused me. I'd be interested to see if its been re-done.

 

[pontalba]

Well if our darling Timofey will be there, count me in!

He is certainly the nicest and best of the group so far.
Unless we count VN himself? Vera may have something to say about that!

 

[ions]

I bought Hey Nostradamus! to get signed at a Coupland signing and got three free hardcover copies of JPod signed.