Last Book You Bought and Why

[Idril]

Settlers: The Emigrant Novels Book 3 ~ Vilhelm Moberg
Kornel Esti ~ Deszö Kosztolányi
Living Souls ~ Dmitrii Bykov
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich ~ Danilo Kis

[Buh4Bee]

I shamefully admit it: The Hunger Games. It's kind of good.

[Easter]

The Lost City of Z by David Grann. I'm in the mood for some non-fiction :)

[cassbee]

I've bought "Robocalypse" lately and as I stared reading it I couldn't put it down. Very decent and well written book. And quite surprising. Highly recommend this read!

[Buh4Bee]

I looked this title up, but I only found video games. Can you share who the author is?

[MystyrMystyry]

Picked up a copy of The Celestial Steam Locomotive by Michael Coney from an Op Shop, basically because the cover artwork caught my eye, then the title, lasty the blurb:

Allen Blue-Cloud is pure intelligence, immortal, ineffable, a being who rembers not only what was, but what will be. Set in the year 143,624 Cyclic, in a future so distant man has evolved into five distinct species on an Earth that is but one of many possible Earths. True Humans are few and far remote, and those remaining have withdrawn into the Domes, where with the aid of the Rainbow they dream time away. But there is Manuel, the artist; and an old man; and a sleeping girl. And together with Starquin the Omniscient they will come together to form the Triad, to challenge the age-old forces that hold the Earth - their Earth - in thrall and change the history of the galaxy.

Can't argue with that


Also a '91 edition of The Hutchinson Encyclopedic Dictionary published by Oxford Press apparently, but the illustrations aren't much to write home about, featuring mainly grainy b&w photographs of various famous people in different areas of pursuit - but hey, five bucks...

[Kafka's Crow]

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Have been thinking about reading it since my days of obsession with Walker Percy 20 years ago.

[Sancho]

The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan

and

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

both at the recommendation of a friend (2 different friends)

[Quintus Ennius]

Finnegans Wake By James Joyce. Because I heard it was a pretty difficult book and I wanted to try it. Unfortunately, I couldn't finish it.

[Des Essientes]

The 1942 edition of "A Conrad Argosy" first published in 1897. This 713 page tome contains 14 of Joseph Conrad's works and hundreds of illustrative woodcuts by Hans Alexander Mueller.
I purchased it because it contains several of Conrad's stories which I haven't yet read and also because its purchase price was a mere 50 cents in the used books for sale section of the Huntington Beach Central Library.
Everytime I am in this part of the library I am taken aback by the cultural shift its contents represent. Persons who in their youth, middle, and old age collected these great books in their home libraries are now dying off in droves and their semi-literate heirs have no use for them. I can practically smell the tobacco smoke and brandy and see the bell-bottoms, turtlenecks and sports-coats of these books' owners in their prime--back in the time when intellectual pretension was widespread amongst the Southern Californian bourgeoisie. Alas all that is gone. As dead as Dick Cavett and Michael Douglas. The great dumbing down is in full effect. Beautiful books may now be had for a pittance. I suppose one might say that the culture's loss is my gain, but it still makes me somewhat sad.

[Declan]

I've read Henry James's Washington Square last. I'm on his What Maisie Knew now, but going very slowly, though it is good. But the language is very demanding, so you need to be in an intellectual flow and not at an intellectual ebb to go through the mental routine that James puts you through: his gymnasium is all jumping through hoops and box splits.

Washington Square was a wonderful story of unrequited love. A beautiful, quiet girl, who the other characters considered unbeautiful and stupid. She was anything but. She was lovely: a picture of sanity and modesty in high society.

I didn't buy either of these books. I'm reading them free on gutenberg.org. Fantastic, the web can be.

[dark desire]

I have ordered online The White Noise by Don Delillo after being recommended by people on this very forum on another thread posted by me. I want to explore postmodern fiction. That was why the post.

[bouquin]

The Go-Between (by L. P. Hartley)




____________________
Currently reading: The Home and the World (Rabindranath Tagore)

[Shalot]

The last thing I bought was Dexter is Delicious in audiobook format so that i can enjoy via my nano while working. In fact, I'm going through the whole Dexter series via audiobook, because I can drive, work, work around the house, take a shower and do a whole bunch of stuff that I couldn't otherwise do if I were just reading a traditional paper bound book (or kindle edition).

I've been watching the Dexter series on Showtime, and while I am waiting for season 7 to air, I decided to listen to the audiobooks and for those who don't already know, the show and the books are quite a bit different. Between the books and the show, I am happily observing Dexter's existence in these parallel universes, and I can't wait to see where they both go.

Dexter is Delicious is read aloud by the author himself, and he does a good job, but I was getting used to and enjoying Nick Landrum's narrative style. I especially enjoyed the last book, Dexter By Design and I've been snickering about the poop van for days now, which I first heard about while working, and I had to stifle the laughter coming from my cubicle, because I didn't want to explain that I was laughing about the "Poop Van." I don't tell stories very well, and it would require quite a bit of lead-up to properly explain "Poop Van" to someone who wasn't listening along with you. So yeah, I am enjoying the Dexter series of books. Poop Van (LOL)

[Desolation]

The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman by Sterne
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Moby-Dick by Melville (about the third time I've bought it...this time I'm really going to read the ****er)

Why? WHY? Because. They're them. And all that.

I'm also thinking about trading a few things in tomorrow to get -

Madame Bovary by Flaubert
Middlemarch by Eliot

[Samsa]

Women in Love - D. H. Lawrence.

Because I just finished The Rainbow.

[bouquin]

The Country Girls (Edna O'Brien)
The Enormous Room (E. E. Cummings)
The Waves (Virginia Woolf)
The Humbling (Philip Roth)
If This is a Man (Primo Levi)
The Truce (Primo Levi)
Birdsong (Sebastian Faulks)
She (H. Rider Haggard)
The Butcher Boy (Patrick McCabe)
The Pursuit of Love (Nancy Mitford)
Krik? Krak! (Edwidge Danticat)
The House on Mango Street (Sandra Cisneros)
Les Braises (Sandor Marai)
Bliss and Other Stories (Katharine Mansfield)
Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut)
The Trusting and the Maimed (stories by James Plunkett)
Farewell, My Lovely (Raymond Chandler)
Little Black Book of Stories (A. S. Byatt)
Divisadero (Michael Ondaatje)
Quartet (Jean Rhys)
The Third Man (Graham Greene)
The Fallen Idol (Graham Greene)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
Her Privates We (Frederic Manning)

[Buckthorn]

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco - because it was recommended on the forum
Veggie Burgers Every Which Way: Plus Toppings, Sides, Buns and More by Lukas Volger - because I have a cookbook addiction

I also downloaded the following for Kindle because they were free:
Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift
Oliver Twist
A Tale of Two Cities
Wuthering Heights
Dracula
The Old Curiosity Shop
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Three Musketeers
Don Quixote

[Belto]

''World without end'', Ken Follett

Why

I picked it up after finishing ''the pillars of the earth, by the same author. It is a book i appreciated so much, because it made me enjoy English, as a language i still learn (non native)

[emmawillyarms]

Samsa, I hope you enjoy Women in Love. I just had a Modernism exam yesterday and used Women in Love as one of my text about about consciousness. The Women in Love thread on here (although quite old now) is really informative and was great for my revision!

I just bought Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley. Bit of a mistake right before exam period, I've had to abandon it halfway through!

I bought it because after seeing the second-hand book fair at uni I figured I needed something new to read to distract me from bogged down with a lot of Modernist reading for my exam revision.

[bouquin]

Murder Must Advertise (Dorothy L. Sayers)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Alexander Solzhenitsyn)
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Victor Hugo)
The Sorrows of Young Werther and Selected Writings (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
The Master of Petersburg (J. M. Coetzee)
The Complete Father Brown Stories (G. K. Chesterton)
Vanishing Point (David Markson)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
The Idiot (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
Trois Femmes Puissantes (Marie Ndiaye)




_______________
Currently reading: BLISS and Other Stories (Katherine Mansfield)

[bouquin]

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Giorgio Bassani)
Wittgenstein's Nephew (Thomas Bernhard)
Drop City (T. C. Boyle)
A Home at the End of the World (Michael Cunningham)
The Radiant Way (Margaret Drabble)
Justine (Lawrence Durrell)
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Milan Kundera)
Christ Stopped at Eboli (Carlo Levi)
A Heart So White (Javier Marias)
Pereira Declares (Antonio Tabucchi)
The Master (Colm Toibin)
Tono-Bungay (H. G. Wells)
Kipps (H. G. Wells)



____________________
Currently reading: Farewell, My Lovely (Raymond Chandler)

[Emil Miller]

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Giorgio Bassani)
Wittgenstein's Nephew (Thomas Bernhard)
Drop City (T. C. Boyle)
A Home at the End of the World (Michael Cunningham)
The Radiant Way (Margaret Drabble)
Justine (Lawrence Durrell)
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Milan Kundera)
Christ Stopped at Eboli (Carlo Levi)
A Heart So White (Javier Marias)
Pereira Declares (Antonio Tabucchi)
The Master (Colm Toibin)
Tono-Bungay (H. G. Wells)
Kipps (H. G. Wells)


____________________
Currently reading: Farewell, My Lovely (Raymond Chandler)


I read Christ stopped at Eboli but it was so long ago that I don't recall what it was about although I think it's about poverty in Southern Italy. Justine or any of the Alexandria Quartet are worth reading and both Kipps and Tono Bungay offer an amusing insight into life in Edwardian England.

[2pjames]

Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, the Penguin version. I'm trying to read all of Dostoevsky's major works. Not sure if I'm getting the best possible translations though -- any advice?

[scottw]

A 1962 Penguin edition of Ulysses.

Because it smelled divine.

[papayahed]

Dracula and Anna Karenina, I was at the airport and couldn't make up my mind so I bought both.

[tonywalt]

Huckleberry Finn - Because it's good.

[BitofEndearment]

Call Me Waiter by Joseph Torra, in order to send a copy to my uncle because I thought he would enjoy it.

[ZTay]

I bought a volume of Charles Peguy's poetry because the guy who referenced him (thereby introducing me to him) said, "one cannot help but be moved by the gentleness of his soul". After a Wikipedia reading, it was confirmed! And I'm currently awaiting the book. Which was scheduled to be delivered Monday...

[The Truth]

I bought David Albahari's Leeches because it was pretty cheap on amazon and looked like something I could potentially enjoy.

[Helga]

The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco because I saw and it was cheap and I wanted to buy a book.

[bouquin]

The Pigeon (Patrick Süskind)
Gabriel's Gift (Hanif Kureishi)
You Are Not a Stranger Here (Adam Haslett)




____________________
Currently reading: Lullaby (Chuck Palahniuk)

[Alan_M]

I love to read fiction. Mysteries and science fiction are my favorite (for the hardcore out there, I know this isn't considered literature!). I’m currently reading Black Ops, a Presidential novel, and I have to say, it might be difficult to read if you aren’t interested in this sort of stuff. It has a lot of government terms and it can get confusing.

[RicMisc]

I just bought three books in Italian while on vacation. I intend to read these with a dictionary close-by because I would like to improve my Italian. It is currently a bit shabby but I want to improve. The books I bought are Divina Commedia by Dante, Il Nome Della Rosa by Umberto Eco and Decameron by Boccaccio. They will present a challenge but I'm up for it.

[Venerable Bede]

I just bought three books in Italian while on vacation. I intend to read these with a dictionary close-by because I would like to improve my Italian. It is currently a bit shabby but I want to improve. The books I bought are Divina Commedia by Dante, Il Nome Della Rosa by Umberto Eco and Decameron by Boccaccio. They will present a challenge but I'm up for it.

I love Umberto Eco, but I have only been able to read his work in translation so far. When I have mastered Italian I intend to revisit his works in the original.

[Kyriakos]

Two volumes of Fernando Pessoa's detective stories. Started reading one of them... I generally like Pessoa, have read most of the Book of Disquiet, but he had his own failings (as a writer too), so i am not advancing in his work with great enthousiasm.

[thelastmelon]

I shall be taking a class in Popular Fiction this semester - and so I just ordered some of the literature for that class, some are books I've read before, and some will be new reads to me. I bought:

I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle
Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales - Stephen King
Ödets hav - Elisabet Nemert
The Murders in the Rue Morgue - Edgar Allan Poe

[Buh4Bee]

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I downloaded it for free on my e-reader. I have not read him yet, and as I have just started, I am very encouraged by how good the beginning is.

[Paulclem]

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. It sounds intriguing. I'm also going to buy on Kindle an Alan Massie who does a detective fiction set in Vichy France.

[E.A Rumfield]

Dostoyevsky is the kind of writer where for the first hundred pages or so you'll be a little bored and on the verge of putting the book down, then something will be said or happen that will make everything come together. The character will come to life and everything that happened up to that point which you previously didn't understand will become profound and you will bother all your friends with your observations. I dig some of Tolstoy's work more. The last book I bought was the U.S.A three volume set by John Dos Passo's. I bought the book because Bukowski speaks highly of Dos and Bukowski's recommendations have never failed me.

[Alex Delarge]

I just bought a copy of Casanova's Voyages and Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse. I just started in Woolf's one, so far it seems a very good deal. :)

[The Truth]

Bought The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall because it sounded reminiscent of House of Leaves and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy because I loved The Road.

[bouquin]

The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)
Le Désert des Tartares (Dino Buzzati)




_______________
Currently reading: Franny and Zooey (J. D. Salinger)

[fb0252]

The Gospel According To Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago.

written of favorably by Harold Bloom in his book Genius.

[crusoe]

BIOCHIPS - William Gibson. Cost me 1 Euro on a Flea-Market. Why I bought it ?
I really don't know. Read it years ago, so maybe nostalgia.

[tonywalt]

The Presidents Club by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy

Best American Short Stories 2004 (Lorrie Moore as Selector) excellent annual book - really the best of each year.

[bouquin]

Book sale at the American Library in Paris -
Like Water for Chocolate (Laura Esquivel)
The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien)
The Book of Illusions (Paul Auster)
Amsterdam (Ian McEwan)
Atonement (Ian McEwan)
Smilla et L'Amour de la Neige (Peter Hoeg)




_______________
Currently reading: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

[Lykren]

La Princesse de Cleves.

Someone gave me a gift certificate to a bookstore, and I heard it about in reference to Sarkozy and was curious.

[mohammadali]

i bought a glossary of literary terms by Abrams
because i needed some information also i have to read this book for my major.

[Helga]

I recently bought 19 novels for school. It would be a long list if I wrote them all down but I am gonna read them all in the next three months.

[tonywalt]

The wine of Solitude by Irene Nemirovsky

In the Sea there are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda

[souremongrel]

last book i bought was elements of style by strunk & white.
i got it b/c my writing is not very articulated. plus i am in an ap english class. so might as well sharpen my writing skills. my teacher recommended it to me.

[bouquin]

15/09/2012

Libra (Don DeLillo)
Regeneration (Pat Barker)
Cider with Rosie (Laurie Lee)
Billy Liar (Keith Waterhouse)
Le Voyageur Enchanté (Nikolaï Leskov)




_______________
Currently reading: Cry, the Beloved Country (Alan Paton)

[crusoe]

"Thomas Müntzer" by Gerhard Wehr. I bought it because I am interested in the german Peasant-War of the 16th Century.

[bouquin]

21/09/2012

Life is a Caravanserai (Emine Sevgi Ozdamar)
La Promesse de l'Aube (Romain Gary)
Exercices de Style (Raymond Queneau)
Home (Toni Morrison)




__________________
Currently reading: Selected Stories (Nadine Gordimer)

[bouquin]

W ou Le Souvenir de l'Enfance (Georges Perec)
Sons and Lovers (D. H. Lawrence)
The Last September (Elizabeth Bowen)
Burger's Daughter (Nadine Gordimer)
Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons)
A Kestrel for a Knave (Barry Hines)
Cancer Ward (Alexander Solzhenitsyn)
The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger) - to reread; lent my first copy to somebody and it has never come back.




____________________
Currently reading: THE TRUSTING AND THE MAIMED and other Irish stories (James Plunkett)

[DianeAdams]

'God's Grammar'. Never heard of it before, bought it just because of the title. Wasn't bad.

[Scheherazade]

Sons and Lovers (D. H. Lawrence)
Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons)I will re-read Sons and Lovers in December and I have always wanted to read Cold Comfort Farm. If you let me know when you decide to read it, I might tag along.

[aaron stark]

Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim. Had already heard about the book, but nothing more than that. When reading the book flap in the store, I simply decided to buy it. Seems an interesting story, I certainly appreciated Heart of Darkness, so why not this one

[llall]

alThe Prize - Daniel Yergin

Because I couldn't find a copy at any of my local libraries.

[bouquin]

I will re-read Sons and Lovers in December and I have always wanted to read Cold Comfort Farm. If you let me know when you decide to read it, I might tag along.




I 'll keep you posted.




____________________
Currently reading: Mercier et Camier (Samuel Beckett)

[FROADS]

Just bought The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Even though I know Coelho is very acclaimed, I've never read anything from him.

[Scheherazade]

Just bought The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Even though I know Coelho is very acclaimed, I've never read anything from him.Keep it that way, I'd say! :D

[aaron stark]

Keep it that way, I'd say! :D
This makes me want to know why :p

[FROADS]

Keep it that way, I'd say! :D
It was a great read from start to finish

[My2cents]

what?
my father's tears john updike
freedom jonathan franzen
rum diary hunter thompson

why?
grand total: $15 (what a bargain)

[Desolation]

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, because Infinite Jest has made me want more, and it was used.

[bouquin]

What Maisie Knew (Henry James)
The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
Saturday (Ian McEwan)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (John Le Carré)
Life & Times of Michael K (J. M. Coetzee)
Waiting for the Barbarians (J. M. Coetzee)
Decline and Fall (Evelyn Waugh)
The Castle (Franz Kafka)




_______________
Currently reading: Murder Must Advertise (Dorothy L. Sayers)

[Sancho]

Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray

Was in Dublin this weekend and I wanted something local but I wasn't up for Ulysses.

So far, so good.

[Desolation]

Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
...Because I haven't read enough Pynchon.

Parallel Stories by Peter Nadas...Because I'm addicted to gigantic books.
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges...Because Borges.

[dfw]

how's the pale king?

[islandclimber]

Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
...Because I haven't read enough Pynchon.

Parallel Stories by Peter Nadas...Because I'm addicted to gigantic books.
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges...Because Borges.

Parallel Stories was incredible... And if you end up liking it as much as I did, Nadás' earlier work Book of Memories is equally good.

Love the choices there. Pynchon is my favourite English language writer by far. Against the Day might be my favourite work of his in terms of pure enjoyment, though I prefer GR to it for several other reasons.

Might I recommend László Krasznahorkai's novels to you if you haven't read them yet. Not so long, but so perfectly labyrinthine and desolate. As a character says in War and War, "reality examined to the point of madness..." Brilliant. I think I reviewed that one in the book review section here and The Melancholy of Resistance is even better.

[Phangirl7]

The last book I bought was this summer.
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson. I wanted to read more of her books.

[Darcy88]

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe. Because I was feeling sorrowful and I've been meaning to read the book for years.

[Babyguile]

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Because I just fancied it. It'll be my first Defoe too.

[FenwickS]

Moby Dick. A must read to any Classics lover!

[VerdantFields]

For a philosophy course, Hobbe's Leviathan.

[Ser Nevarc]

Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. About 25 pages in.

[Ser Nevarc]

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe. Because I was feeling sorrowful and I've been meaning to read the book for years.



Great! It's one of my all-time favorites. And if you want to read about an interesting life-story for a novel (such as it's composition, publication, and reception), then check it out. When Werther was published, it rocked Germany.

[bouquin]

In a Free State (V. S. Naipaul)
The Third Policeman (Flann O'Brien)
At Swim-Two-Birds (Flann O'Brien)
Inside Mr Enderby (Anthony Burgess)
So Long, See You Tomorrow (William Maxwell)




________________
Currently reading: THE THIRD MAN and THE FALLEN IDOL (Graham Greene)

[qimissung]

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, because I found the premise intriguing.

[Darcy88]

Great! It's one of my all-time favorites. And if you want to read about an interesting life-story for a novel (such as it's composition, publication, and reception), then check it out. When Werther was published, it rocked Germany.

Yeah I heard many young men committed suicide in emulation of the book's main character.

[kaethe]

Yeah I heard many young men committed suicide in emulation of the book's main character.

It also influenced the fashion style! Felt hat and brown jackboots were all the rage.

[tonywalt]

Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

[jayat]

Richard III. I was ifluenced by this latin quote "ars longa, vita brevis".

[Snowqueen]

The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me by Roald Dahl. I bought it for my niece.

[bouquin]

Nana (Emile Zola)
La Pianiste (Elfriede Jelinek)

[Grit]

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

I bought it because I'd read all the other appealing classics on the shelf of my local book store already.

[Sancho]

Gone With The Wind, by Margaret Mitchell.

When I walked up to the checkout counter at my local bookstore with an armload of books, somehow this one made it into the pile. It's a pretty nice 75th anniversary edition.

I'd always avoided this book, thinking it was racist, but it turns out it's mostly just a romance novel. Also it takes place right around where I live. The Flint River runs near my house, and so does Tara Boulevard, which was named for the plantation in the book not vice versa. Mitchell's descriptions of the landscape around here are fabulous.

As for her depiction of plantation life in the South in the 19th century, uh, I donno, man. It's written from the perspective of the Southern Landed Gentry and I suppose they may have had a romantic view of their lifestyle. But I'm continually finding myself trying to figure out how much of it is what those people thought of themselves and how much of it is what Mitchell, writing in the 1930s, imagined them to be.

Anyway, back to the checkout counter at the bookstore: a sweet young black girl was ringing up my books and we were laughing and chit-chatting with each other right up until she got to that book. She took one look at it and gave me a malignant stink look.

I said, "Sorry about that one. I guess I really just wanted to know what's in it."

She said, "Alright then."

I suppose I should've bought Michelle Obama's book as a counterbalance.

[Grit]

That's funny Sancho. It reminds me of when I ordered in a textbook on psychopathy. The look that clerk had as I spelled out the title was pretty funny. "Yeah it's called Without Conscience: The disturbing world of psychopaths around us." I wanted to say "It's not a self help book!"

[maxphisher]

Got the following at a used book sale today:

Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon
Parade's End - Ford Madox Ford
Winterwood - Patrick McCabe
an Irish Literature Anthology

The book sale was to raise money for scholarships as the university I work at. At $1/pound, I couldn't resist.

[Sancho]

That's funny Sancho. It reminds me of when I ordered in a textbook on psychopathy. The look that clerk had as I spelled out the title was pretty funny. "Yeah it's called Without Conscience: The disturbing world of psychopaths around us." I wanted to say "It's not a self help book!"

Haha!

Always a good idea to have an excuse ready when you're purchasing something embarrassing: "Uh, those right there are my art magazines."

[Nightshade]

"I Have Manners" its a little picture book published by Scholastic part of the Best I can be series. Why? Because my class is drives me round the bend sometimes with their 'bad manners' (shouting over each other, talking with food in their mouths (licking my face but there is sadly no reference to that in the book) so I thought why not have some extra reinforcement?

[Byronic]

The last book I bought was 'Sweet Tooth' by Ian McEwan. I'm plodding stoically through it, but not enjoying it that much. I wish I'd spent the money on A.S. Byatt's 'Ragnorak' instead...

[Helga]

I just went to a book market, for the second time since it opened, I bought 14 books the first time but only 4 yesterday. I was very happy to find an old copy of Praxis by Fay Weldon, I have wanted it for years. I also got a history book and a book on literature here on the ice around 1500 and one by Susan Sontag. I'm gonna try and get Praxis into my reading schedule now but it will take me awhile to finish I think.

[Jassy Melson]

Haha!

Always a good idea to have an excuse ready when you're purchasing something embarrassing: "Uh, those right there are my art magazines."

There's no earthly reason for apologising to anyone for buying or reading Gone with the Wind. It's one of the great American novels, up there with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick--all of which contain racial prejudice. The fact that they were all written in the 19th century merely illustrates the racial prejudice of that time. Along comes the 20th century, and the invention of films. One of the best color films (1939) won an Academy Award for a black actress; and as for greatness--Gone With the Wind still is being read by white students, but black students are taught to fear or to disdain it. The same with ...Huckleberry Finn.

[bouquin]

Naked Lunch (William Burroughs)
Kim (Rudyard Kipling)
The Old Devils (Kingsley Amis)
Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry)
The Living and the Dead (Patrick White)
The Godfather (Mario Puzo)
Joseph Andrews Henry Fielding
Scarlet and Black (Stendhal)
Bel-Ami (Guy de Maupassant)
Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov)
Hangover Square (Patrick Hamilton)




____________________
Currently reading: Exercices de Style (Raymond Queneau)

[bouquin]

Hideous Kinky (Esther Freud)
La Faim (Knut Hamsun)
Le Royaume de ce Monde (Alejo Carpentier)




____________________
Currently reading: La Pianiste (Elfriede Jelinek)

[Heteronym]

The Collected Works of William Butler Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays, because it contains two essays on Blake and I'm currently assembling a collection of books on him.

[Vota]

The Theodore Roosevelt Treasury, leatherbound, published by Easton Press. On a trip across country I stopped off at the beautiful National Park in his name. He seems like someone I would like to know more about. I also am interested in reading his own thoughts and opinions on things. The book, being a collection of his correspondence, seems like an ideal way to do that.

[Buckthorn]

Infinite Jest - a friend recommended it.
Vegan slow cooker recipes - I just bought a slow cooker and needed something to make in it

[aliengirl]

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. I liked Wolf Hall and was curious about how she would develop the story further.

[chrisvia]

William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books because I only have a smaller edition of the illuminated Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and I am hungry for more of this beautiful coupling of words and images.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0500282455/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Desolation]

The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai
Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec

Bought on the recommendation of a fellow litnet user...Also as a reward to myself for getting straight A's last quarter. Can't buy any books for a long while now, though.

[bouquin]

Summer (Edith Wharton)
Family Matters (Rohinton Mistry)
On Beauty (Zadie Smith)
What I Loved (Siri Hustvedt)
Dead Air (Iain Banks)
Wild Swans (Jung Chang)




____________________
Currently reading: The Quest for Christa T. by Christa Wolf

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

The Penny Falls by Mark Bastable
Why: The title and cover art intigues me.
Secondly; to support Forum member and Bloke.
Just illuminated the screen (cracked it open). Plan to delve into it with conviction this weekend.

[ennison]

Cheannaich mi s an seachdainn seo chaidh mar a leanas: The Vivisector, Cloud Atlas, Wonder, Land of Decoration, Wild Coast, The Collected Poems of Philip Larkin and ASJ Tessimond. And a copy of The Songs of DR Maclachlan of Rathuaidhe. Ah but when will I read them? Well into Tessimond already.

[Vota]

The Wealth of Nations-Adam Smith, 1937 Modern Library, cannan edition full of annotations and footnotes.

Why: I have a nearly complete, 1952 set of Great Books of the Western World, which while being awesome for tracing ideas between great minds through generations, has generally small print and is in their original forms without annotation and such. Plus, besides enjoying leatherbound books, I like crusty old books that are in decent shape because it makes me feel connected to the past by having a piece of it in the present, sort of.

[Lykren]

The Tale of Heike, as translated by Royall Tyler, because I loved his 'Genji' so much.

[thelastmelon]

Me and my boyfriend ordered some books yesterday. He really wanted to read the A Song of Ice and Fire series, so we got all published books so far. As for myself, I noticed that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie had released a new book, Americanah, so I got that (I've been waiting for it for years!) - as well as The Fault in Our Stars by John Green that I have been recommended to read by several people now.

[bouquin]

Sometimes a Great Notion (Ken Kesey)
Neuromancer (William Gibson)
Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson)
The Help (Kathryn Stockett)
The Virgin in the Garden (A.S. Byatt)
Auto da Fé (Elias Canetti)
A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan)

[NekoCase]

Just bought the 28 book set of the civil war published by time life, they're hardback and in perfect shape. I got them for $150 at a flea market, and after googling them online didn't see a price that cheap. I purchased them because I love having complete series of books (I just got the complete set of history of civilization by will durant a week ago), I love history, and my grandfather left me the complete set of the time life WWII books. Also, I have just plowed through a song of ice and fire, and the boyfriend of the previous poster will love them. However, I am definitely in need of some non-fiction after five straight fantasy books; luckily I just replenished my supply

[mortalterror]

Shakuntala and Other Writings by Kalidasa. I don't know any other book that has those translations of his epic poems The Birth of the War God or The Dynasty of Raghu, plus it comes with two minor plays and other epic poems I've already read but didn't own.

[bouquin]

UN ETE A BADEN-BADEN (Leonid Tsypkin)
LA MAISON AUX ESPRITS (Isabel Allende)
LE PONT SUR LE DRINA (Ivo Andric)
HOMO FABER (Max Frisch)
LE STECHLIN (Theodor Fontane)

[MysteryGirl]

I believe the last book that I bought was The Portrait of Dorian Grey.

Because I had heard of the story from a couple of people and it caught my interest immensely.

[NordicFrost]

''Foucault's Pendulum''- Umberto Eco
''Being and Nothingness''- Jean Paul Sartre
''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''- Ludwig Wittgenstein
''Paradise Lost''- John Milton
''The Waste Lands''- T.S Eliot
''Waves''- Virginia Woolf

[lawpark]

Baburnama, translated by Wheeler Thackston

[Nick Capozzoli]

linear algebra, 2nd edition, by Michael O'Nan. Had to get it in a used book store. I was working on a problem that required the use of matrices and I needed to review the theory. Since this was the text I used in college and knew it had what I needed, I hunted around for it rather than just picking up any of the other more easily available texts...$6...

[Snowqueen]

I bought Home of the Gentry by Ivan Turgenev last week. My aunt suggested it to me. Turgenev is one of her favourite writers.

[aaron stark]

Salinger's Franny and Zooey. I've already read Franny, I liked it very much!

[bouquin]

Of Human Bondage (W. Somerset Maugham)
Ilustrado (Miguel Syjuco)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)
A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
The Moor's Last Sigh (Salman Rushdie)
The Joke (Milan Kundera)
England Made Me (Graham Greene)
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (Mario Vargas Llosa)




________________
Currently reading: La Faim (Knut Hamsun)

[sonia bhardwaj]

Unwind by Neal Shusterman is amazing!!

The last book I bought was Darkly Dreaming Dexter.

[Maria May]

The last book I bought was ''I am God'' by Giorgio Faletti...I don't know why,I just love thrillers xD

[neilgee]

Ann Veronica by HG Wells because it was June bom, but nobody likes it.

[bookowskee]

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace and The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino. I'm just getting familiarized with these two authors, that's why. And it's on sale, 30% off. Good deal.

[Sancho]

Speaking of good deals, this one was a freebee from Project Gutenberg:

http://i971.photobucket.com/albums/ae197/mollyandbruno/image-2_zps122f7158.jpg (http://s971.photobucket.com/user/mollyandbruno/media/image-2_zps122f7158.jpg.html)

Co. Aytch, A Side Show of the Big Show, by Sam R. Watkins.

It's a fascinating first-person account of the American Civil War from the perspective of a private soldier in the Confederate Army (Company H of the 1st Tennessee).

[phoenixtears]

The Great Gatsby because I have heard a lot about it around here actually, haven't read it yet, though.

[Cuppa' Tea]

The last book I bought was "Very Good Jeeves" By Wodehouse. I absolutely love the Jeeves series and just cannot get enough of the amazingly clever Jeeves and foppish with a heart of gold Bertie Wooster.

[Snowqueen]

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

[hannah_arendt]

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Have you read it?

[Snowqueen]

Have you read it?

No, I haven’t read it yet. I’m currently reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

[lawpark]

Oxford and Cambridge: An Uncommon History, by Peter Sager (a German),translated by David Wilson. Fascinated by the simultaneous grandness and pettiness of these British institutions.

[Snowqueen]

I bought The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad a couple of days ago and gave it to my younger sister as a gift. She just told me that she didn’t like it. What an honest reply!

[hannah_arendt]

No, I haven’t read it yet. I’m currently reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

I am in the middle of "Dune" now :) Then I am going to re-read "Lord of the ring".

[Vota]

A hardcover of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I have that and Atlas Shrugged. I haven't read her work yet, and I have no idea what I'll think of it, but I have heard that they are excellent reads even if one does not agree with the philosophy espoused by them.

[bouquin]

The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
Nostromo (Joseph Conrad)
Confessions of a Justified Sinner (James Hogg)
Les Enfants Terribles (Jean Cocteau)
Call It Sleep (Henry Roth)
Choke (Chuck Palaniuk)
Titus Groan (Mervyn Peake)
Les Désarrois de l'Eleve Törless (Robert Musil)
The Return of the Soldier (Rebecca West)
The Blessing (Nancy Mitford)
Wigs on the Green (Nancy Mitford)




_______________
Currently reading: Le Pont sur la Drina (Ivo Andric)

[bouquin]

The Day of the Triffids (John Wyndham)
The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett)
Red Harvest (Dashiell Hammett)
The Golden Notebook (Doris Lessing)
Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice)
Uncle Silas (J.S. Le Fanu)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (James M. Cain)
The Time Machine (H.G. Wells)
Good Morning, Midnight (Jean Rhys)
Under the Net (Iris Murdoch)
On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
Intimacy (Hanif Kureishi)
A Passage to India (E.M. Forster)
Sentimental Education (Gustave Flaubert)
Amok (Stefan Zweig)
Around the World in Eighty Days (Jules Verne)
Canada (Richard Ford)
La Conscience de Zeno (Italo Svevo)
Collected Stories (Tennessee Williams)
King Solomon's Mines (H. Rider Haggard)
The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)
A Pale View of the Hills (Kazuo Ishiguro)
The Awakening and Other Stories (Kate Chopin)




_______________
Currently reading: Les Braises (Sandor Marai)

[grigioverde]

Gods of the Greeks and The Heroes of the Greeks by Karl Kerényi: I'm delving into latin and greek mythology almost from five months among essays, epic (-and not) poetry and ancient philosopy.

[Desolation]

Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon

[bookowskee]

House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski
An American Dream - Norman Mailer
Back to Blood - Tom Wolfe
Last Exit to Brooklyn - Hubert Selby Jr.
Reheated Cabbage - Irvine Welsh

All at 20% off. Not too bad.

[thelastmelon]

African Psycho by Alain Mabanckou.
Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis.
All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.

I've been wanting to read the first for a while, and decided to when I was buying the other two. The second one is for my fiancee who has read many books by Bret Easton Ellis and enjoyed them all. And Cormac McCarthy is the next read in my book club.

[bouquin]

Nowhere Man (Aleksandar Hemon)
The Honorary Consul (Graham Greene)
The Shroud (John Banville)
Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser)
Mass (F. Sionil Jose)
The Human Stain (Philip Roth)
Persuasion (Jane Austen)
El Filibusterismo (Jose Rizal)
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
White Teeth (Zadie Smith)
Voss (Patrick White)
Foundation (Isaac Asimov)
Women in Love (D.H. Lawrence)
Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
The Plumed Serpent (D.H. Lawrence)
Jazz (Toni Morrison)
Smiley's People (John Le Carré)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson)
Le Thé à Paris (Christine Barbaste)

Less than 2€ each... not bad.




_______________
Currently reading: The Castle (Franz Kafka)

[bouquin]

On my reading list :
Erewhon (Samuel Butler)
Jealousy (Alain Robbe-Grillet)
Giles Goat-Boy (John Barth)
Possession (A. S. Byatt)
Hallucinating Foucault (Patricia Dunker)
Complicity (Iain Banks)




____________________
Currently reading: Le Stechlin (Theodor Fontane)

[Vota]

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
The Complete H.P. Lovecraft

As I've gotten older my interests have broadened. When I was younger I read only science fiction and fantasy, but now I like to read across the whole range of written word available. That said, as I've been building my personal library I've come to realize that my sci-fi/fantasy selection is disproportionately small and aim to bring it up to par.

[bouquin]

Because they're on my reading list plus they were on sale 2nd hand:

Timbuktu (Paul Auster)
Love in a Cold Climate (Nancy Mitford)
Vineland (Thomas Pynchon)
The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole)
Morvern Callar (Alan Warner)

[Vota]

The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. I have his The Iliad and The Odyssey translations and wanted one of his works. When I saw that Bernard Shaw was a fan I knew the buy was a no-brainer for me.

[Vota]

There was a 50% off sale on your first purchase at Half-price Books today, so I had to check it out. Ended up snagging some good stuff.

1. The World As Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer-circa 1958, 2 hardcover volumes in good condition.
2. The Collected Stories of Raymond Carver-Library of America hardcover
3. 2nd volume of the collected short stories of Leo Tolstoy-Everyman's Library hardcover

I bought these because they were on my list and because they were half-price or less, and in very good condition.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Stopped by Half Price Books this past Friday and purchased two books; one is a compilation of four novels by George Eliot (Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner and Romola), the second book is a compilation of poems by Lord Alfred Tennyson.
Reason? - I have a very old, disintegrating copy of Adam Bede unable to read due to the condition.
As for Tennyson, I was initially drawn to the book cover which has leatherette pattern embossed with Oak leaves and acorns. No copyright date, but it looks to be from 1920's - '40's.
I'm anxious to dig in.

[duke-one]

Life of J.S Bach by Albert Schweitzer. Wanted to read a bio of my favourite composer but now that I have the volumes in hand it is full of music notation and may not be what I wanted (have not started in on it yet).
Duke Masters

[Vota]

Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Outlaws of the Marsh

Two classics of Chinese literature. My book collection is heavily "Western Canon" biased, so I've been trying to fill in here and there with great works from other countries and cultures.

[duke-one]

Reply to the post about Henry James' books...........
Just finished "Portrait of a Lady". Same type of "dense" verbiage but worth the effort. Have you seen the movie version of Washington Square, The Heiress? Also worth seeing, both are period pieces, well done. KDM

[bouquin]

Max Havelaar (Multatuli)
Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories (Herman Melville)
Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson)
Rites of Passage (William Golding)
Fugitive Pieces (Anne Michaels)




_______________
Currently reading: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (Heinrich Böll)

[Vota]

Just received The Iliad in the Richmond Lattimore translation today. It's the large hardcover tome with Leonard Baskin illustrations. A fantastic translation and book wrapped into one!

[qimissung]

I stopped by Half Price Books-my favorite book store-and got, in this order: CBGB, Decades of Graffiti; Identify and Draw North American Birds, A Field Guide for the Artist and Naturalist; Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Maybe I will actually learn to draw-I am at once hopeful and skeptical); and last, but certainly not least, On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King and Bird by Bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. I am very excited. I love bookstores!

[Lykren]

Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Outlaws of the Marsh

Two classics of Chinese literature. My book collection is heavily "Western Canon" biased, so I've been trying to fill in here and there with great works from other countries and cultures.


What do you know! I'm reading RotTK right now. What translation did you get? I'm reading the Moss Roberts, and I'm finding it pretty heavy going.

I would recommend Tyler's translation of The Tale of Genji, if you're curious about Eastern literature.

[Vota]

What do you know! I'm reading RotTK right now. What translation did you get? I'm reading the Moss Roberts, and I'm finding it pretty heavy going.

I would recommend Tyler's translation of The Tale of Genji, if you're curious about Eastern literature.

I have a nice, 2 volume hardcover edition in slipcase of The Tale of Genji. It's the Edward G. Seidensticker, which I had seen recommended by Harold Bloom for it's faithful, if dryer translation.

It's amusing when I think about my Eastern literature exposure; I've read many books about martial arts, philosophy, the Tao, Chi etc, but no actual literature per se.

[Lykren]

I think you're in safe hands with the Seidensticker translation. I haven't read his Genji, but I did read his Snow Country, and that was fantastic.

[EvoWarrior5]

Stopped by the book store to find a gift for my mom's birthday when I saw Nineteen Eighty-Four. I have heard about it so I decided to buy it to start reading soon.

[bouquin]

The Wings of the Dove (Henry James)




_______________
Currently reading: Max Havelaar (Multatuli)

[Buckthorn]

The Snowman (Christmas present for a friends little boy)

[Vota]

READING-An Essay by Hugh Walpole, a small and quaint old hardcover book from 1927, about, well, reading; the book is not about reading criticism though, rather, the joy of reading.

[bouquin]

Hawksmoor (Peter Ackroyd)
On the Black Hill (Bruce Chatwin)
Slow Man (J.M. Coetzee)
Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco)
Burmese Days (George Orwell)
La Leçon d'Allemand (Siegfried Lenz)
Melmoth the Wanderer (Charles Maturin)
Like Life (Lorrie Moore)
Them (Joyce Carol Oates)

[mic19]

I just bought Kafka The Trial
Why?
It's simply I have heard so much about him that I wanted to read his work. And The Trial caught my eyes.

[Snowqueen]

I’ve bought a couple of books yesterday, Madame Bovary and Tender is the Night, looking forward to read both.

[bouquin]

The Best American Short Stories (Tobias Wolff, ed.)
Parade's End (Ford Madox Ford)
Platform (Michel Houellebecq)
March (Geraldine Brooks)
The Debriefing (Robert Littell)
Gargantua & Pantagruel (François Rabelais)
Mémoires d'Hadrien (Marguerite Yourcenar)
Classic English Short Stories (Derek Hudson, ed.)
How to Raise a Gentleman (Kay West)
Waterland (Graham Swift)
The Magus (John Fowles)

[Hwo Thumb]

Wool, by Hugh Howey. I picked up this 550 page book on kindle because I needed something to do during an 8 hour roadtrip so I figured I'd get a little way in and see if I liked it.

Two days later I still could not put this book down.

It's 5 bucks on kindle and I loved every page of it.

[Vota]

Just bought a fine Hardcover first edition of Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy at Half-Price books for 7.50. Why? Great writer, and I have limited Western themed books even though I enjoy that genre.

Hwo Thumb-I read Wool as well a couple months ago and enjoyed it very much. It stuck with me more than I thought it would, enough that I plan to upgrade to a hardcover pretty soon.

[Poetaster]

Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse 5'. Why? I had heard good things about it, and when I read the first sentence it made me laugh, so I took the plunge and pulled out my wallet.

[jupiter]

I got "Everything and More: A Brief History of Infinity" by David Foster Wallace. Why? Because it's David Foster Wallace... on infinity! Mind blowing.

[bouquin]

Shikasta (Doris Lessing)
The Swimming Pool Library (Alan Hollinghurst)
Foe (J. M. Coetzee)
Indigo (Marina Warner)




____________________
Currently reading: Un Eté à Baden-Baden (Leonid Tsypkin)

[Vota]

World's End by Upton Sinclar-old hardcover in good condition. I loved his book The Jungle and heard that this was an awesome series. considering it's predominantly out of print it will take awhile to track down the whole set.

[deguonis]

"Books and Writers" by Robert Wilson Lynd. Because I've read a copy from the library and I truly liked it. Therefore, I decided to own it. Robert Lynd was a genius. A true man of letters who has been praised by Chesterton, J. B. Priestley, H. M. Tomlinson & L. A. G. Strong.

[bouquin]

Fear of Flying (Erica Jong)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)




_______________
Currently reading: Pères et Fils (Ivan Tourgueniev)

[bouquin]

The Talk of the Town (Ardal O'Hanlon)
A Town Like Alice (Nevil Shute)
The Temple of My Familiar (Alice Walker)
Bouvard et Pécuchet (Gustave Flaubert)
Uncle Spence and Other Stories (Aldous Huxley)
The Killer Inside Me (Jim Thompson)
The Black Prince (Iris Murdoch)




_______________
Currently reading: Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)

[Victoria Laza]

On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee

I had wanted to read Native Speaker and just as I got around to checking it out from the library, this book was released. The plot of this one sounds better, so I'm going to read it first.

[bouquin]

Histoire du Siège de Lisbonne (José Saramago)

[Buckthorn]

I bought a Copy of Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway. Its been on my to read list for a while and I found 1 copy in the pound shop so grabbed it!

[yoyosuper2003]

I bougth "Charmed Life" ı don't remember the author. ı got it because the cover looked interesting and I am a book by it'scover type of person.

[dodohappy]

I bought a book called The Shaman's Secret because that book looked interesting to me. the book is talking about a mystery and i like mystery. im now on an other book so i haven't read it yet.

[yasee333]

The last book I bought was Lady Grace Mysteries because I love mysterious books and this book is about a valentines day murder.

[bouquin]

Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos)
Independent People (Halldor Laxness)

[DieterM]

^^ Choderlos de Laclos - great choice, one of my alltime favourites in French, @bouquin!
Me, it's been "The Marriage Plot" by Jeffrey Eugenides, somewhat less brilliant than his former books; and then "War and Peace" in the French version (been reading for 4 months now, have finished 3/4 roughly, and it's worth spending months on it!)

[bouquin]

that's good to know. Thanks, DieterM.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (John Le Carré)
Loving Living Party Going (Henry Green)
Possessing the Secret of Joy (Alice Walker)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Muriel Barbery)
The Birds Fall Down (Rebecca West)
The House of Doctor Dee (Peter Ackroyd)




_______________
Currently reading: Voss (Patrick White)

[Vota]

4 volume set of A Dance To the Music of Time by Anthony Powell, Folio Society. Why? Looks great next to my folio Proust set, but seriously, I want to read it.
The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo, The Limited Editions Club. I wanted another quality seafaring book.

I bought these both for about half of what the Dance set typically goes for, so it was a steal.

[Helga]

I had decided not to buy books until I have finished all the books I have in my bookcase unread. but I bought three biographies last week about three poets and authors from the ice and I bought essays by Freud and short stories by an author from the ice and Jan Kott's essays about Shakespeare.

Now I just have more books I can't read until next summer.

[ChicagoReader]

Tenth of December by George Saunders because I love CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, and because it was by the register.

The Sirens of Titan because Vonnegut is my girlfriend's favorite other and yet she hasn't read it!

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner, again for my girlfriend, but I'll be reading this one as well.

[Vota]

Faust, translation by David Luke, The Folio Society, gorgeous book, it's frickin hyooge, and Goethe is the man.

[AshesAndDust]

Burnt shadows by Kamila Shamsie.
As to the why, I really love reading about war. Plus I liked the title.
I'm also very much looking forward to reading the Wolf of wall street by Jordan belfort. I'm not sure if I'd be interested in reading a biography but still I want to read the book before I watch the movie. <and if anyone knows where I can find its ebook version, please let me know> :D

[bouquin]

The Heat of the Day (Elizabeth Bowen)
The Monk (Matthew Lewis)









____________________
Currently reading: La Maison aux Esprits (Isabel Allende)

[bouquin]

L'Automne du Patriarche (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Le Chagrin des Belges (Hugo Claus)
Les Particules Elémentaires (Michel Houellebecq)

[bouquin]

La Bête Humaine (Emile Zola)
L'Abbé C. (Georges Bataille)
La Marche de Radetzky (Joseph Roth)
Far from the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy)

[Vota]

The Oxford W.E.B. Du Bois Reader. Bought it at my local half-price books in near fine condition.

I am interested in the writings of intelligent black men that have had a positive influence in literature and on the education of black people and people in general. Du Bois, Ellison, Wright, and Baldwin are a few whose works I want to read. It never hurts to have greater awareness.

[bouquin]

A Sentimental Journey (Laurence Sterne)
The Devils (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Dave Eggers)
Arrow of God (Chinua Achebe)
Moon Palace (Paul Auster)
Great Apes (Will Self)
Papillon (Henri Charrière)




_______________
Currently reading: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

[qimissung]

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is really good. I liked it anyway.

[Whosis]

Helen and Troy's Epic Road Quest by A. Lee Martinez

Two reasons:
1. Give the author another chance.
2. I enjoy road quests.

[bouquin]

Le Procès (Franz Kafka)
Cat and Mouse (Günter Grass)

[bouquin]

The Master of Ballantrae (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Sula (Toni Morrison)
Against the Grain (J. K. Huysmans)

[bouquin]

Freedom (Jonathan Franzen)
The Counterfeiters (André Gide)
The Judge and His Hangman (Friedrich Dürrenmatt)
The Roots of Heaven (Romain Gary)
A Bend in the River (V. S. Naipaul)
Get Shorty (Elmore Leonard)




__________________________________________
Currently reading: The Last September (Elizabeth Bowen)

[RobbyA]

The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry. I loved the first part of his autobiography (Moab is my Washpot), so thought I'd give this a go!

[tonywalt]

Karl Ove Knausgaard - My Struggle 2

Bought because it's a autobiographical novel in kind of a modern Proustian style.

[YesNo]

Sally Kempton, Awakening Shakti.

I wanted to know more about Hindu goddesses.

[Poetaster]

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. Why? Because I felt like reading it again, and getting my own copy of this this time. And also, I had finished it a few hours after buying it, so it's all good.

[kev67]

I bought two books yesterday, which was naughty of me, because I still have a big backlog of books to read.

I bought Economics, A User's Guide by Ha-Joon Chang. I have watched several of his lectures on YouTube and he is great. This is one of a new series of Pelican books, which were books designed educate. A friend of mine has a clever son, who is interested in economics in school. I may ask his father to pass it on and ask him what he thinks of it, as I still have Debunking Economics by Steve Keen to read.

I also bought The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. I bought this partly because it is short; partly because it reflects social class anxieties of the Victorian/Edwardian age as highlighted by Jack London's book, The People of the Abyss; partly because I am interested to read this godfather of steampunk; and partly because I thought it might be interesting to read a bit of H.G. Wells before reading David Lodge's book about him, A Man of Parts. I remember we did study this book at school. I think our English teacher selected it in the hope it would appeal to the boys. However most of my classmates were well on the way to evolving into Morlocks themselves and not much learning got done. My school had been a girls' grammar school (i.e. you had to pass your 11+ exam to attend there) but became a mixed comprehensive (open to all) with my intake. I think some of the teachers regretted this development.

[mal4mac]

I bought "Bouvard and Pecuchet: A Novel" by Gustave Flaubert 'cause I'm worried that my projects are futile and will come to nothing...

[temper]

"Criticism and Culture" by R. Con Davis and R. Schleifer, because I'm writing an essay on the evolution of the approach to the reader in literary criticism.

This book got me thinking on what it is that influences our choices in terms of deciding what to read next.

How about a short questionnaire? ;)

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7YG9ZTD

In my case the answers would be press reviews, my friends’ opinions and suggestions, and opinions of professional literary critics - mainly my Professors. How about you?

[bouquin]

Eugénie Grandet (Honoré de Balzac)

[hannah_arendt]

Recently I have bought two novels by Robert Bolano. I am working on an essay, comparison of Bruni Schulz and Bolano.

[bouquin]

The Professor's House (Willa Cather)




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Currently reading: The Awakening and Other Stories (Kate Chopin)

[Scheherazade]

"The Goldfinch" by wonderful Donna Tartt because the waiting list at the library lies from here to Dover and back.

(also I was given some book tokens for my last birthday)

[bouquin]

Wise Children (Angela Carter)
The Comfort of Strangers (Ian McEwan)
The Pianist (Wladyslaw Szpilman)
Operation Shylock (Philip Roth)




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Currently reading: Quartet (Jean Rhys)

[Sido]

Books : Selected works of Oscar Wilde (Oscar Wilde) and The Complete Robot (Isaac Asimov)

Why : I have always enjoyed reading the works of Wilde and I wanted to have this book for my collection. Same goes for Asimov. It was reading his stories on Robots that first inspired me to choose my field of interest.

[bouquin]

The Thinking Reed (Rebecca West)
Harriet Hume (Rebecca West)




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Currently reading: The Public Image (by Muriel Spark)

[Vota]

The Folio Shakespeare-The Folio Society, this is their 1988 6 volume in 2 slip cases set. Kind of an interesting story how I came about buying it. I have a pretty clean 3 volume Heritage Press Shakespeare set, but inside one of the slipcases was the original promo pamphlet for this Folio set. I've had that pamphlet for over a year, and just this weekend I came across the set in fine condition at a local Half-Price books. Stoked.

[bouquin]

The Fahrenheit Twins (Michel Faber)




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Currently reading: Burger's Daughter (Nadine Gordimer)

[Pope of Eruke]

To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolfe
The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

[illiterati]

arrived today:

bukowski, love is a dog from hell (nostalgia)
ronald johnson, ARK (curiosity)
anne carson, albertine workout (curiosity)


the anne carson, by the way, is pretty terrible. i like carson, but i see her more as an author of brilliant curios than a poet per se.

[Lykren]

the anne carson, by the way, is pretty terrible. i like carson, but i see her more as an author of brilliant curios than a poet per se.

What's the difference?

[Pope of Eruke]

Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems - Allen Ginsberg

because I am a 21st century wannabe beatnik hipster haha

[Buckthorn]

Slaughterhouse Five. I bought it because I wanted to! And I got to flirt with the sales guy (bonus)

[Marbles]

1. Alice Walker - The Color Purple.

This one got the Pulitzer lately and I heard tell it's a good story to read. Still sitting on my bookshelf.

2. Vladimir Nabokov - Invitation to a Beheading

I was intrigued, and I wanted to find out about that elusive and indescribable crime of "gnostical turpitude" for which the protagonist was sentenced to death by head-chopping. The narrative doesn't try to explain it and the protagonist is never beheaded. In that, disappointing.

3. E.L. James - Fifty Shades of Gray

I wanted to know how a third-rate, cliched-ridden nonsense can make so much money and who are the idiots who think it's good writing. Got plenty of answers.

[bouquin]

The Lonely Londoners (Sam Selvon)




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Currently reading: The Ghost Road (Pat Barker)

[Poetaster]

The Lonely Londoners (Sam Selvon)

That's a good book. Enjoy it. :)

[Lemonade]

Paperback editions on The winter's tale and A Midsummer night's dream. The Wadsworth editions, hope they're decent, but were the only ones I could afford right now. I think they'll arrive end of this week.

[bouquin]

Nightwood (Djuna Barnes)




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Currently reading: Them (Joyce Carol Oates)

[bouquin]

All About H. Hatterr




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Currently reading: The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood)

[Marbles]

Bought the following books recently.

Jhumpa Lahiri - The Namesake

Gabriel Garcia Marquez - [I]Autumn of the Patriarch [sheer brilliance of his art of storytelling]

Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood [heard good word, read it, liked it. Good book but not a spectacular piece of writing]

Dilip Hiro [ed. & tr.] - Baburnama [non-fiction/history: the autobiography of the founder of the Mughal Empire]

[Carmilla]

Hello!

The last book I bought is 'Daniel Deronda' by George Eliot.

Why? Because Eliot is one of my favourite writers.

[jashleigh]

The last book i bought was 'The Sorrows of Young Mike' by John Zelazny.

Because recently I am all about first time authors.

[Marwood]

À rebours, the 1966 Penguin edition, translated as Against Nature, because it crops up in Withnail & I and sounds similar to a piece I'm currently writing.

[uiscebeatha]

The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney. I don't usually read too many critics since I much prefer to form my own impressions and judgements. However, have read Heaney's poems since the late 1960's and just this once thought - 'I would like to see how far people do or do not see some of this as I do'.

[bouquin]

The Graduate (Charles Webb)
Group Portrait with Lady (Heinrich Böll)
Coming Up for Air (George Orwell)




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Currently reading: The Thinking Reed (Rebecca West)

[totoro]

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. I came on these forums, looking through the author section to see who had been talked about and who hadn't, and this author came up on the page and I noticed no one had started a topic on him so I thought I would read some of what he wrote so that in the future I could start a topic myself. Plus, its good to expand your horizons.

[tonywalt]

Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by Haruki Murakami:

[Jancarlo]

The Picture of Dorian Gray and Homer's Odyssey, they're classics and I hadn't read them yet. I finished Dorian and I enjoyed it very much.

[farnoosh]

Middlemarch by George Elliot.
There is this bookstore I go to that's 98 minutes from my house by bus, it's the only bookstore I like that brings classics and has a good atmosphere to it. And there is this cafe right next to it called Cinema Cafe; A great place to start the first chapter of the book I buy. Anyway, every time I go there I pick a book that I haven't heard of before and open the middle section of the book and read 2 pages. If I like it, I buy it. Just like that :)

[Lykren]

Middlemarch by George Elliot.
There is this bookstore I go to that's 98 minutes from my house by bus, it's the only bookstore I like that brings classics and has a good atmosphere to it. And there is this cafe right next to it called Cinema Cafe; A great place to start the first chapter of the book I buy. Anyway, every time I go there I pick a book that I haven't heard of before and open the middle section of the book and read 2 pages. If I like it, I buy it. Just like that :)

I'd say you got lucky this time. Middlemarch is a fantastic book.

[bouquin]

Tipping the Velvet (Sarah Waters)
The Colour (Rose Tremain)
London Fields (Martin Amis)




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Currently reading: I'm the King of the Castle (Susan Hill)

[Marbles]

In an age of grainy, pale, yellow-by-birth recycled paper and fragile paperbacks with crawling-ant font, I bought some beautiful hardbound English classics printed in Hungary on high quality paper by a German publisher, as if they have come straight from the old days, a celebration of good printing. These books were being sold at throwaway prices. Perhaps they couldn't meet sales in the German market and were too happy to ship them off to anyone who'd take them.

Books are from Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, William Makepeace Thackeray and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Plus I got a couple of second hand copies of John Updike [S, The Witches of Eastwick]. I also bought Milan Kundera's The Art of Novel, in English translation, to see what that wonderful artist has to say. Looks promising and it is the one I am going to start on first as soon as I'm done with what I'm already reading. Hallelujah.

[Spotted Fever]

The Purity Of Desire: 100 poems by Rumi

Rumi is a magnificently beautiful and simple poet who brings the greatest thoughts of love and understanding into my otherwise mundane life. A true master of the craft who keeps the otherwise rampant complexities of most poetry to a slight breeze through the branches of my imagination in what is usually a billowing sail on a roaring sea.

[bouquin]

Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell)
The Ambassadors (Henry James)
The Small Hand (Susan Hill)




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Currently reading: Agnes Grey (by Anne Brontë)

[bouquin]

Give Me Your Heart (Joyce Carol Oates)




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Currently reading: On Beauty (Zadie Smith)

[Helga_]

a travel essay entitled "Book cafe in Europe" by Goo Hyun-jung.

I love going to book cafes and reading about book cafes is fun. I actually bought the book at a book cafe.

[YesNo]

Rupert Sheldrake, "Morphic Resonance". I bought it because it wasn't in the library, but also because I wanted to have the digital version handy so I could reference it and mark it up.

What I hope to understand from reading this is what is more likely putting constraints on us. The previous likely candidates, quantum particles and selfish genes, only go so far and, as far as I can see, don't explain anything of real importance. He offers the idea of morphic fields which is appealing because it is field based rather than particle based.

[dznovels]

for me i spend all my time to prepare free ebooks for people to read online

[Pope of Eruke]

I bought The Rebel by Camus, because I am studying Revolutions as one of my modules.

[Pugnax]

The Verificationist - Donald Antrim
The Death Father - Donald Barthelme
The Cannibal - John Hawkes

Wanted something short, and been feeling a surreal vibe lately.

[bouquin]

Keep the Aspidistra Flying (George Orwell)




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Currently reading: The Bell (Iris Murdoch)

[romeoindespair]

120 days of sodom by Sade

[bouquin]

Le Bleu du Ciel (Georges Bataille)




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Currently reading: Persuasion (Jane Austen)

[ennison]

Stonemouth : Banks Because it's right to support widows.