Last Book You Bought and Why

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.




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Currently reading: The Castle (Franz Kafka)

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)




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Currently reading: Le Stechlin (Theodor Fontane)

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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




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

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!

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!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lykren

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.

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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.

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.

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.

The Wings of the Dove (Henry James)




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Currently reading: Max Havelaar (Multatuli)

The Snowman (Christmas present for a friends little boy)

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.

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)

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.

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

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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




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

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.

"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.

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




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Currently reading: Pères et Fils (Ivan Tourgueniev)

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)




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Currently reading: Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)

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.

Histoire du Siège de Lisbonne (José Saramago)

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!

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.

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.

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

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