Last Book You Bought and Why

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Originally Posted by Antiquarian

I feel in love with the Edith Grossman translation of Don Quixote. I hope you like it.

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I've read an earlier translation, but I got all these books used (and they look almost new, probably only one read through each) so I didn't have much choice, and this looked like the best one the small bookstore had (and it had an introduction by Bloom, so I figured he must have considered it a decent translation). Glad to know it actually is an excellent translation, as I will probably be reading it more than once, and literally be tearing the pages apart with notes.

I have not picked up any virgin texts for some months now, since I left off with a non-fiction reading group @ Yahoo, which was then doing The Third Chimpanzee, which I have been ambivalent about finishing. I know Jared Diamond is the latest PBS mooncalf, but he is just not as exciting when dealing with evolutionary science as I once found Desmond Morris to be.

Not that I can really put my finger on why. Literary comparisons I can do fairly well, not so much popular science-- but the store was having a 3 for 1 deal at the time, and I picked up Kundra (sigh) and Brave New World, which I hated, in so far as I dare hate over rated classics, and despite a compelling Christopher Hitchens apologia for Huxley, I sold my copy, used, somewhat rapidly, and only half-read.

Maybe true satire died off with Swift's senility.

I have been slowing down with my personal library. One of the few times I purchased something fairly hot off of an NYT review, was Alice Hoffman's Blue Diary--which was everything NYT said it was-- and yet, is it something I'll ever read again?

Rereading is my true test of how fanatical I am about an author. Cloud Atlas meets that test. David Mitchell simply blew me away, I mean blew. His fiction was the most difficult exercise my poor mind ever encountered, and as a weary, embittered intermediately successful author, (in terms of byline exposure in print) when I closed that book, I was ready to snarl and throw my edition against the wall out of sheer livid envy.

I had conceived of a similiar post-modern chapter game years ago, and now?

That is the cost of procrastination (sigh).

Ulysses - James Joyce
A Journey to the Centre (i am Canadian for me its 'Centre' LOL) of the Earth - Jules Verne

I'm taking a whole bunch of my mom's old books from Lebanon home with me - cast your eyes on these beauties :D

The Great Gatsby
The Aeneid
The Confessions of St. Augustine
The Old Man and the Sea
Brave New World
The ABC Murders
The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories
Animal Farm
Waiting for Godot
Christian Liberty
Notes on Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Oresteian Trilogy
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Last Days of Socrates
The Theban Plays
Utopia

The Holy Bible, NIV version. It surprised me how different it were from other version but it interesting to think about various translation as sometime translation say more about what people want than about what they need.

For an after-exams treat I bought myself Being Elizabeth Bennet By Emma Campbell Webster. It's a cross between a book and a game: you have to make decisions and answer questions, and the choices you make determine which page you go to next. You add up points for intellegence, fortune etc, and are aiming to 'marry well and for love'. It's really good fun and totally engrossing, and is written in a Jane Austeny style with a modern humour. I would certainly reccommend it to any Austen fans!

Bought The Complete Mr. Moto Film Phile--A Casebook by Howard M. Berlin so I could read up on the films. Am currently reading Last Laugh Mr. Moto (the fifth of six novels) by James P. Marquand and hope to get the eight Peter Lorre movies on DVD in the very near future and have a marathon viewing. I like Charlie Chan in small doses but I enjoy the energy of a Mr. Moto who does not hesitate to use deadly force when necessary. TCM ran Thank You Mr. Moto (the second one recently and reawakened my interest in the character. Note book/movie character are very different in presentation.

Today I bought these three: Being and Nothingness by Sartre(the copy I once lent to a friend was never returned to me),The Myth of Sisyphus(I never owned this) by Camus,and finally,finally,I found a copy of The Castle by Kafka. It's been a good day.:D

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Originally Posted by andave_ya

I'm taking a whole bunch of my mom's old books from Lebanon home with me - cast your eyes on these beauties :D

The Great Gatsby
The Aeneid
The Confessions of St. Augustine
The Old Man and the Sea
Brave New World
The ABC Murders
The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories
Animal Farm
Waiting for Godot
Christian Liberty
Notes on Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Oresteian Trilogy
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Last Days of Socrates
The Theban Plays
Utopia

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That should keep you quiet for a while! :D

Fire Bringer ~ David Clement-Davies
The Quest ~ Wilbur Smith
A Room With A View ~ E.M. Forster
The Three Musketeers ~ Alxandre Dumas
German Stories and Tales

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Originally Posted by Dark Muse

Fire Bringer ~ David Clement-Davies
The Quest ~ Wilbur Smith
A Room With A View ~ E.M. Forster
The Three Musketeers ~ Alxandre Dumas
German Stories and Tales

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Dark Muse, I can only speak for one of those books; I simply loved "A Room With a View". I liked all of the Forster novels I have read. I think I read "A Room With a View" twice (it is short;), and very enjoyable.)

That last book you bought sounds interesting to me. Are they short stories?

Yes I loved A Passage to India, so I cannot wait to read more of Forster's work

The German tales are short stories from a varity of different authors.

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Originally Posted by Antiquarian

I have The Castle, but I've never read it, I'm ashamed to say.

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:eek2: Put a hold on everything you're doing right now,and read that book! :)

I've read pretty much everything by Kafka,and The Castle ranks with the very best of his works in my opinion,sometimes it's even slightly better than The Trial.