Last Book You Bought and Why

The Marquise of O - And Other Stories by Heinrich Kleist
The Russian Revolution by Sheila Fitzpatrick
The French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert
The Rebel by Albert Camus
Existentialism and Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre
Caesar: The Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
Cousin Bette by Honore Balzac
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky

Why???

For those books concerned, I love history.

As for the others I love Camus and Hemingway

and I want to get into wider European literary material

The Mango Tree - Ronald McKie
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner - Alan Sillitoe

The first two will be re-reads from long ago, the last will be a first timer.

Why
They were all there in there in an op shop at the right price, pre-loved books:angel:

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. After I read Behind the Scenes at the Museum I was anxious to read any more she would write and I was disappointed in Human Croquet. But Case Histories is good and fulfils my need for a well written thriller.

After Many A Summer by Aldous Huxley. I bought it because I like to read.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger.

Why? Because I loved The Time Traveller's Wife by the same author.

I picked up 5 books at a Labor Day 20% off sale at Half-Price Books:

Anne Carson- An Oresteia- a "translation" of Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Sophocles' Elektra, and Euripides' Orestes. I quite like Carson as poet and translator and am interested in what she soes with these three different versions of the tragedy of the house of Atreus.

Euripides- Medea tr. by Robin Robertson. This is a classic Greek tragedy and I am interested in how this acclaimed recent translation approaches the work.

Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey- Fragonard- A lovely little book on the paintings of the Rococo master at a price that could not be passed by.

Mark Rosenthal (ed.)- Vision of Paris: Robert Delaunay's Series- Another art book. The paintings of the French Modernist, Robert Delaunay. I had never really looked at his work much in the past, but I found that his Expressionistic approach to space is quite intriguing and something I could use in my own paintings.

Catherine Clark, etc...- Ascending Chaos: The Art of Masami Teraoka- Another art book. In this case it is a retrospective of the work of the contemporary Japanese painter, Masami Teraoka, known for his figurative paintings which explore eroticism in Western and Japanese culture. His most recent works are huge watercolor paintings with gold leaf framed like early Renaissance altarpieces with imagery exploring sexual hypocrisy in Western/American politics.

I went to Barnes & Noble the other day to look around and noticed they (re)released their collection of Jules Verne novels among their leatherbound classics line. I picked up that along with the HG Wells collection which I've been meaning to get anyway.

Except for the inclusion of a few poor and out-dated translations that seriously mitigate his work, the Verne collection was well worth $20.

Boy - by James Hanley

Transition by Iain Banks for a book club on another forum. Finished it now. Meh.

Flush by Virginia Woolf. To satisfy 3 of my passions, Woolf, Dogs and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And it was one of the few books of hers that I hadn't read.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. I've never really been into science fiction, but as Heinlein is considered one of the greats of the genre I thought this would be worth a look. I also have an interest in anarchism which is why I chose this book specifically.

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. It appears on a lot of recommended reading and best book lists and has long been a source of intrigue.

Stand We At Last by Zoe Fairbairns, it follows five generations generations of women through the history of their emancipation. It opens in 1855 in Sussex England, a very interesting era for me.

Just obtained a book entitled, The Fin-de-Siècle Poem: English Literary Culture and the 1890s (a collection of essays) edited by Joseph Bristow.

Know Bristow from Wilde studies.

by the antediluvian Noah. I hope the book is better than the movie.

I just bought Eyeless in Gaza just because Im on a huge Huxley kick right now.