highlyeccentric (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
highlyeccentric) wrote2009-02-22 04:12 pm
highlyeccentric) wrote2009-02-22 04:12 pm
Entry tags:
Book-buying account
I bought a lot of books this weekend. Towed my dad around my favourite bookshops. Just as well I got a cheque in the mail...
The loot:
1. Nietzsche - Why I am So Wise
2. Thomas a'Kempis - The Inner Life
$7.50 each, matching Penguin editions. I'm vastly entertained by the prospect of buying Nietzsche and Thomas a'Kempis in a matching set.
3. Michael Swanton: English Poetry Before Chaucer
Lit-crit, ten dollars. I WIN, and Academic Remainders own my soul.
And from The Book Grocer in Kingston:
1. Diana Wynne Jones - Charmed Life
Five dollars. Plus one children's fantasy classic!
2. Virginia Woolf - The Waves
'cos I've never read any Woolf. I think it was about twelve dollars?
3. D.H. Lawrence - Women In Love
Still have to buy Lady Chatterly, but this looks interesting. Ten dollars, i think.
4. Arthur Miller - The Crucible.
Viking Critical Edition. Fourteen dollars. Bonus lit-crit FTW.
5. Someone-or-other Verhulst - The Carolingian Economy
Cambridge UP. Twelve dollars. You'd be surprised how often I need to know about Carolingian economic structures.
6. Joanne Harris - Jigs and Reels
By the woman who wrote Chocolat. Short stories, very pretty, can't remember how much it cost me.
The loot:
1. Nietzsche - Why I am So Wise
2. Thomas a'Kempis - The Inner Life
$7.50 each, matching Penguin editions. I'm vastly entertained by the prospect of buying Nietzsche and Thomas a'Kempis in a matching set.
3. Michael Swanton: English Poetry Before Chaucer
Lit-crit, ten dollars. I WIN, and Academic Remainders own my soul.
And from The Book Grocer in Kingston:
1. Diana Wynne Jones - Charmed Life
Five dollars. Plus one children's fantasy classic!
2. Virginia Woolf - The Waves
'cos I've never read any Woolf. I think it was about twelve dollars?
3. D.H. Lawrence - Women In Love
Still have to buy Lady Chatterly, but this looks interesting. Ten dollars, i think.
4. Arthur Miller - The Crucible.
Viking Critical Edition. Fourteen dollars. Bonus lit-crit FTW.
5. Someone-or-other Verhulst - The Carolingian Economy
Cambridge UP. Twelve dollars. You'd be surprised how often I need to know about Carolingian economic structures.
6. Joanne Harris - Jigs and Reels
By the woman who wrote Chocolat. Short stories, very pretty, can't remember how much it cost me.
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To the Lighthouse
and Orlando, which can only be described as transgendered sci fi as written by Woolf.
Lawrence: Ignore Lady C's Lover. It's essentially upper class husband is paralyzed, so his wife has an affair with the gardener. It was an early example of sexually explicit writing, and the class implications (doing the dirty deed with the man who handles dirt for a living) meant a lot more back then, so people made an uproar over it; but as a novel it's actually pretty weak. I think Sons and Lovers is his best book, but Women in Love is nothing to sneeze at.
Miller: Crucible also is less in perspective than it was at the time, because it was reflecting the McCarthy witch hunts here, and he was married to Marilyn Monroe.
The one to get is All My Sons, which might be the closest thing in 20th century literature to a true Greek tragedy, and packs an enormous punch when a good actor plays the role of the father.
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