12 posts tagged “book shopping”
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery.
Isn't that title magnificent?
I very nearly bought this book for the title alone, but I did skim a page or two before slapping it down and saying "I'll take it!" I must say, however, that I'd never have purchased it if it weren't for the title. A customer requested it months ago, and the title stuck firmly in my brain. Today, I desperately needed something to read, and so I purchased The Elegance of the Hedgehog as I left work.
I also must say that I don't understand all of it. The author is very philosophical, and has a tendency to go on about thinkers for a page at a time. That's nowhere near as disturbing or annoying as it might be. Somehow, it fits this book.
If you like to laugh about upper class snobbery and read about Japanese simplicity and would enjoy spending time in the company of a French concierge who is extremely art-and-music conscious but must maintain proletarian facade while making snarky side comments about the insanely rich young university students yakking about how reading Marx has changed their lives, man....go read the book. Oh, and the concierge (to the distress of the building's other residents, natch) becomes friends with a young genius who lives in the building and whose suicidal adolescent genius angst is perfectly tempered by the concierge's dry public maturity and private uncertainties.
Furthermore, the author has described the effect of music better than ever I could. In the following paragraph, the 12-year-old genius is listening to the choir at her school perform, and observes:
"Every time, it's the same thing. I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself but sometimes it gets close: I can hardly keep myself from sobbing. So when they sing a canon I look down at the ground because it's just too much emotion at once: it's too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing. I'm no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment, during a choir.
When the music stops, everyone applauds, their faces all lit up, the choir radiant. It is so beautiful.
In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song." (p. 184-185, The Elegance of the Hedgehog)
I think I've found my monthly book to recommend. One brief note: this book is translated from the original French. Therefore, it never had a hardcover debut in America, as it was, I believe, translated to English and sold in America after European success. I bought it in paperback. I considered very briefly spending the money to have it shipped in hardcover from England, and decided that I'd rather not spend the money for the book and the ridiculous shipping only to not know if I'd even like it or want it in my library. This book stays. Furthermore, I can think of at least two people to whom I'd like to give this book for birthdays or Christmas.
UbiCaritas gives this book two thumbs up and five stars.
Shewhoquilts came over last night. I ended up making the curry and a tomato-avocado salad in balsamic vinegar on the side. Dessert was coffee and biscotti. Simple, yet oh-so-good. I was going to make a cake, but then I sprained my knee while vacuuming. Normal people trip on the vacuum cleaner or fall downthe stairs when off-balanced by the vacuum cleaner...not I. I tripped over the floor and the wall (I don't know how. Maybe I wasn't expecting them to be there?) and heard a distinct "pop". I do not like that sound. Neither did my knee. One elastic knee brace plus one bag of ice plus cashier duty for a few days, here I come.
As a side note, shewhoquilts insists that I "do not have too many books." Such a wise woman. I will not take this opportunity to order more (I have five waiting to be read, and if I end up seeing a doctor for this knee I would regret spending the money) but I will bear that in mind for future book purchases. :P
In the meantime, what have I purchased?
I mentioned a month or two ago that I would like to read some Heinlein but that I drew a firm line at spending upwards of $30 on a single hardcover title. (Heinlein is relatively early scifi, and a lot of that genre was never--or hardly ever--published in hardcover.) I also generally dislike "collection"-style books. However, I broke down and ordered this when a fantastic deal came up on one of my booksites. Including shipping, it was less than $8, and I will now be able to read Have Spacesuit, Will Travel; Starship Troopers; and Podkayne of Mars. Excellent. Depending on how this goes, I may pick up his other omnibuses.
Ann Patchett wrote Bel Canto, which is simultaneously one of the most beautiful and almost certainly the saddest book I've ever read. Because of my respect for Bel Canto, I purchased this a few days ago while it was on a clearance of sorts. If it's anything like Bel Canto, I may have to pick up some more of her books. I read Bel Canto last year sometime; it wore me out, but in a good way. It was just so intense that I couldn't pick up another of her books until now.
I picked this up, too, also at a clearance. A number of people may be familiar with the story of the Indianapolis because it was mentioned by Quint in the film Jaws. This book delves into the experience of the men in the water, the reasons why they weren't even missed for days, etc. Should be an interesting read.
I also purchased a book of Emily Dickinson's poetry for about $4. I bought it for two reasons: one, I don't own any of her poetry and she's considered a classic author, and two, the book is a really lovely book: the paper is high-quality and slightly glossy, the book is heavy and well bound. There's just one problem: I've since tried to read some of her poems, and I can't stand them. They strike me as simperingly gooey; the experience was not unlike being trapped in a small room with a little old lady force-feeding me caramel syrup and reading poems about her cat, Fluffy, who died twenty years ago and to whose memory she remains faithful. I guess I'll have to try them again later this week to see if that was a mood I was in rather than the poetry, and if I still don't like them I'll shelve them for a few years and then see what I think.
My carry-around-with-me book this week is Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which I am rereading for approximately the fifty-seventh time. I love this book. I can always see the salon of the Nautilus as clearly as if I'd been there.
Finally, I'm reading a Rex Stout Nero Wolfe collection, and I think I'm in love with Archie Goodwin. I
Ignoring details like budgets/reading time (or near-complete lack thereof)/space constraints...
let me present to you allbookstores.com. Want to buy a book, but don't want to spend time shopping around for the best price online? Want to be able to search most used book stores--from abebooks to B&N to ALibris to Half.com--without actually having to, well, y'know, search?
Go to AllBookStores, enter your search criteria, and click "Search."
You'll get a list of the prices--listed low-to-high--for the book you are seeking from all of (and more than) the above stores.
Of course, I am not buying more than one book a week until the Hood County Friends of the Library Sale. This is a sore temptation, but I will be strong. I shall triumph. And my bookshelves will groan after the last weekend in April.
You haven't heard of Hood County, Texas? I'm shocked. Shocked, I say. :P
In point of fact, there is little reason for y'all to be familiar with it. Unless, of course, you are a nutty collector of books, in which case their library book sale is positively drool-inspiring.
One of the larger cities in Hood County (and probably, if I bothered to look it up, the county seat) is Granbury. Granbury is the standard small and somewhat historic Texas town. A large number of older people retire from Dallas/Fort Worth to Granbury and the surrounding areas.
Oooookay, you might think. Why on earth is a town comprised of a high percentage of retirees of interest to this culture-loving (and I do not mean Dolly Parton) diva?
Simple.
Retirees eventually, well, pass on.
Leave this sphere.
Depart this mortal coil.
Go to the great roundup in the sky.
And they can't take their books with them.
Their relatives, the majority of whom, it seems, care not a lick for books, nearly always donate the deceased's books to the library.
The library then sells those books for $1 for hardbacks, and fill-a-box-for-$5 on the last day. Provided that you don't care about getting the latest John Grisham, you can still get some fantastic reads on that last day. Howesomever, if you'll join the Hood County Friends of the Library ($10 towards the support of a library--I'm all for it!), you can get in a day early and snatch up all sorts of goodies that might otherwise walk off with someone else. Think about it: A Fitzgerald translation of the Iliad: $1. The Harvard Dictionary of Music: $1. Various mysteries: $1 apiece. Etc, etc, etc.
An expedition from Fort Worth to the wilds of Granbury is being planned for that weekend. Details (and who knows, perhaps some actual pictures?) to follow.
Therefore, I'm restraining myself to one book purchase per week until then.
*like I need a hole in the head.
Oh, SUCH an original title.
And yes, I need to be studying algebra right now.
However...
Books I'm reading/ordering/will read/et all:
The Jasper Fforde Thursday Next series:
Jasper Fforde has that wry, literary, tongue-in-cheek sort of humor that one might expect if you crossed Terry Pratchett with Harry Potter and threw in an old-fashioned librarian just for kicks. I'm slooooowly working through the series after picking up Something Rotten at Half Price Books a few weeks ago for $4. It's a sort of literary-scifi-fantasy-adventure cross. How can you not read a book that features Mrs. TiggyWinkle and Emperor Zhark as SpecOps agents? (Featured paraphrased quote: "My name strikes terror into the heart of billions, but can I get my collars properly starched? Noooooo!") Or a series in which characters such as Hamlet can jump into real life in order to have identity crises? I ask you.
Start off with The Eyre Affair, and work your way through the next four. He also has a Nursery Crimes series (introduced in Thursday's The Well of Lost Plots) which features, natch, Detective Jack Spratt. Haven't picked those up yet, but if they are to the level of Thursday Next, they're well worth it.
Having read The Eyre Affair, I had, of course, to rerererereread Jane Eyre. As usual, it was even better than I remembered and I understood or saw more nuances that I did in the last reading. If you haven't read it, then do so.
Finally, thanks to Mr. Fforde and Ms. Bronte, I decided to try Jane Austen yet again. (I was forced to read Pride and Prejudice at nine or ten, and have held a strong--oh, I can't resist--prejudice against Austen ever since.) Ergo, I ordered Sense and Sensibility, and it should be here this week:
Title: 84 Charing Cross Road
Author: Helene Hanff
Rating: Can one perhaps raise five stars to the second, third, or tenth power? (Can you tell that I'm taking another math class this semester?)
Read it
if you love good books,
if you want to share that love with wonderful and book-loving people,
if you want to become a friend of friends of books,
if you love the feel of a perfectly bound good book in your hand--none of those revolting "grimy schoolboy editions" published by B&N, Borders, and all and sundry,
if you appreciate great wit and gentility,
if you consider abridgement, retelling, and selection to be crimes that would, in a reasonable world, be punishable by hanging, drawing and quartering at the very least,
if you are or ever have been an impoverished bibliophile,
if you've read and loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (a reviewer of that beautiful book led me to 84 Charing Cross Road),
(and if any of these statements are true and you haven't read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, get thee to your nearest bookstore/computer/library)
if you haunt real used bookstores and/or devoutly wish that chain used-book stores, however well-meaning, would not exist as they tend to put the privately-owned used-book stores out of business,
if you dream of spending afternoons wandering through shelves and shelves and shelves of books,
then you must read this book. That's all there is to it. You will laugh, nod, hop up and down, run out and spend too much money on some books, cry, and reread, because the only issue I'd have with the book is that it is too darned short.
I got my copy yesterday, stayed up 'til two reading it after work, and will reread it again today before finding a fellow book lover to whom I'll pass it on.
Go forth and purchase it! In paperback, you can get it for $5 (including shipping) from Abebooks.com. In hardcover, you could get it for $8 or so (again, including shipping). I'd argue that this book should be purchased in hardcover because of the sort of book that it is, but I'm sure Ms. Hanff would have understood if one must purchase it in paperback. Heck, go to a library and get it for free. It is all of maybe 150-200 pages, and probably less; not exactly a tome.
Just read it, okay?
(Carapiccoladiva, I have vowed that this afternoon I shall sit down and read Mrs. Dalloway cover-to-cover and not let myself be distracted from my purpose. Now you go get this book! :D Incidentally, it is available in German. Oh, and I've meant to email you about this, but to look back to the book meme of over a year ago, Birgit Nilsson's autobiography--La Nilsson--has finally come out in English.)
Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time at all will know that I am a raving bibliophile, a book addict, a collector of the printed page, and generally place books on my "needs" list somewhere around food, shelter, and love in furry packages.
Miss Spider commented on one of my recent posts about books, and that reminded me of a post that I meant to do. I really should include some pictures, but I'm too lazy to argue with my computer right now.
I have a running list of books that I want to own at some point. I harbor no illusions that I'll own all those books at any point in the near future. The list is sort of like a to-do list; if I read a book I love and want to own it, I put the title on that list. The list is divided into sections and genres: children's fiction, poetry, and nonfiction; adult fiction, with subcategories of novels, mysteries, and science fiction; adult nonfiction, with subcategories of general nonfiction (I have a really wide range of nonfiction reading, but not a lot of titles in each category, so history and biography and so forth are all together), music (biographies of musicians, technical books, theory books, etc), sheet music; adult poetry; and plays. Within each section, the list is alphabetical by author.
My bookshelves are similarly divided. I really need another set of shelves right now, but figure that I'll wait to spring another on the Hair Goddess for another few months. When she asks what I want for Christmas, I'll request another spot in the "common area" for a bookcase. Because my bookshelves are this organized (or OCD'd, depending on your point of view) I know at a glance what I have and don't have. I should consider beginning a catalogue, but I keep telling myself that I don't have that many books. (Ha. Ha. Ha.)
If at all possible, I only purchase hardcover editions of books. If I want to own a book, it means that I'll read or reference it again in the future. Hardcovers last longer, and if the book isn't a new release, hardcovers can often be picked up at library sales or garage sales or even Goodwill for fifty cents to two dollars apiece. Online, one can often pay a dollar or so for the book and spend four on shipping. While I certainly prefer spending fifty cents on a book to spending five dollars, there are some books that just aren't going to appear at Goodwill, and so I'll buy the book from a used-book dealer, whether online or locally. I can't (obviously) buy nearly the number I'd like; I'm a college student, and have oh-so-many other expenses that, whatever I might think, need to be dealt with before I buy books. Still, I don't buy many clothes, and I buy what I buy on sale. I buy shoes that last a looooong time. I very rarely eat out; I'd usually rather cook at home for a fraction of the cost, and I could spend the $6 I'd spend at Taco Bell or wherever on a book or two. As an example, I went to Goodwill today and got three books, all hardcover and in good condition, for five dollars and change. A while back, I went to the local Friends of the Library bookstore and for under $20 (I believe it was eighteen and change) got nine or ten books. A new hardcover will run me that much with my 30% employee discount. While none of the books I got in either case were "new," in that they hadn't come out in the last couple of months, there were many new hardcovers at the Friends bookstore, complete with dust jackets and in really nice condition for $2-$4 each. Admittedly, there were some books at the Friends store that were either really worn, or just filthy, or unnacceptable (to me) in some way, but I just opted instead for cleaner or tighter books. It wasn't as though there was a shortage of titles from which to choose; I could have spent a couple of hundred at that bookstore if I had the money.
I almost never buy new books. I usually only buy a book new if I want to support the author directly (see Waiter Rant.) Used are so much cheaper, and I'll often get a hardback for about 30% of what I'd spend on a paperback version. As an example, my book purchase this week was Ann Patchett's Bel Canto. I bought it used and in good condition online from Barnes & Noble's used book section of their site. It is a hardcover. The new paperback was 14.95 plus nearly 1.50 in tax. I got the harcover for $6.27, and that included shipping.
I don't collect rare editions, so I can't really comment on that aspect of collecting.
I've mentioned purchasing books from library sales. At library sales, a fair number of the books will be discarded from the library, which means that they'll still have their plastic wrappers, call numbers, and card pockets. I don't care about any of those as long as the book is in good condition, but others do. If you don't wany any of that on your book, make absolutely certain if you buy online that the description doesn't include the phrase "ex-library." I might add that ex-library books are often library editions, which means that they are bound extra-well with an eye towards heavy use. New library-edition hardcovers often run in the $40-$50 range because of the particularly good binding. Between the binding and the extra plastic cover, ex-library books often last considerably longer. Finally, even if you don't want ex-library books, don't let that stop you from shopping at Friends-style bookstores. They'll have a fair number of books there that are uncirculated donations.
Have fun collecting, Miss Spider! :)
Sigh.
See this?
Isn't it what any book collector/addicted reader/bibliophile has always dreamed of?
How much more beautiful can you get? A website that lists used bookstores and sales in every single state? Bellissimo, says I. (and says no more, as that is one of my three Italian words.)
Beautiful in a different way is having one snoring pussycat draped all over the stacks of books and laundry on my couch, and another snoring pussycat draped over the hutch on my desk.
Definitely time to clean up. (The stacks of books and music, that is--not the kitties!)
And to think that I have family coming into town this weekend--family who love books almost as much as I do, and can think of few things that they'd rather do than go book-hunting.
Fewer than three days to go....
I found this at Half-Price Books today, and couldn't resist. (Well, I could have, but then I wouldn't have a blog post. File that under "lamest excuse ever for purchasing a book.")
I first read Inside, Outside when I was in high school. For my last two years of high school, I attended a tiny high school in a correspondingly miniscule town. The school library was the town library. I kid you not. It was open to the public two days each week for two hours at a time. It was open to students during school hours, and featured two shelves of nonfiction, three of fiction, and a wall of reference books.
Since I spent most of my class time and all of the time on the bus reading, I finished anything worth reading in that libary by Halloween or so of my junior year.
I asked the libarian to request some books via interlibrary loan for me.
She replied that it had been years since she last did that, she didn't think that she remembered how to do it, and why did I want to have my nose in a book all the time?
I offered to put away all the books on the "Reshelve" cart if she'd get that list of books for me. As the librarian was morbidly obese and had bad hips/knees/feet, she realized the benefit of this: she could remain sitting at the desk while requesting those books, and her shelving would be finished.
I had heard of Inside, Outside after I read Chaim Potok. (When I checked out My Name is Asher Lev, the librarian suspiciously asked me if I was planning on selling it on Ebay, because NO ONE read Chaim Potok because they LIKED him.) Inside, Outside also deals with a Jew who reads much Talmud, but there the similarities end. While Potok writes beautiful, heartbreaking, stunning literature, Wouk is just a bloody good read. Imagine a politically liberal Jewish tax attorney who is married to an even-more-politically-liberal woman. Imagine if Nixon (who is never mentioned by name but implied) decides that he needs a Jewish person on his staff--err, I mean, "Special Assistant to the President for Cultural and Educational Liason." Now remember that the wife campaigned madly for Stephenson. The man--who, while he disagrees politically with Nixon, doesn't hate him--decides to write a memoir about his crazy family in order to pass the time. He's studied Talmud for hours while waiting for a job from the President--though he does occasionally get delegated to take Soviet professors of American literature to topless bars. Now it's time to write about his totally devoted (and nutty) mother, his peculiar ancestors, and his grandmother, who makes sauerkraut by the vat while the lot of them are living in an apartment.
Off to read...
I went to Half-Price Books, and guess what I got?
While this has the dreaded words "illustrated" "junior" and "library" in the version name, this is not an abridged or rewritten version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (the only time I've ever been tempted to burn a book is when I see a great book desecrated by some illiterate, moronic publishing company in order to appeal to those who wouldn't recognize a great work of literature if it smacked them with a sorely-needed clue-bat).
Rather, the text is there in entirety, with the best illustrations I've ever seen of this story. I grew up with this book in a slightly older edition but the same illustrations. Hardcover, in near-PERFECT condition (I'd swear that noone had ever opened it) for a whopping $4. At some point I will have to get this version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, too, which I also had as a child.
I got this, too, except that it was a hardcover version of all these books (with, of course, the original illustrations) except Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Farm. Amazon didn't have a picture of it, but it has this same illustration on the cover. A wonderful friend introduced me to these when I was a kid (about 7ish, I'd say, though I'd recommend them to most 9-10-year-olds), and I've loved them ever since. Hardcover, excellent condition, $5.
I wandered through the Fiction section on my way out, and found this. It was in a library rebinding, so I'm not sure of what the cover originally looked like. The flyleaf was a bit battered (I suspect that someone stepped on it) but it was a tight copy overall. $4 later, it was MINE!
Now all I need is some free time, some hot tea, and a comfy couch on which to curl.
Did I mention that I'm off on Saturday?
My cousin sent me a Barnes&Noble gift card for my birthday.
Barnes&Noble sells used books online, and you can use gift cards to purchase them.
So, I got:
This author is not as well-known as she once was, but her books are really well-written and enjoyable. I had this in paperback; now I'll have it in hardcover! Yay!
Of course, that meant that I had to get the sequel to Gone-Away Lake, which is, unusually, quite as good as the first.
I could not be more pleased that Roger Lancelyn Green is coming back into vogue in some of the better area schools. He was a professor at, I believe, Cambridge. His specialty was myths, and he retold all sorts of wonderful stories for children. He found a perfect blend of authenticity and somewhat modernized language: while his characters and the story's voice don't speak Middle English, they utilize an older style without being inaccessable. He's retold everything from English/Welsh myths to old Egyptian fairytales. Furthermore, I love the Everyman Library editions; the bindings are lovely, the paper is of good quality, PURTY pictures, and so forth. I am disgusted to note that his Tales of Troy seem to be entirely unavailable in hardcover for those of us who don't want (or, in my case, can't afford) the collector's set of four of his books: leather bindings, gold leaf on the pages, ribbon markers, leather slipcover, retailing at a mere $550....no, that was not an extra "5" in there...
Was it Erasmus who said "If I get a little money, I buy books, and if there's any left over, I buy food"?
I should have that framed and put it on my wall.
Of course, I couldn't have spent that gift card on anything much except books. Sure, they sell CDs, office stuff, journals, etc--but if my choices are a) books and b) virtually anything else, then I generally choose books. In case y'all hadn't noticed.
Must get showered/dressed/ready for work, as I'm on call.
