Book Hauls!

[GOLLUM]

Today....the following are from the new Penguin Mini Modern Classics

The Last Demon & other stories - Isac Singer *1978 Nobel Prize-winner Isaac Bashevis Singer is best remembered for his short stories, which drew on traditions of folk tales and Yiddish culture to explore good and evil, passion and restraint, religious fervour and personal failings with wisdom, wit and humanity. The three collected here, about a girl who pretends to be a man to study the Torah, a frustrated demon and a writer trying to understand a Holocaust survivor, illuminate eternal themes with supernatural grace.

Flypaper ad Other Stories *From the author of the classic modernist work A Man With No Qualities comes this short collection *Of the very first rank of prose stylists, Robert Musil captures a scene's every telling detail and symbolic aspect with a precise and remarkable beauty. In these nine stories and essays, he considers holidaymakers and stone monuments, tales of war and blackbirds, and the great pathos of a tiny death: a fly's impossible fight against the grip of flypaper.

Moon Lake - Eudora Welty *Moon Lake is the story of a summer camp in Mississippi, a surly lifeguard, a rebellious orphan girl, and the fateful day when they learn the secrets of life and death. Pulitzer Prize-winner Eudora Welty's extraordinary short story is a lushly atmospheric and acutely observed portrayal of the strange, surreal time between childhood and adulthood.

And on order....

Short Treatise on the Joys of Morphinism - Hans Fallada *Drawing on Hans Fallada's own history of addiction, these two stories are written with a remarkable, tough, spartan clarity. As a man desperately, haplessly tries to get enough morphine to make it through the day and a drunk embezzler struggles to get himself arrested, they are at one second crushing, the next darkly comic.

And...

Several Perceptions - Angela Carter *Centre stage in Angela Carter's unruly tale of the Flower Power Generation is Joseph - a decadent, disorientated rebel without a cause. A self-styled nihilist whose girlfriend has abandoned him, Joseph has decided to give up existing. But his concerned friends and neighbours have other plans. In an effort to join in the spirit of protest which motivates his contemporaries, Joseph frees a badger from the local zoo; sends a turd airmail to the President of the United States; falls in love with the mother of his best friend; and, accompanied by the strains of an old man's violin, celebrates Christmas Eve in a bewildering state of sexual discovery. But has he found the Meaning of Life?

Love - Angela Carter *Annabel, an artist adrift in the political and sexual crosscurrents of the 1960s and the whirling undertow of her own mind, falls into marriage with the blithely adulterous Lee. Before long, her relationship leads to obsession, betrayal, deceit, voyeurism, violence, and suicide

[Menion]

I found copys of Arthur C. Clarke - Islands in the Sky & Earthlight & The Sands of Mars. The whole Space trilogy I think.
Joe Haldeman's The Forever War.
L Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth.
Robert A. Heinlein's The cat who walks through walls.
And a few Discworld novels, In a box of my dads old army stuff.

[AE35Unit]

Originally Posted by Menion

I found copys of Arthur C. Clarke - Islands in the Sky & Earthlight & The Sands of Mars. The whole Space trilogy I think.

Yea thats his 'Space Trilogy', enjoy! I have them in one volume from 2000.

[Hilarious Joke]

Having finished my reread of The Name of the Wind last night, I bought Wise Man's Fear today at lunch. Very excited!

[Mouse]

I just got Steve Irwin's biography. Swapped it for my Star Trek technical manual. Why I owned a Star Trek technical manual, I'll never know.

[GOLLUM]

The fourth and final of the Penguin mini modern classics I was after...

Short Treatise on the Joys of Morphinism - Hans Fallada *Drawing on Hans Fallada's own history of addiction, these two stories are written with a remarkable, tough, spartan clarity. As a man desperately, haplessly tries to get enough morphine to make it through the day and a drunk embezzler struggles to get himself arrested, they are at one second crushing, the next darkly comic.

[GOLLUM]

A couple more of the new Penguin Mini Classics that caught my eye...

The Machine Stops - E.M.Forster *E.M. Forster is best known for his exquisite novels, but these two affecting short stories brilliantly combine the fantastical with the allegorical. In 'The Machine Stops', humanity has isolated itself beneath the ground, enmeshed in automated comforts, and in 'The Celestial Omnibus' a young boy takes a trip his parents believe impossible.

Romances of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady - Robert Coover *Robert Coover's imagination blisteringly combines the sinister and the hilarious, in writing both wildly energetic and cruelly vaudevillian. These three short stories conjure macabre scenes of a troubled circus romance, of a brutally comic traffic accident, and of a single night of babysitting where every hope or threat of violence or sex is done and undone.

[Connavar]

The Female Man - Joanna Russ(SF Masterworks)

[Daisy-Boo]

The Painted Man - Peter V. Brett (Am reading it now and it's excellent.)
The Gunslinger - Stephen King
Sleepyhead - Mark Billingham

[neuroticdog]

Tales of Terror and the Supernatural-Wilkie Collins
The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs-James P. Blaylock
The Wasp Factory-Iain Banks

[GOLLUM]

Recently....

The last of the modern mini classics that I'll be getting.

The sexes and other stories - Dorothy Parker *Dorothy Parker captured early twentieth century American society like no one else could. She was a masterful observer of character, a witty, sharply exact composer of dialogue and a poignant reader of the subtleties of relationship. In these five stories, of relationships strained by ill-will, social distance or circumstance, all her strengths are clear.

La Grosse Fifi and other stories - Jean Rhys *For those who may not be aware, Jean Rhys is the author of the wonderful Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Bronte's Jane Eyre. *These four haunting stories from the author of Wide Sargasso Sea capture moments in the lives of European dilettantes, ingénues, businessmen, soldiers and artists at a time when the world was enjoying freedom after war. But with freedom comes the greater opportunity for self-destruction, and Rhys is at her redolent best when writing about the desires of people striving unsuccessfully after happiness.

[Lemmy]

I can think of three books on top of my head.

1. The Servant of Bones, by Anne Rice. First edition, first print and signed. And no, you don't want to know how much I paid for it.

2. Pet Semetary, by Stephen King. First edition.

3. House of Night Book 7: Burned, by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast. I had pre-ordered this in paperback, but when I saw the hardcover in the store I simply couldn't resist. I bought it, went home and read half the book literally in one sitting without a break. But it didn't quite fit with the other books, so I didn't bother cancel the paperback edition, but kept both versions.

[GOLLUM]

Recently....

Difference Engine - Gibson & Sterling. A classic for the latest in the Masterwork series. Blurb: The computer age has arrived a century ahead of time with Charles Babbage's perfection of his Analytical Engine. The Industrial Revolution, supercharged by the development of steam-driven cybernetic Engines, is in full and drastic swing. Great Britain, with her calculating-cannons, steam dreadnoughts, machine-guns and information technology, prepares to better the world's lot . .

Growth Of The Soil - Knut Hamsun *Generally regraded as the greatest of Hamsun's great novels.Blurb: When Hamsun won the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1920, it was mostly because of this 1917 novel, an epic vision of peasant life in Norway’s backcountry. The saga of Isak and Inger (born with a harelip) and their hard times is by turns affecting and ponderous; the somewhat overheated first-person narrators of Hamsun’s extraordinary early novels—"Hunger" and "Pan"—are replaced by a stately, almost distant third person. Yet Hamsun’s eye and ear were still sharp; even his trees have special qualities ("Everybody knows that aspens can have an unpleasant, bullying way of rustling"). In this overdue new version, Lyngstad, Hamsun’s heroic translator, splendidly captures the author’s voice as he guides his large cast into the stresses of the modern age.

My Happy Days in Hell - Gyorgy Faludy. A recommendation from my bookseller. Blurb: My Happy Days in Hell (1962) is Gyorgy Faludy's grimly beautiful autobiography of his battle to survive tyranny and oppression. Fleeing Hungary in 1938 as the German army approaches, acclaimed poet Faludy journeys to Paris, where he finds a lover but merely a cursory asylum. When the French capitulate to the Nazis, Faludy travels to North Africa, then on to America, where he volunteers for military service. Missing his homeland and determined to do the right thing, he returns - only to be imprisoned, tortured, and slowly starved, eventually becoming one of only twenty-one survivors of his camp.


Education of the Stoic - Fernando Pessoa *Not much to be said about the author of the masterpiece Book of Disquiet except that I'm looking forward to this latest "discovery". Blurb: In 1999, translator Richard Zenith made a new find in the Pessoa archive in Lisbon: a group of prose writings by a previously unknown heteronym, the "Baron of Teive." The Portuguese volume of these writings has been received by scholars as a crucial piece of the puzzle that is Pessoa’s oeuvre. The Education of the Stoic is the unique work left by the Baron of Teive, who, after destroying all his previous literary attempts and before destroying himself, explains "the impossibility of producing superior art." It is the dark companion piece to The Book of Disquiet.

[dask]

Found this at the Salvation Army a few days ago. Couldn't post it due to problems with Photobucket, but as of this morning the situation appears to have been resolved so here's my super-find of the month. Perhaps technically not a trade paperback it's bigger than a mass market paperback measuring 5X8 inches. White tagged for forty nine cents during the week white tags are 75% off this extremely fine, more like near mint, copy of B. Traven's masterpiece published by Time, Inc (with extra stiff paper cover) cost me a whopping thirteen cents tax included. Hoo hah!

[GOLLUM]

Well done Dask. That's a bargain for what is a little known classic!

Today....

The Prestige - Christopher Priest *SF Masterwork edition of one of Priests' better known novels. Blurb:Two 19th century stage illusionists, the aristocratic Rupert Angier and the working-class Alfred Borden, engage in a bitter and deadly feud; the effects are still being felt by their respective families a hundred years later. Working in the gaslight-and-velvet world of Victorian music halls, they prowl edgily in the background of each other's shadowy life, driven to the extremes by a deadly combination of obsessive secrecy and insatiable curiosity. At the heart of the row is an amazing illusion they both perform during their stage acts. The secret of the magic is simple, and the reader is in on it almost from the start, but to the antagonists the real mystery lies deeper. Both have something more to hide than the mere workings of a trick.

Long Price Quartet Vols I & II - Daniel Abrahams *Tor edition of Abrahams' modern day classic.

Auto Da Fe - Elias Canetti *Edition of recognised masterpiece of modernism and the only prose work by the 1981 Bulgarian Nobel Prize winner in Literature Elias Canetti. Blurb: Auto-da-Fé, Elias Canetti's only work of fiction, is a staggering achievement that puts him squarely in the ranks of major European writers such as Robert Musil and Hermann Broch. It is the story of Peter Kien, a scholarly recluse who lives among and for his great library. The destruction of Kien through the instrument of the illiterate, brutish housekeeper he marries constitutes the plot of the book. The best writers of our time have been concerned with the horror of the modern world--one thinks of Kafka, to whom Canetti has often been compared. But Auto-de-Fé stands as a completely original, unforgettable treatment of the modern predicament.