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Recently Purchased/Borrowed

z_boy said:
Is everyone's bookstore having a 3 for 2 sale????
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A couple of the major chains in the UK are. One of them does both 3 for 2 and 4 for £10. I think it started off as a special offer on the BBC book list, and then never finished. It just gets transfered onto new books, summer reads, essential reads or whatever other themes they can think up. They stack them up all around the door so you can't get in or out without facing the most dire temptation.
 
Four for a tenner? That's alright. We have a WHSmiths here, that's the only shop that sells books in the whole town. ONE SHOP. It's not even a big WHSmiths :( You find bigger ones at train stations. Woe is me.
 
I've only made 2 recent additions. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and Neil Gaiman's American Gods.


RaVeN
 
I hope to be able to read it soon Kaz. So many books, so little time. :(

I bought just 1 today, Fire by Sebastian Junger. (author of The Perfect Storm)


RaVeN
 
i just picked up 4 wordsworth classics on sale:

Homer's Iliad
The Odyssey
Anna Karenina
The Great Gatsby
 
The Great Gatsby is one I keep meaning to read, but then not bothering with. If it's in Wordsworth Classics, then I suppose I'm not losing much if it's rubbish.
 
Litany said:
The Great Gatsby is one I keep meaning to read, but then not bothering with. If it's in Wordsworth Classics, then I suppose I'm not losing much if it's rubbish.
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I think it's worth reading, and a pretty fast read once you get into it. It has a sense of immediacy that most novels aspire to and don't quite acheive. You thoroughly disapprove of the characters, but are close enough to touch them and it's hard to take a step back.

I'm reading a section of Reading Lolita in Tehran that deals with teaching that book. Interesting to see how some people just "get" the message of a novel and some are so immersed in their own ideology that they can only see the trappings of it.
 
I'm really proud of myself since my rampant book buying has been curbed somewhat over the last few weeks, so just one book to report:

The Big Picture by Douglas Kennedy. Loved one of his other books so much when I read it that I've been scouring the second-hand shops for any others and discovered this the other day. A snip at £1.99 :)
 
The Great Gatsby

Ashlea said:
I think it's worth reading, and a pretty fast read once you get into it. It has a sense of immediacy that most novels aspire to and don't quite acheive. You thoroughly disapprove of the characters, but are close enough to touch them and it's hard to take a step back.

I'm reading a section of Reading Lolita in Tehran that deals with teaching that book. Interesting to see how some people just "get" the message of a novel and some are so immersed in their own ideology that they can only see the trappings of it.
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To me, the fascinating thing about Gatsby is the first-person voice of Nick Carraway, who puts himself forward as a neutral observer, but he's this Midwestern monied conservative guy who's extremely judgmental about class.

In fact, Carraway's comments immediately tar Gatsby as a climber and a fraud with a shady past (compared with Carraway's own indisputable lineage and connections), and then he befriends him because Carraway is, afer all, extremely impressed by money. Great commentary on the American national character.

I think a book like this is a perfect example of a narrative that is accepted as the "true" story by some readers who never recognize or question the voice that's recounting the narrative.

Fitzgerald is, IMO, a brilliantly smooth observer of human nature, very modern for his time, and subtly poetic. Tender is the Night is another wonderful book.


Novella
 
Lous de Bernieres - Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Synopisis In the early days of the Second World War, before Benito Mussolini invaded Greece, Dr. Iannis practices medicine on the island of Cephalonia, accompanied by his daughter, Pelagia, to whom he imparts much of his healing art. Even when the Italians do invade, life isn't so bad--at first anyway. The officer in command of the Italian garrison is the cultured Captain Antonio Corelli, who responds to a Nazi greeting of "Heil Hitler" with his own "Heil Puccini," and whose most precious possession is his mandolin. It isn't long before Corelli and Pelagia are involved in a heated affair--despite her engagement to a young fisherman, Mandras, who has gone off to join Greek partisans. Love is complicated enough in wartime, even when the lovers are on the same side. And for Corelli and Pelagia, it becomes increasingly difficult to negotiate the minefield of allegiances, both personal and political, as all around them atrocities mount, former friends become enemies, and the ugliness of war infects everyone it touches.

British author Louis de Bernières is well known for his forays into magical realism in such novels as The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord, and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman. Here he keeps it to a minimum, though certainly the secondary characters with whom he populates his island--the drunken priest, the strongman, the fisherman who swims with dolphins--would be at home in any of his wildly imaginative Latin American fictions. Instead, de Bernières seems interested in dissecting the nature of history as he tells his ever-darkening tale from many different perspectives. Corelli's Mandolin works on many levels, as a love story, a war story, and a deconstruction of just what determines the facts that make it into the history books.

Sounds interesting, huh? I now have three of his books ( unread ) on my shelf... so he BETTER be good :D

And I also got The Inn At The End Of The World by Thomas Alice Ellis.

Synopsis Five fugitives from Christmas are lured by an advertisement to a remote Scottish Island. Each has a prifave motive for avoiding the false jollity of the festive season and each as different ways, in search of escape, steeped in the myth and the magic of the Selkies - the seal people - works its mysterious alchemy on them, alliances are attempted, bonds created and broken, and peace, when it comes, wears an unxpected guise.
 
Well, I Am Legend arrived in the mail today. Didn't realise it was such a short book - only 160 pages. But I'll love it none the less.

Cheers
 
I've got 3 packages on there way, 2 from amazon and one from FSF book club. Going to be beans on toast for every meal for the next month :(

Earlier this week received:

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich, by P K Dick
The Sheep Look Up, by John Brunner
Grendel by John Gardner (this one looks cool, but is going to wait til i finally finish Beowulf).
 
I have a few new ones this week. The Riverrun Trilogy by S.P.Somtow (Riverrun, Armorica, & Yestern)
I read & enjoyed the author's werewolf novel, Moon Dance, years ago and thought I would give these a shot.

The others that I just ebayed were 2 copies (1st editions) of Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. One in a white dust jacket(the U.S. edition) and one in black (the U.K. edition).
I don't usually do that but the book has such a hype that I thought I'd keep the U.S. edition in it's plastic wrap, just for kicks, and read the U.K. edition.
If you haven't heard of the book you might want to look it up. It may turn to fizzle but it sounds pretty good to me. :) I'm looking forward to reading it, once done with The Three Musketeers.


RaVeN
 
just pre-ordered The Dark Tower VII from Amazon - should arrive next Tuesday :D very excited.

Also ordered: Enchantment (Orsen Scott Card), American Gods (Neil Gaiman) and I Am Legend (Richard Matheson).
 
Antipodes By Ignacio Padilla.

Synopsis

IPadilla, one of Mexico's foremost young writers, presents a handful of eclectic modern-day fables. From the author of the award-winning novel Shadow Without a Name, comes Antipodes, the first collection of his short fiction to be translated into English. This lively, eclectic, and highly imaginative volume spans time, place, and culture as the narratives move from the scorching heat of the Gobi desert to the glacial heights of Mount Everest.

Here, among others, are the stories of a great Scottish engineer, left to die in the middle of the desert, who is rescued by a tribe of nomads and inspires them to build an exact replica of the city of Edinburgh in the dunes; of a dying, cross-dressing pilot who allegedly climbs Mount Everest and then mysteriously disappears; of an English colonel who swears on his life to make the trains in Zambezi run on time, only to be forced to honor his word when they are always ten minutes late; of a monk who conjures the devil to prove the devil's existence; and of a young administrator of a psychiatric hospital who is appalled by the treatment of the patients, and devises his own bizarre solution.
 
I just bought:

Dreamcatcher by Stephen King
Salem's Lot by Stephen King
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice

It'll be awhile before I get to these, I have a few more to read beforehand.
 
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