frankie Posted August 26, 2011 Author Share Posted August 26, 2011 I've just gone through my last year's reading blog, to see which books I got from last year's book sale. And I realised that the price of a bag full of books was 3e, not 5e as I remembered! Wohoo! Last year I got me these: An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge The Small Assassin by Ray Bradbury Roommates: You're No Friend of Mine by Emily Chase Fanny Hill by John Cleland What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code by Eoin Colfer Vuokralla täällä by Pentti Holappa The Bostonians by Henry James The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory by Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason Classics of the Macabre by Daphne du Maurier Hungry Hill by Daphne du Maurier The Rendezvous and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier On rakkautes ääretön by Maria Peura A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell It wasn't as good a haul as I remembered. And what's worse, I haven't read any of those titles yet, to this very day How very embarrassing! I've even given away the Artemis Fowl book because I realised afterwards that it's not the first novel in the series, so no use owning that. Still, a lot of books for only 3e. I'm hoping to do better this year, because I'm more prepared, I know what it's like, and I know a few strategies that should come in handy. And I've learnt that if a book interests me, there's no use wondering whether I should get it or not, just grab it. I can always go through the books I've snatched before getting out and paying for them, to leave behind the ones that I don't want after all. I'm too excited! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kidsmum Posted August 26, 2011 Share Posted August 26, 2011 I really enjoyed An Awfully Big Adventure Frankie & as I recall it was quite a quick read so if you were looking to make inroads into your pile I'd definitely recommend that one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kylie Posted August 26, 2011 Share Posted August 26, 2011 When I saw that list, the first thing I thought was 'I wonder how many she has read'. I'm so excited for you. It brings back memories of us planning our trip to the book fair and pouring over our maps to work out where we would go first. And remember on the third day we got to fill a bag for $15? That was almost a year ago now. I can't wait to see what you buy! Happy book shopping Frankie! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted August 26, 2011 Author Share Posted August 26, 2011 I totally scored today! In quality, as well as quantity. Full report will follow later Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrissy Posted August 26, 2011 Share Posted August 26, 2011 You big book teaser you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted August 26, 2011 Author Share Posted August 26, 2011 (edited) Well I needed a breather, it's a hot day and the room where they held the sale was packed and I was sweating like a pig! Needed water... And needed to sort the books in lovely piles. First a description of how it went down: Last year I went to the library maybe 20-30 minutes before the start and the place was packed, so this year I played it safe. A friend of mine noticed my FB status about me going to the library sale and asked me if she could tag along. So we went there 1,5 before the doors opened. And there was nobody there We were first, and started the line. We sat there for about half an hour, then a 40-50 old man came and ask if this was the line. We started talking to him, or rather, he started talking to us about books and the sale and stuff. He might be the age that he could be my father, but he was nice and kind of nice looking, he had long, gorgeous eye lashes Hehehe 45 minutes before the door opened about 5 more people gathered around, and me and my friend started feeling a bit stupid for going there so early. But when it was time to open the doors, I looked around and hallway behind us was pretty packed. The a lady came up, moved the tables that blocked the way, and then IT WAS ON!! I got to go first, wohoo I dashed for the English lit section, the selection was pretty poor, and then moved straighaway to the 'literature studies' section. I made some really excellent finds there!! Within 15 minutes my arms were full of books. For some reason they didn't hand out plastic bags this year, and I was in a big trouble. I realised I had to get out, purchase the books, stash them somewhere and come back a second time. I tell you, some people gave me some really weird glances when they saw how many books I carried. I wanted to ask them, 'isn't this what this thing is all about?! Buying books?! Why the hell are you here??" This year the payment was different, it wasn't 3e per bagful. Each book was 20cnt. But it all adds up to just about the same price. But when I realised I would be paying for individual books, I went through my first haul, sat on the floor and put my books down in a nice row and went through them. This one woman who was going out actually stopped to go through my books, apparently she thought that the books on the floor were another section where to find books. She left when she realised they were mine I bought the books, stashed them in a locker and went back. So far I'd only gone through the English lit section and the literary studies section, and pretty fast. This time I started from the fiction section. Oh man it was hot. There was this large table with four cardboard boxes per row, and people went around the table from right to left, taking in the contents of the two closest cardboard boxes, then reached the end of the table, went around the corner and got to the other two box rows. I tell you, if you gave up your space right next to the table, just to go around one obstinate person who wouldn't get out of your way, some other person rushed in and you couldn't get back to the table but had to peak over hunched shoulders. I was practising the obstinate, non-moving routine myself a couple of times. But I didn't elbow anyone, and if I accidentally hit someone with my books, I always apologised and smiled apologetically. It was that crowded. I went around the whole place maybe three times on my second book haul and found me some great titles, but then I decide that this is it for me, I won't be able to get more books because the plastic bags they sold were small and looked like they could break from the weight at any given second. It was an excellent outing. I got there first! And I found some excellent titles! And I got all the books home, safe Edited August 26, 2011 by frankie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lauraloves Posted August 26, 2011 Share Posted August 26, 2011 Oh who can remember such minor, irrelevant details I believe I have your details, I shall send the book to you some time next week when I get to the post office Thanks Frankie, your a star P.S. can't wait to see what books you got at the sale! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted August 26, 2011 Author Share Posted August 26, 2011 (edited) Okay, here's the list of books I bought. 20 cnt a piece. Fiction: Donna Leon: A Noble Radiance (in English) Donna Leon: Acqual Alta (in English) William Burroughs: Cities of the Red Light (Wohoo, Burroughs, and in English!) Elie Wiesel: The Testament (in English) Jerome K. Jerome: Three Men in a Boat (yay, now I have this, can read it and then read Three Men on a Bummel that I bought this summer ) Julian Barnes: Talking it over (I don't know if this is any good but want to try Barnes) John Kennedy Toole: The Neon Bible (wohoooo!!! Too bad that it's in Finnish, though) Katherine Mansfield: The Garden Party and Other Stories (I've been wanting to read Mansfield ever since I started reading Between the Sheets) Sapphire: Push! (I love this book, couldn't believe I found a copy!) Erich Segal: Man, Woman and Child (yay, more Segal!) Cynthia Ozick: The Cannibal Galaxy (once I noticed this book in a secondhand bookshop, the title caught my attention, read the blurb, sounded interesting but didn't buy it because was not cheap. Now was!) William Goldman: The Marathon Man (I'm not sure if this is on one of my lists, might be, might not be. Interesting blurb anyways) Charles Baudelaire: Välähdyksiä and Alaston sydämeni (don't know if there are English titles for these) Non-Fiction: (and these are my most favorite finds, at least some of them!) Maksim Gorki: some book, straight translation of title would be Essays on Literature but found no such thing, will continue searching Kingsley Amis: What Became of Jane Austen? (in English) Per Olov Enquist: August Stringbergin elämä (August Strindberg's Life) Roland Barthes: The Pleasure of the Text (Barthes has been turning up on almost every book I've now leafed through concerning my thesis, he sounds like an interesting person) Leon Edel: Bloomsbury: A House of Lions (wohoo And in English, too! poppyshake will be pleased!) Gertrude Stein: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (wohooo!!!) Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, Memory (wohooo!!) T. R. Fyvel: George Orwell - A personal memoir (in English!) Frank MacShane: The Life of Raymond Chandler Margareta Strömstedt: Astrid Lindgren Arthur Miller: Timebends. A Life Brenda Maddox: Nora and last but not least: five copies of Anaïs Nin's diaries!! 1934-1939, 1944-1947, 1947-1955, 1955-1966, 1966-1974. (Anaïs Nin is someone I've only recently 'discovered', she's one of the literary partners in Between the Sheets, which I'm currently reading, and just yesterday I thought to myself, 'if only I could find the diaries somewhere, inexpensively...' And holy hell I got five of them!!!) I'm happy happy happy Edited August 27, 2011 by frankie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrissy Posted August 26, 2011 Share Posted August 26, 2011 In the words of Bart Simpson.........Ay Curumba! That's a whole lotta books there. Good haul, great books, great authors. Well done! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sofia Posted August 26, 2011 Share Posted August 26, 2011 terrific haul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chesilbeach Posted August 27, 2011 Share Posted August 27, 2011 Wow, what a fantastic thing your library book sale is! My local library is tiny, and if they had a book sale like this, they wouldn't have any books left! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kylie Posted August 27, 2011 Share Posted August 27, 2011 (edited) Donna Leon: A Noble Radiance (in English) Donna Leon: Acqual Alta (in English) I've heard her name but know nothing about her. Is she on any lists? William Burroughs: Cities of the Red Light (Wohoo, Burroughs, and in English!) Excellent! I'd like to read this. Elie Wiesel: The Testament (in English) Ooh, very cool. Jerome K. Jerome: Three Men in a Boat (yay, now I have this, can read it and then read Three Men on a Bummel that I bought this summer ) I can't wait for you to read this! I hope you read it soon. Julian Barnes: Talking it over (I don't know if this is any good but want to try Barnes) Why don't you start with Flaubert's Parrot? I think you already have it, don't you? John Kennedy Toole: The Neon Bible (wohoooo!!! Too bad that it's in Finnish, though) I'm so jealous! Katherine Mansfield: The Garden Party and Other Stories (I've been wanting to read Mansfield ever since I started reading Between the Sheets) Woohoo! I recently got a book of her stories. I think it might include all of her short stories, but I'm pretty sure the one you bought is the exact title on (I think) the Rory list. I've been reading all your happy posts on Between the Sheets, and I sooooo want this book! I'm going to have to buy myself a copy very soon...Aw man, I just looked it up and the paperback isn't due out until 2012. Erich Segal: Man, Woman and Child (yay, more Segal!) I can imagine that you're very, very pleased with this! William Goldman: The Marathon Man (I'm not sure if this is on one of my lists, might be, might not be. Interesting blurb anyways) I think this might be on the 1001 list. I'd like to give it a go one day. Maksim Gorki: some book, straight translation of title would be Essays on Literature but found no such thing, will continue searching You mean Maxim Gorky? (By the way, regarding that 'who has the correct spelling?' post of yours, the answer is that you're wrong and we're right. ) Jokes aside, essays on literature are always bound to be great. Kingsley Amis: What Became of Jane Austen? (in English) Ooh, this sounds interesting. A book about my favourite author by an author I'd really like to read. Per Olov Enquist: August Stringbergin elämä (August Strindberg's Life) Who's August Stringbergin? Leon Edel: Bloomsbury: A House of Lions (wohoo And in English, too! poppyshake will be pleased!) This sounds like one I'd love too. Gertrude Stein: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (wohooo!!!) Dang, I'm so jealous! Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, Memory (wohooo!!) Yay for more Nabokov! And this was mentioned in Reading Lolita in Tehran too, so I bet you're extra happy about that. T. R. Fyvel: George Orwell - A personal memoir (in English!) Frank MacShane: The Life of Raymond Chandler Margareta Strömstedt: Astrid Lindgren These all sound great. Man, I kind of wish I'd never gotten interested in biographies. There are too many interesting people to read about! five copies of Anaïs Nin's diaries!! 1934-1939, 1944-1947, 1947-1955, 1955-1966, 1966-1974. (Anaïs Nin is someone I've only recently 'discovered', she's one of the literary partners in Between the Sheets, which I'm currently reading, and just yesterday I thought to myself, 'if only I could find the diaries somewhere, inexpensively...' And holy hell I got five of them!!!) Unbelievable! You were just wanting them and the next day you found them. That is just too cool. I'm happy happy happy And I'm happy happy happy for you. What a terrific haul! Edited August 27, 2011 by Kylie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kidsmum Posted August 27, 2011 Share Posted August 27, 2011 Wow...!!!! Frankie you must have neede a pack horse to get all that lot home Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted August 28, 2011 Author Share Posted August 28, 2011 I really enjoyed An Awfully Big Adventure Frankie & as I recall it was quite a quick read so if you were looking to make inroads into your pile I'd definitely recommend that one Yep, it seems like a short read so I think it could be quickly and easily read. Before I bought the new bookcase, the book was unhappily situated in a backrow with other books and that might be a reason as to why I never even considered reading it. 'Out of sight, out of mind' sort of thing. My friend wrote her thesis on Beryl Bainbridge's The Bottle Factory Outing which sounded like a really quirky read (have you read that one by any chance?), and I always wanted to read that book but have never found an English copy, so when I found AABA, I just bought it because it was by Bainbridge. I might be bumping it up on my next reads pile, thanks to you When I saw that list, the first thing I thought was 'I wonder how many she has read'. You know me too well I'm so excited for you. It brings back memories of us planning our trip to the book fair and pouring over our maps to work out where we would go first. And remember on the third day we got to fill a bag for $15? That was almost a year ago now. Yep, I was also thinking about the maps they gave us in Canberra, I was so wishing they would have maps at the library sale as well. Although it was a small sale, in comparison. A really small sale. I miss the Canberra book fair, and all the secondhand bookshop outings! And who could forget the $15 offer on the third day? Not me! I wish I had loads of money. I've been thinking about moving abroad for a year or two after I graduate. Maybe UK, maybe Australia. If I were ever to live abroad, the time's now when I have nothing besides uni for me here in Joensuu. No commitments or attachments to anyone. In the words of Bart Simpson.........Ay Curumba! That's a whole lotta books there. Good haul, great books, great authors. Well done! Thanks Chrissy, still feeling very happy about my books and my accomplishments! terrific haul Thanks Sofia! Wow, what a fantastic thing your library book sale is! My local library is tiny, and if they had a book sale like this, they wouldn't have any books left! Well we can't have libraries without books, can we? I bet you have a lot of secondhand bookshops available for you, though Donna Leon: A Noble Radiance (in English) Donna Leon: Acqual Alta (in English) I've heard her name but know nothing about her. Is she on any lists? No, she's an American author who's lived in Venice for over 25 years, and these books are detective stories/thrillers set in Venice/Italy. I'm fascinated by all things Italian, and when I was going to go to Rome with BF and his family, BF's Mum gave me the first novel in the series as a gift because she knows how much I like reading and thrillers, and this was set in Italy. William Burroughs: Cities of the Red Light (Wohoo, Burroughs, and in English!) Excellent! I'd like to read this. I bet you would! Elie Wiesel: The Testament (in English) Ooh, very cool. Very! Jerome K. Jerome: Three Men in a Boat (yay, now I have this, can read it and then read Three Men on a Bummel that I bought this summer ) I can't wait for you to read this! I hope you read it soon. Maybe I will, although I'm bummed that the copy was in Finnish. But it had lovely covers and couldn't resist. Julian Barnes: Talking it over (I don't know if this is any good but want to try Barnes) Why don't you start with Flaubert's Parrot? I think you already have it, don't you? Well, I did have it, and started reading it while in OZ, but it was really hard to get into. I.e. BORING. I gave you the option to have it as your own, but I think we took it to the secondhand bookshops to get rid of. I'm disappointed that you don't remember this, Kylie John Kennedy Toole: The Neon Bible (wohoooo!!! Too bad that it's in Finnish, though) I'm so jealous! I know, sorry! Katherine Mansfield: The Garden Party and Other Stories (I've been wanting to read Mansfield ever since I started reading Between the Sheets) Woohoo! I recently got a book of her stories. I think it might include all of her short stories, but I'm pretty sure the one you bought is the exact title on (I think) the Rory list. I've been reading all your happy posts on Between the Sheets, and I sooooo want this book! I'm going to have to buy myself a copy very soon...Aw man, I just looked it up and the paperback isn't due out until 2012. Actually it's on the 1001 list, not the Rory one, but yes, The Garden Party is there. Bliss and Other Stories is on the 501 list, and so is Journal of Katherine Mansfield. I want to buy everything by her that I can get my hands on. Erich Segal: Man, Woman and Child (yay, more Segal!) I can imagine that you're very, very pleased with this! I was Especially when I found a copy of this in a secondhand bookshop a few months back, but I was skint and it was a bit expensive and I had to leave it behind. And now I finally got it! William Goldman: The Marathon Man (I'm not sure if this is on one of my lists, might be, might not be. Interesting blurb anyways) I think this might be on the 1001 list. I'd like to give it a go one day. It's on the Rory list. I would've also thought that it would be on the 1001 list but no. Maksim Gorki: some book, straight translation of title would be Essays on Literature but found no such thing, will continue searching You mean Maxim Gorky? (By the way, regarding that 'who has the correct spelling?' post of yours, the answer is that you're wrong and we're right.) Jokes aside, essays on literature are always bound to be great. It's Maksim Gorki!! I'd like to believe that because we live way closer to Russia than any English speaking countries, we know better Kingsley Amis: What Became of Jane Austen? (in English) Ooh, this sounds interesting. A book about my favourite author by an author I'd really like to read. I haven't looked it over yet but I think it also discusses other authors. Per Olov Enquist: August Stringbergin elämä (August Strindberg's Life) Who's August Stringbergin? Oops, a typo! Not Stringberg but StrinDberg. 'Strindbergin' is 'Strindberg's' in Finnish, so it's August Strindberg, like it says in the parentheses. I know him as a Swedish author, but apparently he was also a playwright, painter and essayist. He wrote, for example, The Red Room, which is on the 1001 list. I've read Miss Julie by him, and I loved it. I regret giving the copy away. Leon Edel: Bloomsbury: A House of Lions This sounds like one I'd love too. I agree, you should look into it! Just wait til you have the time to read poppyshake's and my discussion on Virginia Woolf in her reading blog, you might get hooked! Gertrude Stein: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (wohooo!!!) Dang, I'm so jealous! This is one of the books I was the most happy about finding! Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, Memory (wohooo!!) Yay for more Nabokov! And this was mentioned in Reading Lolita in Tehran too, so I bet you're extra happy about that. Indeed! And what's more funny, the Finnish title is (translated to English:) Nabokov on Nabokov, so when I bought it, I only found out later that it's not just some other book but Speak, Memory, which is on the Rory list and the 501 list as well! T. R. Fyvel: George Orwell - A personal memoir (in English!) Frank MacShane: The Life of Raymond Chandler Margareta Strömstedt: Astrid Lindgren These all sound great. Man, I kind of wish I'd never gotten interested in biographies. There are too many interesting people to read about! I was particularly happy to find Lindgren's biography! She has written so many of my childhood's favorite books. I've said this before but I'll say it again: I'd swap Finland's Tove Jansson for Sweden's Astrid Lindgren anyday! five copies of Anaïs Nin's diaries!! 1934-1939, 1944-1947, 1947-1955, 1955-1966, 1966-1974. (Anaïs Nin is someone I've only recently 'discovered', she's one of the literary partners in Between the Sheets, which I'm currently reading, and just yesterday I thought to myself, 'if only I could find the diaries somewhere, inexpensively...' And holy hell I got five of them!!!) Unbelievable! You were just wanting them and the next day you found them. That is just too cool. I know, I know! I couldn't believe my luck, I really had to compose myself and avoid any kind of screaming... Wow...!!!! Frankie you must have neede a pack horse to get all that lot home Yep, I had my horsie with me, I saddled him and mounted all the books and me on top of him, and yelled 'GIDDYUP!' but the silly horsie wouldn't budge! I had to peddle Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted August 28, 2011 Author Share Posted August 28, 2011 I forgot to tell you about a few details re: book sale. When we went to the library with my friend, I took out my copy of Literary Trivia - Over 300 Curious Lists for Bookworms from my bag and was leafing through it. Friend then mentioned that she hadn't realised that she could also bring a book along, to pass the time. I then went over to the free book trolley and found Flora Rheta Schreiber's Sybil and gave it to her and provided her with the synopsis She sounded interested and took the book! At the book sale I noticed a Finnish copy of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, and marvelled at it. But I already had a copy so there was no reason to buy it. I told my friend who was right beside, going through the books, that that is one heck of a book, and she said she trusts my taste, and anyways it was cheap. So she got it. Wohoo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted August 29, 2011 Author Share Posted August 29, 2011 (edited) Between the Sheets - The Literary Liaisons of Nine 20th-Century Women Writers by Lesley McDowell From the cover: Why did a gifted writer like Sylvia Plath stumble into a marriage that drove her to suicide? Why did Hilda Doolittle want to marry Ezra Pound when she was attracted to women? Why did Simone De Beauvoir pimp for Jean-Paul Sartre? The list of the damages done in each of these sexual relationships between female writers and their male literary partners is long, but each relationship provokes the same question: would these women have become the writers they became without the experience of their own particular literary relationship? Focusing on the diaries, letters and journals of each woman, Between the Sheets explores nine famous literary liaisons of the twentieth century. Lesley McDowell examines the extent to which each woman was prepared to put artistic ambition before personal happiness, and how dependent on their male writing partners these women felt themselves to be. She probes the consequences of the women's codependence and reveals how, in many instances, their partnerships liberated unspoken desires, encouraged artistic innovations, and even shored up literary reputations. Fascinating and insightful, Between the Sheets is a marvelous read and an invaluable addition to the literature of feminism. Thougths: I was looking for material for my thesis when the title of this book caught my eye at the uni library, and I simply had to borrow the book. The literary couples that McDowell discusses are - Katherine Mansfield & John Middleton Murry - H. D. & Ezra Pound - Rebecca West & H. G. Wells - Jean Rhys & Ford Madox Ford - Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller - Simone de Beauvoir & Jean-Paul Sartre - Martha Gellhorn & Ernest Hemingway - Elizabeth Smart & George Barker - Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes The books starts with a, IMO, very fascinating introduction. We learn how and why McDowell came to write about this subject, and I don't want to give anything away, but let's just say she has a certain connection to one of these literary relationships, making it in a way a personal voyage, in part. I've already read a biography of Sylvia Plath and thus knew about her and Ted's relationship, and I knew at least half of the other authors and they were all the sort of people I was happy to learn more about. There are some names I've never heard of, but that didn't hurt the reading process at all, I don't mind learning about new authors. And it's true what they say about no man being an island: a lot of these people (outside their own relationships) knew about each other by name, they were acquaintances or even lovers. I was absolutely fascinated with the book. All the relationships had their problems, and some had really serious ones, but there was also one recurring theme that benefited the women: the men were supportive of their writing. This was so refreshing, especially after having a long discussion with poppyshake about the dominance of white males in the literary scene. Apart from learning a lot of new things about these people and couples, what will stay with me the longest is the feeling I got from the book: I felt like I wanted to immediately start writing a book, letters, or a journal, and I wanted to find my literary half. Eventhough there was such sadness and pain to the relationships, I got into a very romantic mood and wanted to find me a time machine and go back to the days when there were no computers, and people wrote everything by hand, there was still nature to be seen instead of all the concrete multi-storied buildings. 5/5! Would recommend to anyone who enjoys memoirs/biographies, of authors in particular. And a word of warning: Here's a list of books I added to my wishlist while reading the book: - Christopher Barker: The Arms of the Infinite - Elizabeth Smart: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept - Hilda Doolittle: Tribute to Freud - P. G. Wodehouse: Mike and Psmith - Bram Stoker: Under the Sunset - Jean Rhys: After Leaving Mr MacKenzie - Jean Rhys: Smile, Please - Henry Miller: Crazy Cock - Anaïs Nin: Diaries - D. H. Lawrence: Women in Love (I, who loathed Lady Chatterley's Lover, have now added a D. H. Lawrence on my wishlist!!) - Katherine Mansfield's Journals + Letters - Beauvoir's Letters to Sartre - Beauvoir's Letters to Jacques-Laurent Bost - Biography of Simone de Beauvoir - Jean Rhys: Quartet - Anaïs Nin: Henry and June - Jean-Paul Sartre: Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre: Being and Nothingness - Ernest Hemingway: Across the River and into the Trees - Martha Gellhorn: The Trouble I've Seen - Martha Gellhorn: Travels with Myself and Another - Elizabeth Smart: Journals, Collected Works. So be aware, that you might also be adding a lot of books to your wishlist. I will not take any responsibility for that, because you've now been warned!!! Edit: And what's better: I've been somewhat interested in Simone de Beauvoir for a while now, mostly because her The Second Sex is on some reading challenges I'm doing, and the book sounds interesting, and then I also found her book She Came to Stay sometime ago. Before I got to read the chapter about Beauvoir & Sartre, I found five of her books in a charityshop for only 1,5e each, and was thrilled. And then when I read the chapter I was more thrilled that I'd found and bought the books! And then after having read the Anaïs Nin chapter, I became totally fascinated by her, and thought to myself I really want to find her diaries somewhere. And the next day was the library book sale where I found 5 of the diaries. I was so giddy Edited August 29, 2011 by frankie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poppyshake Posted August 29, 2011 Share Posted August 29, 2011 Great review of 'Between the Sheets' Frankie it sounds right up my alley (and knocking on my door and calling through the letterbox as Nick Hornby would say ) I love reading about writers so this is double heaven. Apart from Sylvia and Ted I only know snippets about the others so am totally intrigued. I like the look of your booklist too, there's lots of great sounding books there - I am off to look them up in a minute. I'm whole heartedly with you as regards to time travelling back to a more romantic time when men strode about the moors wearing breeches etc (hot flush coming on I fear ) or galloped about on horseback (I might be going back a little further, and more fictionally, than you intended ... I seem to have Darcy/Heathcliff in mind!) And as for letter writing, I hardly ever get letters now, only bills. You can't get very romantic about texts/emails, I mean they're perfect for letting you know what time someone will be home or what they want for dinner but if that someone wants to declare their unswerving devotion ... they're hopeless. I'm not saying let's go back to using quills but when I look at all my memorabilia, the letters start dwindling somewhere around the turn of the new millennium, I can't even trust my mum to write now .. she's caught the email bug. Hopefully novelists will always write letters/journals otherwise we'll be forced to read collected volumes of their emails which I can't imagine will be as enlightening. I am very much afraid (and so is my purse ) that I will catch this Simone de Beauvoir virus that you've been afflicted with, I can feel it coming on. Her books will now jump out at me from the library/bookshop shelves Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted August 30, 2011 Author Share Posted August 30, 2011 (edited) Great review of 'Between the Sheets' Frankie it sounds right up my alley (and knocking on my door and calling through the letterbox as Nick Hornby would say ) I love reading about writers so this is double heaven. Apart from Sylvia and Ted I only know snippets about the others so am totally intrigued. I like the look of your booklist too, there's lots of great sounding books there - I am off to look them up in a minute. Thanks poppyshake I know you'd like it. But I'm also very afraid that you'll go into bankruptcy with this book and all the books you'll be wanting to buy after reading it, I know I will! The biography I've already recommended to you, Ronald Hayman's The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath is mentioned in the book, so at least you already have that added on your list, if that's of any consolation... Earlier today I took a look at my goodreads account and all the updates made by my friends on there, and I noticed you'd added a lot of the titles I mentioned to your To-Read pile... BTW, did you know that you can add a 'wishlist' shelf there? It goes straight up to the specific section of read, to-read, currently-reading. I only found out about this from Kylie, just recently. I'm whole heartedly with you as regards to time travelling back to a more romantic time when men strode about the moors wearing breeches etc (hot flush coming on I fear ) or galloped about on horseback (I might be going back a little further, and more fictionally, than you intended ... I seem to have Darcy/Heathcliff in mind!) And as for letter writing, I hardly ever get letters now, only bills. You can't get very romantic about texts/emails, I mean they're perfect for letting you know what time someone will be home or what they want for dinner but if that someone wants to declare their unswerving devotion ... they're hopeless. I'm not saying let's go back to using quills but when I look at all my memorabilia, the letters start dwindling somewhere around the turn of the new millennium, I can't even trust my mum to write now .. she's caught the email bug. Hopefully novelists will always write letters/journals otherwise we'll be forced to read collected volumes of their emails which I can't imagine will be as enlightening. Hot flushes and it's not even 10 AM I wouldn't mind going back a bit further, if it means I would meet the likes of Darcy or Captain Wentworth, or Colonel Brandon. I think Alan Rickman's Brandon has been grossly understated!! As well as Ciarán Hinds's Wentworth. Swoon! Oh, I feel like an Austen marathon coming along... should not... give into... temptation... must ... write .... thesis! Edited August 30, 2011 by frankie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted August 30, 2011 Author Share Posted August 30, 2011 Oh boy... I took a look at the Notes section in Between the Sheets and there were many books that I have to add to my wishlist. - H. G. Wells: H. G. Wells in Love - Postscript to an Experiment in Autobiography - Rebecca West: Selected Letters - David Plante: Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three: Jean Rhys, Sonia Orwell, Germaine Greer - Jean Rhys: Letters - Anaïs Nin: Literary Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller - Jean-Paul Sartre: Witness to My Life - Martha Gellhorn: The Letters - Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters - Elizabeth Smart: Necessary Secrets: The Journals of Elizabeth Smart - Louise DeSalvo: Conceived with Malice: Literature as Revenge in the Lives and Works of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Djuna Barnes, and Henry Miller - Katherine Mansfield: Notebooks - John Middleton Murry: Letters Between Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry - Katherine Mansfield: Collected Letters - Katherine Mansfield: Journal - Shari Benstock: Women of the Left Bank - H. D.: Asphodel - Susan Stanford Friedman: Analyzing Freud: Letters of H.D., Bryher and their Circle - Elizabeth Smart: Autobiographies - Ted Hughes: Letters - John Tytell: Passionate Lives: D. H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath... in Love And if I hadn't already found a copy of it, I would also have to add Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev's book Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love to the list. I bet Kylie's feeling pretty happy now about me talking about the book so much when I was in Australia that she had to buy a copy herself That's one less book to buy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted September 3, 2011 Author Share Posted September 3, 2011 I bought these on Thursday/Friday: Douglas Adams: A Hitchhiker's Galaxy (I've read it once before but would like a re-read) Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything (wohoo!) Neal Cassady: The First Third (I was so excited when I found this!) Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha (1001 book, and a Rory book!) Henry James: Daisy Miller and Other Stories (inspired by Reading Lolita in Tehran. Although I'm a bit confused now, there's a Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller on the 1001 list, is it a sequel to this? Or the same book, just a different title?) Each in English. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vodkafan Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 Amazing that you just happened on all those Beauvoir and Nin books/diaries just when you needed them Frankie- I am sure they are not common books. What exactly is your thesis about, or have you said already and I missed it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted September 4, 2011 Author Share Posted September 4, 2011 Amazing that you just happened on all those Beauvoir and Nin books/diaries just when you needed them Frankie- I am sure they are not common books. What exactly is your thesis about, or have you said already and I missed it? I know! I think those books would be hard to come by usually, and even if I happened to find a copy they'd be expensive. Now the Nins were only 20cnt each, and the de Beauvoir's a measly 1,5e. I've never divulged any info on my thesis on here, so I'll let you in on the 'big secret'. My thesis is about Margaret Drabble's novel The Millstone, and the main character Rosamund Stacey in particular. That's as far as I'll go Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted October 23, 2011 Author Share Posted October 23, 2011 (edited) The Water Room ~ A Bryant and May Mystery ~ by Christopher Fowler The blurb: An oasis in the heart of Kentish Town, Balaklava Street is ripe for gentrification. But then the body of an elderly woman is found at No. 5. Her demise seems to have been peaceful but for the fact that her throat is full of river water... For the Met's Peculiar Crimes Unit, led by London's longest-serving detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, this curious death marks the beginning of a distinctly sinister investigation. And the new owner of No. 5 is understandably unsettled by the damp in the basement of her home, some particularly resilient spiders and the ghostly sound of rushing water. Unearthing hitherto undiscovered secrets, the two octogenarian policemen learn that, in a London filled with the rich, the poor and the dispossessed, there's still something a desperate individual is willing to kill for. And kill again to protect. Armed only with their wits, their own idiosyncratic practices and a plentiful supply of boiled sweets, Bryant and May come face to face with madness, greed and revenge in a wickedly sinuous mystery that goes to the heart of every London home. Thoughts: I read this as my first book in the Transworld Book Group Reading Challenge. I have to confess it took me ages to read and I sometimes felt that I wasn't getting anywhere with the novel, but the book is not to be blamed in this case, I've been so swamped with uni work. I think I wasn't in the right kind of mood to read this sort of book at the time and it had some effect on my reading experience. I chose this book because I like detective novels and I found the setting of the story fascinating. I wasn't quite sure if I should be expecting some sort of fantastical elements, the crime case being as unusual as it was, spiders going wild and the detectives working in a Peculiar Crimes Unit. I did think of Jasper Fforde and his incredible Thursday Next books and I couldn't really wait to get started on the book. However, there were no supernatural phenomena in sight, it was after all just a good old detective novel, but a curious and clever one at that. Some (or one, I should say) of the lines of inquiry did seem a bit too out there for my liking, but all in all I enjoyed where the book was going and it was a great story. I'm usually a very plot-driven person and have to say that with this book, the things that kept me going were not the plot, but the characters and the witty writing of Fowler. As a non-native English speaker I have to say I sometimes struggled with Fowler's use of fancy, intellectual words, but it didn't put me off but rather made me want to look up all the words I'd never heard of before. If I were to read more Fowler I dare say my vocabulary would increase immensely, something which is always a good thing As for the characters in the novel, I absolutely adored them. Well at least the central characters who were naturally more prominently portrayed in the book. I found it admirable and intriguing that the main detectives were of an older generation, who'd already experienced a whole lot of life which definitely showed. I loved it how in these youth-obsessed times of ours we can still find real, mature, grey-haired heroes who aren't in any way polished and who go about things in a certain old-school way. My favorite character was Arthur Bryant, not that surprisingly. He is irritable, obstinate, he speaks his mind and is not willing comply with the police office superiors, or anyone else for that matter. I actually had to write down some quotes from the novel in my notebook, just for my own amusement. Here's one of them: [May:] 'Arthur, you used to sound your age. Now you're sounding several centuries old.' [Arthur:] 'What's wrong with that? One of the great pleasures that used to come with senior citizenship was the right to be perfectly vile to everyone. You could say whatever you liked, and people excused you out of respect for your advanced years. But now that everyone is in touch with their emotions and says exactly what they feel, even that pleasure has been taken away. Is there nothing the young haven't usurped?' Another quote that made it's way to my notebook: [This is after a body has been found and Arthur Bryant has been informed about it over the phone. His colleague supposes that Bryant might like to know how the victim's partner who found him is doing:] 'I'm sure you and Longbright will take care of him,' said Bryant dismissively. 'Now kindly get off the phone. I have no intention of attending the crime scene in my Tintin pyjamas.' Bryant showed little empathy for survivors. Survival was something he expected everyone to do as a matter of course; every life was punctuated with tests. What I also found very intriguing were the real life crimes and the people who committed them that were mentioned and talked about in the novel. As it just so happens, I own a book called 501 Most Notorious Crimes and I was pleased that I could use it as a reference book and I did look up the cases of Ruth Ellis, Dick Turpin and Toni Mancini. All in all, this was a refreshing and enjoyable detective novel and if I ever stumble upon another Bryant & May -mystery, I will definitely seize the opportunity and read them. I gave this book 3/5, I would have given it a 4/5 had I been in the right mood and mindset to read this sort of book at the time. I’m part of the Transworld Book Group! Edited October 23, 2011 by frankie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vodkafan Posted October 23, 2011 Share Posted October 23, 2011 Haha Frankie I am sure naming the characters Bryant and May is a joke. That is an English company who make matches! Here is a historical link to a strike by the women workers in 1888: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUmatchgirls.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted October 24, 2011 Author Share Posted October 24, 2011 Haha Frankie I am sure naming the characters Bryant and May is a joke. That is an English company who make matches! Here is a historical link to a strike by the women workers in 1888: http://www.spartacus...Umatchgirls.htm Thanks for the info, vodkafan Although I'm very confused as to why Fowler would name his two central characters after the company! Which reminds me, I have to see if I can find any other B&M books in the library or somewhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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