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Wednesday Buyer's Lack of Remorse
Jun. 30th, 2021 12:11 pmIt's been a ridiculous week and a half for books. I was out of town visiting family for a little while, which also meant visiting local bookstores, which means I came home with a lot more books than I brought with me. It was less worse than it could have been because we didn't have time to visit John K. King (the Trantor of used bookstores) but the Library Bookstore in Ferndale did more than enough damage with its frankly beautiful selection and elegant pricing (used book pricing is an art, like everything else; not all stores do it exceptionally well). I'm allowing myself to pat myself on the back, in hopes that encouragement will lead to further strengthening of restraint, for only buying two issues of The New Yorker circa 1953 when I could easily have gotten ten. Then we came home just in time for a book sale at one of the local bookstores, at which I was able to limit myself to three only because the selection wasn't that great.
Anyway, the "get rid of books" project is suffering a small setback, but it's nothing to worry about yet! In the meantime, there are some new books on the TBR conveyor belt.
What I've Finished Reading
I've been swimming in periodicals lately, which is part of my plan (to shift the backreading-contemporaneous ratio a little further toward the present for a while) but also part of the problem getting-rid-of-bookswise. Ashley M. Jones' stint as editor of Poetry has been good. There was an article in last week's Sunday Times about a subscription box for parents who want to teach their children the importance of volunteering but can't be bothered to spend twenty minutes finding and contacting the nearest food bank. I thought it was mildly funny in a "let's enjoy feeling superior to professional writers" way, so I shared it with my brother, who got unexpectedly furious about this apparently harmless puff-piecer representing the end of civilization. If you would like to decide for yourself which one it is, it's here.
What I'm Reading Now
The Madwoman of Serrano is a pleasantly odd sort-of fableish novel about a village that keeps to its old ways (or tries to) and some of the people it damages, by Dina Salústio. I'm not sure what I think of it so far, but I'm still reading. A larger and slightly glossier bolus of oddness is Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which is the book one of the founders of the sci-fi book club has been trying to get us all to read for years. It's not very sci-fi yet, but I do like the closed-in alley where the narrator goes to look for his cat, and the narrator's total lack of ambition and penchant for describing whatever sandwich he's making for himself when the assorted mysteries disrupt his non-schedule. Chances seem pretty good that this will be the first Murakami I don't forget shortly after reading, but we'll see what happens.
What I Plan to Read Next
Some of the books acquired in the Great Not Buying More Books Massacre of 2021: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron, The Twenty-Seventh City by Jonathan Franzen, Selected Poems of Mervyn Peake, With Teeth by Kristen Arnett, The Windfall by Diksha Basu, The Long Way to an Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, A Burning by Megha Majumdar, Collected Stories of Isaac Babel, and Knowing Woman: A Feminine Psychology by Irene Claremont de Castillejo. The latter is copyright 1973 by the C. G. Jung foundation and was brought over by one of my aunts because she knows I like books.
What's actually next on the conveyor belt: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.
Anyway, the "get rid of books" project is suffering a small setback, but it's nothing to worry about yet! In the meantime, there are some new books on the TBR conveyor belt.
What I've Finished Reading
I've been swimming in periodicals lately, which is part of my plan (to shift the backreading-contemporaneous ratio a little further toward the present for a while) but also part of the problem getting-rid-of-bookswise. Ashley M. Jones' stint as editor of Poetry has been good. There was an article in last week's Sunday Times about a subscription box for parents who want to teach their children the importance of volunteering but can't be bothered to spend twenty minutes finding and contacting the nearest food bank. I thought it was mildly funny in a "let's enjoy feeling superior to professional writers" way, so I shared it with my brother, who got unexpectedly furious about this apparently harmless puff-piecer representing the end of civilization. If you would like to decide for yourself which one it is, it's here.
What I'm Reading Now
The Madwoman of Serrano is a pleasantly odd sort-of fableish novel about a village that keeps to its old ways (or tries to) and some of the people it damages, by Dina Salústio. I'm not sure what I think of it so far, but I'm still reading. A larger and slightly glossier bolus of oddness is Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which is the book one of the founders of the sci-fi book club has been trying to get us all to read for years. It's not very sci-fi yet, but I do like the closed-in alley where the narrator goes to look for his cat, and the narrator's total lack of ambition and penchant for describing whatever sandwich he's making for himself when the assorted mysteries disrupt his non-schedule. Chances seem pretty good that this will be the first Murakami I don't forget shortly after reading, but we'll see what happens.
What I Plan to Read Next
Some of the books acquired in the Great Not Buying More Books Massacre of 2021: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron, The Twenty-Seventh City by Jonathan Franzen, Selected Poems of Mervyn Peake, With Teeth by Kristen Arnett, The Windfall by Diksha Basu, The Long Way to an Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, A Burning by Megha Majumdar, Collected Stories of Isaac Babel, and Knowing Woman: A Feminine Psychology by Irene Claremont de Castillejo. The latter is copyright 1973 by the C. G. Jung foundation and was brought over by one of my aunts because she knows I like books.
What's actually next on the conveyor belt: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.
