Book Hauls!

[Connavar]

I bought my first Georges Simenon book in an actual real second hand bookstore and of course it must be his roman noir books and not his detective books for me to start with.

Swedish translation of 1938 book, The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (Homme qui regardait passer les trains, 1938)

 

[GOLLUM]

I bought my first Georges Simenon book in an actual real second hand bookstore and of course it must be his roman noir books and not his detective books for me to start with.

Swedish translation of 1938 book, The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (Homme qui regardait passer les trains, 1938)

Good call. I believe you'll appreciate his psychological novels most commonly referred to by Simenon as 'romain durs' or noir as you say, the most. If you can do so get yourself a copy of Dirty Snow, one of the best novels of that genre he ever wrote. The Man Who Watched Trains Go By is also good.

Here's a blurb....Nineteen-year-old Frank Friedmaier lives in a country under occupation. Most people struggle to get by; Frank takes it easy in his mother's whorehouse, which caters to members of the occupying forces. But Frank is restless. He is a pimp, a thug, a petty thief, and, as Dirty Snow opens, he has just killed his first man. Through the unrelenting darkness and cold of an endless winter, Frank will pursue abjection until at last there is nowhere to go.

P.S. I think you'll still enjoy the Inspector Maigret novels if you also choose to read his detective fiction.

P.P.S. The excellent NYRB have actively been publishing several of Simenon's best roman durs into English including Dirty Snow and The Man Who Watched Trains Go By.

 

[j d worthington]

When I got home from work tonight, I found a package from Derrick Hussey of Hippocampus Press waiting for me, which included:

Supernatural Horror in Literature (rev. edition) by H. P. Lovecraft and annotated by S. T. Joshi
Lovecraft's Library: A Catalogue (rev. edition), by S. T. Joshi
Dead Reckonings No. 11
Lovecraft Annual No. 6
The Golden State Phantasticks: The California Romantics and Related Subjects, by Donald Sidney-Fryer
The Atlantis Fragments: The Novel, by Donald Sidney-Fryer
Forever Azathoth: Parodies and Pastiches, by Peter Cannon
Uncommon Places: A Collection of Exquisites, by W. H. Pugmire
Visions, by Richard Lupoff
Dreams, by Richard Lupoff
Portraits of Ruin, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
At Fear's Altar, by Richard Gavin
Intimations of Unreality: Weird Fiction and Poetry, by Alan Gullette

 

[Extollager]

When I got home from work tonight, I found a package from Derrick Hussey of Hippocampus Press waiting for me, which included:

Supernatural Horror in Literature (rev. edition) by H. P. Lovecraft and annotated by S. T. Joshi
Lovecraft's Library: A Catalogue (rev. edition), by S. T. Joshi
Dead Reckonings No. 11
Lovecraft Annual No. 6
The Golden State Phantasticks: The California Romantics and Related Subjects, by Donald Sidney-Fryer
The Atlantis Fragments: The Novel, by Donald Sidney-Fryer
Forever Azathoth: Parodies and Pastiches, by Peter Cannon
Uncommon Places: A Collection of Exquisites, by W. H. Pugmire
Visions, by Richard Lupoff
Dreams, by Richard Lupoff
Portraits of Ruin, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
At Fear's Altar, by Richard Gavin
Intimations of Unreality: Weird Fiction and Poetry, by Alan Gullette

"Here's richness!" said Wackford Squeers. ;-)

 

[j d worthington]

"Here's richness!" said Wackford Squeers. ;-)

Hah! Now, that's a name I hadn't expected to see....

Not to brag about recent hauls, but I also received a package from Nesa containing a four-volume set of "Silverfish Malaysian Classics":

1: Marong Mahawangsa: The Kedah Annals (from the 1849 translation by Lt. Col. James Low)
2. Sejarah Melayu: The Malay Annals (from the 1821 translation by Dr. John Leyden)
3. The Epic of Bidasari and Other Tales (from an edition first published by The Colonial Press in 1901)
4. Malaysian Fables, Folk Tales & Legends (complied from three sources: Fables and Folk Tales from an Eastern Forest, by Walter Skeat, 1901; Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo, by the Rev. Edwin H. Gomez, 1911; and Two Dyak Legends, also by Gomez, 1904)

So, yes, I'd have to agree with that sentiment....

 

[dask]

JD, you bought all these books? No wonder when I went book hunting the other day I couldn't find a single book anywhere. "You naughty child, how dare you? Go and sit down this instant!" Mrs. Pocket.

 

[hitmouse]

I bought my first Georges Simenon book in an actual real second hand bookstore and of course it must be his roman noir books and not his detective books for me to start with.

Swedish translation of 1938 book, The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (Homme qui regardait passer les trains, 1938)

Really interesting series recently on BBC radio4 called Foreign Bodies, which looks at Europe as refracted through literary detectives frm various countries. Very interesting, and I think it is probably available as a download (certainly is in the UK):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nq6s8/episodes/guide#b01nq8gd

 

[j d worthington]

JD, you bought all these books? No wonder when I went book hunting the other day I couldn't find a single book anywhere. "You naughty child, how dare you? Go and sit down this instant!" Mrs. Pocket.

Actually, I only bought two of them: the revised SHiL and Lovecraft's Library. Nesa sent me the ones from the Malaysian series as a gift, while the others from Hippocampus are part of the lifetime subscription purchased about seven years ago, when Derrick had five of those offered, and I was lucky enough to be able to invest before they all disappeared... quite possibly the best investment I've ever made!

 

[Extollager]

Here I've been reducing my book-buying, and then a correspondent in Philadelphia made me a dozen Aubrey-Maturin volumes richer for less than a dollar a book. I won't list all the titles -- but now I have 13 of the 16 volumes in Patrick O'Brian's series. I don't think I will read them in order -- at any rate, having read the first one (Master and Commander), I expect to jump soon to Desolation Island, fifth in the series, simply because I'm eager for a "thrilling chase through an Antarctic storm" etc. The box also included Cyril Connolly's Enemies of Promise, about which I know not much more than that George Orwell reviewed it somewhere.

I'd read the first volume years before the Peter Weir movie of The Far Side of the World came out around the same time as the Jackson Return of the King; I liked the former more.

 

[GOLLUM]

Recent purchases included:

Republic of Red Wine - Mo Yan *The most surreal novel in translation and apparently one of the best of this year's Nobel prize winner in literature. Shortened Blurb: In this hypnotic epic novel, Mo Yan, the most critically acclaimed Chinese writer of this generation, takes us on a journey to a conjured province of contemporary China known as the Republic of Wine—a corrupt and hallucinatory world filled with superstitions, gargantuan appetites, and surrealistic events. When rumors reach the authorities that strange and excessive gourmandise is being practiced in the city of Liquorland (so named for the staggering amount of alcohol produced and consumed there), veteran special investigator Ding Gou'er is dispatched from the capital to discover the truth.

Journey into Moonlight - Antal Szerb *One of the most acclaimed novels of Hungarian literature in a nice Pushkin Press edition, which more or less means a guaranteed quality production. Blurb: Anxious to please his bourgeois father, Mihaly has joined the family firm in Budapest. Pursued by nostalgia for his bohemian youth, he seeks escape in marriage to Erzsi, not realising that she has chosen him as a means to her own rebellion. On their honeymoon in Italy Mihaly "loses" his bride at a provincial station and embarks on a chaotic and bizarre journey that leads him finally to Rome. There all the death-haunted and erotic elements of his past converge, and he, like Erzsi, has finally to choose.

The double-death of Quincas Water-Bray - Jorge Armado *I stumbled across this new penguin black translation of Aramdo's comic masterwork to celebrate the 100th anniversary since the author's birth. I had previously purchased Violent Land another of his classic works. For anyone reading this Armado along with Clarice Lispector (greatest female writer, certainty of 20th Century) and Machado de Assis (overall regarded as that country's greatest author) represent three of Brazil's best authors of the past 150 years. Blurb: Here is the story of Joaquim Soares da Cunha, a Falstaff-like character who abandons his life of upstanding citizenship to assume the identity of Quincas Water-Bray, king of the Bahia lowlife and a "champion drunk." After a decade of revelry among bums, pimps, and prostitutes, he drops dead, and his prim family gathers for a proper burial. But when Quincas's unsavory friends show up with a bottle of rum, they whisk him along on a postmortem journey to enjoy one last party—his own wake.

 

[hitmouse]

It is worth readng the Aubrey-Maturin novels in order, though not compulsory. These are very fine indeed. Plenty of action in the first four, and some really good character development.

 

[Extollager]

This came in today's mail --

I was attracted to Longfellow's poetry a while back thanks largely to an essay by John Derbyshire:

http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Reviews/Considerations/longfellow.html

 

[K. Riehl]

Picked up three of Karl Edward Wagner's' Kane 1sts- Bloodstone, Dark Crusade, and Death Angel's Shadow. Also grabbed a 1st pb edition of The Shrinking Man by Matheson.

 

[Extollager]

One more novel by Madison Jones, Season of the Strangler.

 

[dask]

Great title. Is this a psychothriller of some kind?

 

[Extollager]

Great title. Is this a psychothriller of some kind?

Looks like it is marketed as such, but I haven't read it yet -- just received a copy.

I have no fears of its turning out to be exploitative junk, given the fine achievement of the other novels I've read by Madison Jones. If this one deals with a psychotic killer, it will still be worth reading, I fully expect.

 

[dask]

Good Reads lists two books by Jones, Season Of The Strangler, and Season Of The Stranger, both with different page counts but another site lists them interchangeably as if they were the same book. Did Jones write two books with similar titles or is this a monumental mix-up?

 

[Extollager]

Good Reads lists two books by Jones, Season Of The Strangler, and Season Of The Stranger, both with different page counts but another site lists them interchangeably as if they were the same book. Did Jones write two books with similar titles or is this a monumental mix-up?

I'm purely guessing but this puzzle might be due to a combination of a mixup (misprint) on the title plus the difference in page count between a paperback edition and a hardcover.

 

[dask]

I'm purely guessing but this puzzle might be due to a combination of a mixup (misprint) on the title plus the difference in page count between a paperback edition and a hardcover.

You're right. Just checked Good Reads and even though they used the same cover the page difference is due to different editions. Stupid small print!

 

[Connavar]

Who Fears Death (World Fantasy award 2011)Okorafor, Nnedi
Gods of Mars (John Carter #2) by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Those books say everything about who i am as a reader. Classic Science fantasy fav and trying to read new fantasy,SF set in another world than American/European setting.

I cant wait to read Who Fears Death