The more I write these Book Loot posts, the more you will realize that I buy way more books than I could ever possibly read. Sure, eventually, over the course of a lifetime, I’ll hopefully get them all read. As a customer said to me this week, “I need more books like I need a hole in the head!” – ouch! Didn’t stop her from buying five books from me. I like to think of my book buying adventures as an investment for the future in a way. Here’s what I “invested” in this week.

The Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
The wilds of Egdon Heath seem like a prison to Eustacia Vye, cut off from the world in her grandfathers lonely cottage. When Clym Yeobright returns from the glittering lights of Paris, he seems to offer everything she dreams of – passion, excitement, and the opportunity to escape. However, Clym’s ambitions are quite different from hers, and marriage only increases Eustacia’s destructive restlessness. In his evocation of the ‘vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath’, Hardy’s descriptive and lyrical powers are seen at their height, creating a powerful setting which seems as vital and dramatic as the characters it sustains.

This sounds really wonderful. It has the landscape as character theme which I’m so interested in at the moment, sounds like it is dark and melancholic with a touch of romance? A sense of isolation. This summary doesn’t really give much away, but it makes me excited to read it. Eustacia Vye is such a great character name.

The Night Climbers – Ivo Stourton
When I jumped, I felt at first that I moved very slowly through the air, accelerating only as I fell. Far below me on te cobbles, there were the upturned faces of the police and the porters, staring into the sky like children. It made me feel like a god.

I’m solely interested in this one because of its inclusion on a shelf on GoodReads, “Books Claiming To Be Just Like The Secret History.” Obviously nothing is ever going to be as good as The Secret History – well, not nothing ever but within the same broad genre – but I’m still interested in reading these supposed lesser versions. I should just reread The Secret History over and over.

A quick visit to the local secondhand bookstore – just to waste time while I was waiting for the bus, I promise! – saw me buy three William Faulkner novels. I’ve been going to this store for over ten years and now that I work in a bookstore on the same street, the owner and I are quite friendly and he always gives me a discount on the marked prices.

Light in August – William Faulkner
When it was first published, many critics considered Light in August to be a macabre fantasy – one went so far as to say that the novel was like “an epileptic fit.” It has now become a landmark in American fiction. The central figure, ironically called Joe Christmas, kills his perverted but God-fearing lover (who has ordered him to fall on his knees and pray at pistol point) and is pursued by a lynch-hungry populace. Through his observation of the character of this man and of the people with whom he comes into contact, Faulkner probes deep into the frightening recesses of the Calvinist spirit, and of society in the Southern United States.

Requiem for a Nun – William Faulkner
Nancy, a negro nursemaid, is about to be hanged for killing her mistress’s baby: her lawyer, Gavin Stevens, compels the mistress to confess the reason for Nancy’s crime. The law takes its course; but justice, in Faulkner’s sense, has been done.

The Unvanquished – William Faulkner
In a series of episodes set during and after the American Civil War the 1949 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature profiles the people of the South – who might surrender but could never be vanquished. The characters of The Unvanquished and the earlier Sartoris are largely based on Faulkner’s own family: in particular, Colonel John Sartoris is a fairly faithful portrait of the author’s extraordinary great-grandfather – a notable personality who fought in Mexico, was tried for murder, raised a Confederate regiment, built a railway, ran a plantation, founded a college, and published a best-seller. These tales of the Civil War form Faulkner’s least difficult novel, and serve to introduce many of the themes and characters of his famous novels of the South.

Strange, I can’t find an image of my cover of The Unvanquished anywhere online. Just when you think absolutely everything is accessible …

I also visited the local library this week, and picked up a few books that may or may not actually get read (or may just sit on the nightstand way past their due date and amass a huge fine): some of Mary Roach’s work, Stiff and Bonk; John Steinbeck’s Winter of Our Discontent and Catherine Ray’s Stepping Out. In a few weeks I’ll be digging out Jane Austen’s Lady Susan as part of A Soirée with Lady Susan as organized by the Austenprose blog. AND I’ve got some ebay purchases due to arrive next week – book buying problem? What book buying problem?