Category Archives: Book Loot

Book Loot: Week Ending 6th June, 2010

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A Book Loot: Week Ending 6th June, 2010rather decent haul this week. There seems to be a trend among book bloggers at the moment of self-imposed book buying bans but obviously I laugh in the face of trends.

With the Larkin so-called Collected Poems I really should have done some research before buying this edition. The edition I worshipped at the university library was much thicker than the one I received which confused me, and some cursory research revealed that the earlier edition contains much more of Larkin’s unpublished, uncollected and juvenile poetry. Whereas my edition contains his four main poetry books, and a handful of uncollected poetry – all kept in Larkin’s own ordering for his poems rather than chronological. I know there are some poems in the earlier edition which are necessary, so it looks like I’ll be hunting down a copy of the earlier edition as well. I can’t help but feel that Larkin deserves a better treatment but I am a completist.

Links!:

  • Driven to Distraction: Cate Kennedy on the internet and the writing life is now online at Overland. When there were excerpts posted online a few months ago, I was totally adamant that she had things utterly wrong, but the full article is a lot more persuasive, the argument fleshed out more than the “controversial” soundbites listed in mainstream newspapers.
  • There is now an Australian Book Blogger Directory. Hopefully this will become a really useful resource, I wonder if this means we are a step closer to seeing an Australian Book Blogger Convention?
  • I have such a crush on this post from My Girl Friday. Steph has made polyvore sets for characters from young adult novels, and the results are so fantastic and creative! I might be awed because I have a complete lack of fashion sense, black goes with black right? I’m one of those Melbournians with a monochromatic wardrobe.

Book Loot: Week Ending May 30th, 2010

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The last of my Fitzgerald’s are filtering through and my, my they do look lovely all together! The photographs on the covers are a little bit kitsch, I’ll take a photo of them when they’ve all arrived.

This week’s loot links, other than this thorough feminist reading list, are all videos:

  • Dale Campisi from Arcade Publications talks about E.W. Cole (you can read my review of the book he’s discussing, Lisa Lang’s E.W. Cole: Chasing the Rainbow here) and what independent booksellers can learn from Cole’s approach to bookselling. I might use this video to convince my boss that our book store really needs a monkey enclosure.
  • Are you ready for the self-referential joy that is this youtube video? Here is Andrew McCarthy reviewing Bret Easton Ellis’ Imperial Bedrooms. “What? What do I care what Blane from Pretty in Pink cares about a book?!” There was a film version of Less Than Zero and Andrew McCarthy played the lead character, Clay. Imperial Bedrooms is a sequel to the original novel Less Than Zero, which opens with a discussion of the film version of their lives from the perspective of Clay, AND Andrew McCarthy is the narrator of the Imperial Bedrooms audiobook. This might just be a cleverly self-aware, effective bit of marketing hype, but I kind of love it.
  • And finally, the dulcet tones of Damon Albarn reading Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Book Loot: Week Ending May 23rd, 2010

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Ernest Hemingway poses with a water buffalo while on safari in Africa, 1953-1954Well, it appears after last week’s overload of links the internet has dried up this week. It’s good, in a way, as I seem to have been a lot more productive this week. Thanks boring internet, but please don’t always be this way. Oh look! Here’s Ernest Hemingway with a buffalo!

Photo credit: Ernest Hemingway poses with a water buffalo while on safari in Africa, 1953-1954. Photograph in the Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston.

http://thenewinquiry.com/post/589628505/lester-bangs-and-rock-music-as-the-eternal-high-school

Book Loot: Week Ending 16th May, 2010

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Natalie WoodJust one this week, from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program thanks to Hesperus Press:

Was it just me, or was there an overwhelming amount of good articles to be found on the interwebs this week?

I collect shocking titles — “Sex on Horseback,’’ “Roughneck River,’’ “Convict Lust,’’ “Stars and Their Pets.’’ My most shocking books I put in the guest room, so people don’t stay real long.

Photo Credit: Natalie Wood, from the Women Reading tumblr.

Book Loot: Week Ending May 9th, 2010

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The Debutantes by Marta Aronssohn-Danzig (c1889)A few more of my Fitzgerald set have been arriving this week, only a couple more due in and then I’ve completed my whole set and sense of fulfillment and happiness will surely follow.

And, a whole bunch of links of good reading for you all.

Picture credit: The Debutantes by Marta Aronssohn-Danzig (c1889); nothing to do with anything, really, I just like the look on their faces: “really Jess?, you’re talking about Carson McCullers again? Sigh.”

Book Loot: Week Ending May 2nd, 2010

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A warning to all, especially those on self-imposed book buying bans, this post features an obscene amount of books. First, some ebay packages arrived. Then I found out one of my favourite secondhand bookstores in the city was going out of business and selling all their books for $1. Yes, $1. I set myself a modest limit of $20 and let loose, coming out with only (cough, only? My shoulder and hands disagree) 19 books. The day after the sale ended, my sister happened to be wandering by and they were chucking books into a dumpster; she scored some really good stuff too.

And then, yes, that’s just my loot from during the week, there was Clunes. I came well under budget, spending much less than I thought I would. It was a great day, lovely surrounds and buildings, a good vibe, a few friendly dogs and lots of books.  Here’s my haul:

And, a few interesting articles from the week:

Book Loot: Week Ending April 25th, 2010

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by Charles Dana GibsonThis week I’ve decided that I want to complete my collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald novels and short stories. Not only have I decided I want to complete my collection, but seeing as the two novels are of a similar design, I want my entire collection of Fitzgerald’s to be from this particular printing from the mid-1970s. Bless eBay and Abebooks1.  Does anyone else get like this? It doesn’t even make sense because my books aren’t properly shelved, so it’s not as though they’ll look pretty lined up together on a shelf. Crazy. I really don’t understand it, but even thinking about buying the same title from a different printing seems completely impossible. Thank God I don’t get like this with every book I buy, it’s rather stressful.

Less than a week until Clunes! To keep you happily distracted while I work out my game plan (seriously, what would be the ideal method for carrying my new books around – I’ve considered getting one of those granny shopping carts and pimping it up a bit! That’d be so badass, even if I was the only one that thought so.) for next weekend:

“When the private world of reading and the public world of performance mesh happily, all parties benefit: musicians appearing cerebral, writers appearing hip, readers and listeners feeling smart.”

  • A romantic look at the independent bookstore in the digital age, some of the reasons put forward here are the same that were espoused upon the emergence of digital music versus record stores; comments like this:

“Independent bookstores remain a sensual and social experience that will be tough to replace. Going to a bookstore is as much about physically browsing. As smart as Amazon’s ‘Customer’s Who Bought This Item Also Bought’ metadata is, it’s no replacement for mooching around the fiction section and skimming novels yourself. Or the serendipitous eye-catching of a face-out cover or flipping through several books without laggy downloads.”

  • are eerily similar to what we were saying about the physical aspects of music less than ten years ago, you know, incessant whining about cover art and whatnot. While I agree with the sentiment, ignoring the realities and implications of a changing business landscape isn’t going to help the future of the physical bookstore.
  • The Miles Franklin Award shortlist was announced during the week (almost tempted to try and read all of the nominated novels, I’m still contemplating it.) and Alex Miller had a few choice words to say about the lack of relevance of the literary award.

1 Speaking of Abebooks, do you think of it as Abe, as in Abe Simpson, Abe Lincoln, and all those other famous Abes; or A.B.E.? I’ve always thought of it as Abe, but I was speaking to a more experienced bookseller this week and he referred to it as A.B.E. and my whole world fell apart. But, then I got to talk at length to a little kid about the upcoming Iron Man film and then I was okay again.

Book Loot: Week Ending April 18th, 2010

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This Year's Summer ReadingI know! I said I wouldn’t be buying any books until Clunes, but as luck would have it I found myself in a secondhand bookstore this week. Thinking I wouldn’t find anything I would want to buy, just intending to have a browse around and waste some time – I’m really good at self deception, it would seem – but found a few books that begged to be bought home with me.

My Mum returned from the U.S.A. this week and she brought with her a bounty of gifts, including the Tintin and Capone books above. The Capone book looks really fascinating, stuffed with actual documents from the gangster’s time at Alcatraz. She also visited the set of Gilmore Girls at Warner Brothers Studio, which was exciting enough when she was telling me all about it, but then she pulled out a t-shirt with the logo for Luke’s Diner on it – I may have cried a little bit. As well as all this, she took a passing snapshot of the famous City Lights bookstore in San Francisco for me, what a champ!

It’s been a really strange week. Two bouts of sickness that hit me out of nowhere, and a major computer malfunction thanks to Microsoft which meant I had to completely reinstall Windows and reformat everything. Luckily nothing was lost, but it was still a bit of a pain. The week wasn’t all bad news though, I found out that I’m going to be getting more hours and new responsibilities at the bookstore from next week. Always good, and hopefully it means a big paycheck due just in time for Clunes.

[image credit: "This Year's Summer Reading" by flickr user ephemera assemblyman]

Book Loot: Week Ending April 11th, 2010

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Still no loot to report, still saving for Clunes in a few weeks. I’m currently reading the complete works of Nathanael West, still intimidated by the looming giant of William Faulkner. Volume One of his collected novels sits on my desk, a young Willy staring at me as though trying to lure me in. I think what has put me off is a scathing review of his first novel Soldier’s Pay on LibraryThing. So I picked up The Day of the Locust on a whim, and upon finding out that his literary output was so slim, have begun the project of reading all of Nathanael West’s short novels. At least it is still in tune with my goal of reading the complete works of authors.

Next week I’ll be seeing Henry Rollins in Melbourne, which I’m very excited about. A battered copy of the Portable Henry Rollins got me through much of my university years. I saw him do his spoken word thing a few years ago, and it was such a riot; funny, though-provoking, unapologetic about his anger. Definitely looking forward to seeing him again, and it feels like I’m in the right headspace for it too. Also I’ll be seeing the Mountain Goats next week, who were featured in John Green’s Paper Towns [review here], which is perhaps a tenuous literary link, but a literary link nonetheless!

I don’t even have a list of links to share this week, but I did come across these very cute retro library posters, so hopefully they’ll be enough for you to forgive my slackness.

Fiction - Retro Library Poster by flickr user vblibrary

Nonfiction Retro Library Poster by flickr user vblibrary

[Image credits: flickr user VB library, and be sure to check out their amazing set of 1960s library posters.]

Book Loot: Week Ending April 4th, 2010

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I hope you’ve all had a splendid Easter, with chocolate (oh so much chocolate) and hot cross buns and, if you can believe it, we’re already a quarter of the way through 2010. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time this week trying to research why it is that so many from non-religious backgrounds continue to observe the no fish on Good Friday tradition. I wasn’t raised in a religious household, my parents weren’t raised in religious households; yet still, every Good Friday we eat fish. Not out of some culinary coincidence, but because you can’t eat meat on Good Friday. I don’t really understand why, out of all the religious traditions, this particular one is the one that has stuck. Perhaps because it is relatively easy to follow? Tradition has a strange power over us; I think the guilt of breaking the tradition itself is more powerful than any of the religious connotations. Anyone else have any ideas?

Now that Easter has passed, it’s time to begin looking forward to that other huge event: Clunes Booktown. In the first weekend of May, an entire small country town converts into a book lovers haven and all of the historic buildings are given over to booksellers and their wares. Books, good food, clean country air, it’s really a very special and unique event. A few hints from a seasoned Booktowner (ahem, I went for the first time last year): there is no mobile phone reception in the town, so if you’re attending with others make sure to have planned meeting spots/times to avoid confusion and frustration. Or learn how to send smoke signals. Also, if you go on the Sunday, by late afternoon some of the booksellers are desperate to get rid of their remaining stock and will start selling BOXES of books for spare change.

It’s very unlikely that I’ll have any new acquisitions to post about in these Loot posts until the end of the Clunes weekend, but luckily there’s still some good readin’ on the internet: