Tag Archives: Book Loot

Book Loot: Week Ending August 15th, 2010

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I’d resigned myself to not buying any books this week, I wasn’t expecting any parcels to arrive and had no intention of going book shopping. Then my Dad roped me in to spending a day exploring op shops and second hand bookstores. It took a lot of convincing, but I happily tagged along:

Over the past year or so I’ve become more inclined to buy new/remaindered books, mainly thanks to a.) working in a remainder bookstore, b.) working in a “normal” bookstore and c.) The Book Depository. When I was younger, and even sometimes now, I bought a lot of second hand books. What I love about them is thinking about the journey they’ve taken to end up in a particular store. How did a Vintage Classics copy of Aldous Huxley’s Island bought in Indonesia for 40 000 RP end up for sale for $2 in a suburban Salvation Army store? Why did someone buy Volume 3 of Harold Pinter’s plays from Monash University bookstore and how did it end up unread in a second hand bookstore by the train station? What was originally in the envelope in All the President’s Men that was then used as a bookmark, forgotten about at page 42? I like to think about these stories, in addition to those contained within the text.

This week I was also suffering from what I not so fondly refer to as perma-headache. Not quite as intense as a migraine, but painful enough to be constantly aware of the throbbing pain in my head. Very annoying. And in my birthday week as well! There were some exciting things happening despite perma-headache. My favourite band, Manic Street Preachers, who I’ve loved since my early teens, announced their first Australian tour in ELEVEN YEARS! This means I’m currently planning another trip to Sydney to see them play in two capital cities in November. I’d been looking for an excuse to visit Sydney again after going there (again, for a band) in March, and this is the perfect reason. There’ll be more about this band in tomorrow’s review, as the tour was not only announced on my birthday but while I was reading a biography about them. Pretty amazing coincidence.

Imperial Bedrooms signed by Bret Easton EllisThis week Bret Easton Ellis was in town, and I went and saw him interviewed at the Athenaeum Theatre on Friday night. It was such a great night, Ellis was in top form, funny and irreverent. I met him briefly afterwards, he signed a couple of my books (including the battered copy of Less Than Zero I’ve been reading and rereading since I was sixteen) and posed for a few photos with me. I look insanely happy. He was very lovely, chatty and warm. When my sister accidentally took a photo of us while he was looking away he insisted that she retake it as he wanted to be looking at the camera. While I don’t really get the whole book signing thing, I’m very happy that I got to meet him.

I read Imperial Bedrooms this week, and I’m not going to review it for the blog. It was difficult to get out of review mindset and just read for pleasure, to really immerse myself in the book and enjoy it – that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the books I do review but it’s a completely different approach to read without that critical distance. Does that make sense? I’m sure that I’ll be rereading it in the future and then I will write up my thoughts on it, but for now I was really pleased to just read the latest book from one of my favourite authors. Heh, maybe some time in the future someone will pick up my signed copy of Imperial Bedrooms and wonder who Jess was and why the book ended up in a second hand bookstore.

Book Loot: Week Ending August 8th, 2010

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Witch StoriesThis week:

A few months after purchasing it on ebay, The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald finally arrived. I’d accepted that it had probably been lost in the post, and emailed the seller who was on holiday at the time. When they returned from their trip they told me that the book had been sent back to them as my address had been rubbed off the package! Very pleased that it wasn’t the victim of some sort of postal conspiracy.

This is the 52nd Book Loot post, which means that Start Narrative Here has been around for almost a year! (And I don’t even want to think about just how many books have been amassed in that time.) My first review was posted on a wordpress hosted site on the 11th of August, 2009 – and I decided that I wanted my own space and bought the domain a week later on the 18th of August, 2009. Starting a book blog was a project aimed at learning to express myself again after a really horrible year, and it has quickly become much more than just a nerdy recovery method. It has reinvigorated and reaffirmed my love of the written word. To anyone that has commented, read, recommended, emailed or even lurked over the past year, thank you so much.

Image from tumblr.

Book Loot: Week Ending August 1st, 2010

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Hunter S. ThompsonMy postwoman was kept very busy this week, here are the bookish delights she dumped on my doorstep.

Two of these (Lilian’s Story and One Day) were won from various online competitions. I’ve been having such good luck in book related competitions, I wonder whether that luck would translate should I buy a lottery ticket? After watching Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson the other week I was inspired to fill in the gaps in my Thompson library, and the Simon & Schuster editions are so much more pleasant looking than the unbearably ugly MacMillan reissues.

The unstoppable Amanda from Desert Book Chick sent me Expiration Date, and it looks like a mind-meltingly awesome read, you can read her review of it here. August is Classics month over on her blog, and when I stop running my hands lovingly over my Penguin Classics and Modern Library editions and I’ll be writing a guest post for her about reading the classics. It’ll be my first guest post and I’m pretty excited about it.

This week I had to press the “MARK ALL AS READ” button on my book news folder as it got way too unmanageable in the time I spent away from the computer, so this Book Loot is sadly lacking the usual list of fascinating tidbits from the literary world. I’ve been busy with Melbourne International Film Festival screenings, but the past week looks mild compared to the crazy schedule I’ve prepared for myself this week. I’m most looking forward to The Killer Inside Me (I have the book on hold, and would have read it by now too if only some dastardly creature hadn’t kept it for three weeks past the due date.), Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam (and I have the book that inspired this documentary on hold as well) and the newest film from one of my favourites, Harmony Korine, Trash Humpers – and yes, it is what it sounds like.

I’ve also (finally) decided to put up the Google Friend Connect widget, and although my loner tendencies like that it’s just me there at the moment, if any of you would care to join me over there, it is sure to be one hell of a party!

Image: a very young Hunter S. Thompson, via tumblr.

Book Loot: Week Ending July 25th, 2010

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This week:Good Friends (Berta and Capi) by Albert Edelfelt (1882)

This one was a freebie that I received for signing up to Penguin’s Young Adult newsletter Between the Lines. Pretty rad eh? You can still sign up and receive a free book, but it is open to Australian residents only. Now, there’s a phrase you don’t see very often on book blogs!

This week at the very last minute I decided to buy a minipass for the Melbourne International Film Festival. I was a cinema studies student for five long years after all! Originally I had only planned to go to a couple of sessions, but that very quickly turned into a few more sessions and in the end it was cheaper to buy the pass. I’m going to see lots of documentaries, a couple of new films from old favourites and some films picked at random. It’s a great time of year to be in Melbourne, after the film festival ends it’s not long until the Bret Easton Ellis event, and then after that, the Melbourne Writer’s Festival begins! City of Literature? City of Awesome.

Image Credit: Good Friends (Berta and Capi) by Albert Edelfelt, 1882.

Book Loot: Week Ending July 18th, 2010

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The loot of the week:"Bob was so stuck into his book he didn't realize he was in SPACE" Book Depository Bookmark

I won To the Lighthouse through a twitter competition Penguin Australia ran to promote their new range of Popular Penguins. It doesn’t get any more exciting than free books, does it?

Think again friends. Do you remember the three hundred times I raved about the Bob in Space bookmark from the Book Depository bookmark competition winners? And how I constantly lamented the fact that I never seemed to receive it? Well, guess what bookmark arrived with my July 2010-December 2011 Moleskine planner?

You’re damn right it was the Bob in Space bookmark.

While I sit here content that my life can be made that much brighter by a simple bookmark and planning jam packed days at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival, here are some links to peruse:

Book Loot: Week Ending July 4th, 2010

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I have to apologize for what is going to be a very brief and image-less post, our broadband bandwidth has run out until Wednesday and trying to do anything without it is tear-inducing. I don’t remember dial-up being this slow. Just another reason to move to Finland, where this week they announced that access to a high speed broadband service is a basic right. Damn right Finland. Hopefully Book Depository still do free shipping there? (I’d check myself, but it would take about three hours to load the page!)

Thankfully I have these new books to keep me company:

In lieu of an array of fantastically interesting links, though I do recommend reading Flavorwire’s list of the 20th Century’s most reclusive authors, I’m going to tell you a story!

I had an interesting encounter with some young readers yesterday. Tired after a long day, I was listening to my ipod but the battery ran out, so I pulled a book out of my bag and started reading that instead. Soon after I did the conversation of the group of teenagers moved toward what they’d been reading. I really loved secretly listening to them talking about books, and convinced myself that it was me that caused the change of topic. Who knows.

So what are teens (male and female) in the North-West of Melbourne reading on their school holidays? A few of the titles that I caught were Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher (and they were very insistent about how great it is, reading up on it now it sounds like something I’d be interested in. Anyone read it?), Gone by Michael Grant, Inkheart by Cornelia Funke and The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. I couldn’t help but grin to myself when I heard them talking about The Outsiders. No vampires!

Book Loot: Week Ending June 26th, 2010

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Book Loot: Week Ending June 27th, 2010My orders from The Book Depository have been arriving really quickly lately. Not bad for free shipping.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying – man takes a job in a bookshop but his poverty ends up destroying his creativity and his spirit – sounds like it has the potential to hit a little too close to home. Just kidding, I’m pretty sure my creativity & spirit were broken long before I started working in bookstores. Ah, don’t mind me, it’s just been one of those weeks.

Speaking of bookstores, every single store that sends me an email newsletter seems to be having big end of financial year sales over the next couple of weeks. Lots of very tempting emails about 50%/20% off all stock which are very difficult to ignore. There should be some sort of way to filter such emails, preferably according to my bank balance!

Book Loot: Week Ending June 20th, 2010

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Monkey See Monkey ReadMy shelves, floor, bedside table & desk can let out a sigh of relief, there were no new book acquisitions this week.

I did, when digging through our review proof corner during a quiet moment at work, find a copy of Jonathan Franzen’s upcoming Freedom and took it home with me. I was only flicking through it – I’m a pretty strict one book at a time kind of woman – and ending up reading the first 30 pages. And those 30 pages were really good. Have I told you the story about how I found a torn ten dollar note in a $3 copy of The Corrections at Clunes this year? Everyone laughed when I told them you could take fragments of notes to the bank and they would exchange it for the equivalent amount of cash, but I was right. So really, I bought The Corrections and made a profit. And I’m very much looking forward to reading Freedom.

The reading monkey to the left there is a present my Dad bought for me a few weeks ago because it reminded him of me (!). Look at how into his book he is.

This week’s Book Loot links would be a lot longer if I hadn’t been so distracted by vuvuzelas and vuvuzela internet memes during the week:

Book Loot: Week Ending June 13th, 2010

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Book Loot: Week Ending June 13th, 2010Say hello to the latest little darlings to join my evergrowing book collection:

And, I was lucky enough to have a kindly someone slip a bookmark with one of the Book Depository bookmark competition winning designs into Kingdom Come. Not my favourite one: “Bob was so stuck into his book he didn’t realize he was in SPACE” but a very cute bookmark nonetheless. I guess I’ll just have to keep buying more books until I get the Bob in Space bookmark.

This week I renewed the startnarrativehere.com domain for another two years, so it looks like I’m going to be around for little while longer. Speaking of which, my one year anniversary is coming up … I wonder what I’ll do to celebrate? (No, seriously. Any ideas?)

Until then,

  • Listverse lists the Top 10 Difficult Literary Works. I’ve only read 1/10 – T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land – hooray for first year Literature university courses!  (Listverse is easily of my favourite non-book related websites, I spend so much time here and have way too many random “no one cares Jess” facts from reading their various lists.)
  • Even though I too favour marginalia and such in physical books versus the cold, hard plastic of e-readers sometimes I wonder whether it is just the old “But physical album art is so important for the experience of music!” argument rehashed for the literature crowd. In the latest bit of heartwarming reportage, a man tracks down and reconnects with an old friend after finding a bunch of old books in a second hand bookstore with the friend’s ex-libris sticker inside.
  • More John Waters promotional articles as Role Models is released, The New Yorker recounts a recent event with Waters:

“I love feel-bad books,” Waters said, perched cross-legged on the edge of a couch. “I want to have a hate book club where we all come over and read about hateful characters.”

“I love feel-bad books,” Waters said, perched cross-legged on the edge of a couch. “I want to have a hate book club where we all come over and read about hateful characters.”

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.