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.

• The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Lost Decade by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Pat Hobby Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

• Did you know that there is no historical marker in the house in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where Carson McCullers wrote The Heart is a Lonely Hunter?
• A look at Mad Men‘s Don Draper’s bookshelf.
• On the Meaning of Making Time to Read by Nymeth from Things Mean A Lot.
• A visit to Carson McCullers’ childhood home in Columbus.
• On books and reading – how the very act of reading must be considered before we can adequately engage in a discussion of “the future of fiction”; some interesting thoughts on the agency of reading as well.
• Chuck Palahniuk on reading Judy Blume and his latest novel Tell-All.
• The 1996 Details profile of David Foster Wallace; that the author of the article couldn’t easily access the profile online speaks volumes about how far digitization still has to go.
• Truth: I was that creepy kid at high school that spent lunchtimes in the library reading true crime. Here’s a short list of the best true crime books.
• This isn’t book related at all, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless. Phillipe Halsman was a photographer in the 1950s and would ask his subjects to “jump” for a photo.
• I’m almost finished with my last Nathanael West novel, and The New York Times published a review of a new biography of him and his wife, Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney by Marion Meade.
• Ben Myers is releasing a fictional account of the life of missing pop lyricist Richey Edwards – a profound influence on my teenage self – in October, Richard: A Novel. The cover looks good, but the blurb seems a bit underwhelming, I mean:  “one man’s battle with his worst enemy. Himself.” Hopefully that’s just publishing copy and  in no way reflects the quality of the writing inside? I remain very wary. I feel like this has the potential to be gobsmackingly good or just abysmally train-wreck awful. Either way, I’ll likely be buying and reading it and expect a review come October.

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.”

Remember a few months ago I was quite taken with a short story called “Jeane” by James Hopkin? Well, this week I found his debut novel, Winter Under Water,  in the the most unexpected of places. It was a remainder outlet in the city, which had an upstairs area where the books were priced 10 for $10 or $5 each. Of course I went up there and had a look around, but the place itself felt eerily quiet in the midst of the bustling metropolis. There wasn’t much to entice me, but I did find Winter Under Water and Susanna Moore’s In the Cut.

I took the past few days off, an internet sabbatical perhaps you could call it. Maybe it’s just me, but every so often the internet just becomes just too much and I feel myself going slightly screwy with information overload, to the point where it feels like the only possible release is a Scanners style explosion. However, the best remedy is usually to turn off the computer, remove myself from most, if not all, online services, and take some time to rejuvenate. If I were rich, this would probably involve expensive day spas and intensive massages by attractive young men;  instead I’ve just hung out with my Dad, worked (a surprisingly effective way to boost my self-confidence) and caught up on some (offline) reading.

In the time before deciding to take some time off the internet, I did come across some interesting links which might, if you’re not already suffering from hyper-information related illness, also be of interest to you.

• David Foster Wallace it turns out was a prolific book annotator. The University of Texas acquired his archive and have put examples of some of the items online. His annotations of a few novels can be seen, including a scribbled addition to a  portrait of Cormac McCarthy. Fittingly enough for a man with an impressive vocabulary, there is also a look inside his marked up dictionary.
• I’m not sure how I’d missed this previously, but the Carson McCullers Center of Columbus State University also has a blog, keeping interested parties up to date with the events and happenings organized by the center. One to keep an eye on, perhaps.
• Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin’ Time!!! is a collection of visual interpretations and portraits of authors and fictional characters.
• And, finally, Toby Lichtig is determined to do what those of weaker resolve have failed time and time again, to give up book buying for six (6 … 6!! SIX!! SIX!1!?) months. Godspeed Toby Lichtig, godspeed.

[image credit: Virginia Frances Sterret, frontispiece to Old French Fairy Tales, by the Comtesse de Ségur. Philadelphia, 1920, via archive.org]

[photo credit: shelbychicago at flickr]

I bought a whole heap of books this week. Stacks. The injuries acquired lugging them home will possibly require chiropractic care. With my bookstore closing and everything heavily discounted, plus staff discount, the accumulated loot only cost me about $3 a book, but I feel awkward and a little embarrassed displaying them here. (Not just because I may have bought some Gossip Girl books.) Instead of talking about the books I bought, this week, I’m going to gift you all with a number of links to some equally fascinating reading.

Jeanette Winterson reviews The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar at the New York Times. Highsmith is someone I have found myself increasingly drawn to, mainly due to her incredibly colourful personal history. I’m yet to read any of Highsmith’s fiction, but I imagine I will in the future, as well as a number of the biographies written about her. Winterson touches upon some of the intriguing aspects of Patricia Highsmith’s life in her review, so it is worth reading.

“Highsmith had a kind of archive-­attachment disorder; she adored lists. She chronicled, mapped, numbered and cross-referenced everything in her life, and even rated her lovers, but she wiped out what didn’t suit her and only vaguely acknowledged, when pressed by the more ferrety kind of interviewer, having conjured up a few story lines for Superman and Batman.”

Robert McCrum was invited to take a look at the Bodleian library collection of Kafka manuscripts – “What possible significance could a few boxes of manuscript have in the digital age? I was dead wrong.” – leading him to consider the many issues raised regarding the digitization of literature in general.

Margo Rabb surveys independent bookstores to find out which title is most often stolen from their stores. The answers and stories may surprise you.

“But this doesn’t mean that every reader is contributing to the bottom line. Only 40 percent of books that are read are paid for, and only 28 percent are purchased new, said Peter Hildick-Smith of the Codex Group, a consultant to the publishing industry. The rest are shared, borrowed, given away — or stolen.”

A bit of a David Foster Wallace love-fest in the online literary world this week with “All That“, an excerpt from his unfinished novel The Pale King to be released in 2010, published this week in the New Yorker.  GQ published an interview with Deborah Treisman, Wallace’s editor, discussing The Pale King and her working relationship with DFW.

Lauren Leto has written a funny-because-it-is-(mostly)-true list of how to stereotype readers by their favourite authors.You will laugh and nod and say “oh my God, I know someone just like that!” to at least one of her stinging barbs.

And, finally, in I could have told you this but I don’t have the science degree and research funding to back it up, whiskey hangovers are officially worse than vodka hangovers. Consider this your friendly festive and completely scientific warning to take it easy on the booze over the Christmas period.

• Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
• The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
• The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
• The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
• The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor
• The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck
• Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace
• A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
• Native Son by Richard Wright

This week I found a link on tumblr to the handmade bags of Olympia le Tan (incidentally, my parents planned to name me Olympia – because I was born during the 1984 Olympics, gimmicky I know  … anyway! sometimes I still wonder whether life would have turned out differently if I’d been named Olympia. Would my nickname be Oly? Pia? Lympy?) via the We Love You So blog, and was intrigued with the idea of a purse embroidered with the first edition cover of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Then I found the price tag. You, too, can pick up one of these little darlings for $1,500. Let me just repeat that for you. $1,500. Honey, you could get an actual first edition of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – possibly even signed by Carson herself – for that kind of money, and let’s face it that’s surely going to be more of investment in the long run.

It’s been rather quiet around these parts lately and for that, I apologize. I now have all of my assignments for the semester completed and handed in, and while working on them over the past couple of weeks resorted to my favourite procrastination technique – Gilmore Girls and knitting – totally rock and roll, I know; and didn’t find much time for reading. I visited the libraries over the past couple of days and stocked up on some books to start reading now that I am on “holidays” and I’m very, very much looking forward to it. What else are 34°C days for if not finding an air-conditioned space and reading?

On to the acquisitions for the week!:

Book Loot: Week Ending November 8th, 2009

• Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story – Chuck Klosterman
• Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace

The copy of Infinite Jest was secondhand, but it had the original cover price sticker on it – put out on the shelf in July 2009. It’s clear from the spine that the original person (whose name is written on the first page, but I’m not about to publicly call them out on it.) didn’t read it but … July 2009? That’s a pretty quick turnaround. Oh well, their efficient tendency to not hoard books they haven’t read is the gain of one who does hoard books they haven’t read (yet). Summer project perhaps?

And something very dear to my heart:

Yes, a recording of Carson McCullers in 1958 reading excerpts from The Member of the Wedding, The Ballad of the Sad Café and the Heart is a Lonely Hunter as well as some of her poetry. I got this for an absolute steal on ebay and I absolutely plan on arranging to get it digitized. What you think I just have a record player lying about amongst all those books? Googling this baby only brings up 8 results – well 9 I suppose once this entry gets indexed.

And, finally, some of the stuff I have out from the library at the moment, who knows how much of it will actually get read:

Library Loot - Week Ending November 8th, 2009