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.

• Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
• Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
• The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers by Virginia Spencer Carr
• The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
• The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and Other Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Liana by Martha Gellhorn
• Katherine Anne Porter: A Life by Joan Givner
• The Ghostly Lover by Elizabeth Hardwick
• The Simple Truth by Elizabeth Hardwick
• Pentimento by Lillian Hellman
• Scoundrel Time by Lillian Hellman
• An Unfinished Woman by Lillian Hellman
• Conversations with Katherine Anne Porter: Refugee from Indian Creek by Enrique Hank Lopez
• Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
• The Collected Essays and Occasional Writings by Katherine Anne Porter
• In Pursuit of Hygiene by Helen Razer
• Beautiful Exile: The Life of Martha Gellhorn by Carl Rollyson
• Lillian Hellman: Her Legend and Her Legacy by Carl Rollyson
• With Fondest Regards by Françoise Sagan
• Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel

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:

• The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
• God’s Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell [review]
• Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
• Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
• The Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet
• Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps by Emmett Grogan
• Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley
• From Here to Eternity by James Jones
• Lonesome Traveler by Jack Kerouac
• The Penguin Book of New American Voices edited by Jay McInerney
• The Group by Mary McCarthy
• Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
• A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
• A House for Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
• The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark
• The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark
• Not to Disturb by Muriel Spark
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
• The Public Image by Muriel Spark
• The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
• Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath by Anne Stevenson
• The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima by Henry Scott Stokes
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

And, a few interesting articles from the week:

• Literary Characters and Their Modern-Day Tabloid Counterparts by Bailey Kennedy
• Faking Nice in the Blogosphere: Women and Book Reviews by Sarah McCarry (A must read, in my opinion.)
• Mae at Mad Bibliophile has written up a summary of her day at Clunes, including a photograph of the pony in a local front yard. (!)
• Does Twitter Sell Books? Our Quasi-Scientific Study by Paul Young

What’s the best book you’ve read recently?

In terms of fiction, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers has affected me profoundly, and in so many ways. It reminded me of the places a novel can take you. When I was reading it I was transported to two places at once: 1. to some distant nostalgic place in my childhood, of getting lost in books and tales of other people, of sitting curled up and reading for hours and hours. 2. to the place evoked in the story. McCullers’ use of language is so deceptively sparse, yet manages to contain and convey all elements of human experience within it. There were times when I was just totally knocked out by how wonderfully she expressed particular things, but most of all, loneliness. This woman just seemed to understand it and able to sum it up in such a succinct way that makes you feel, maybe, a little less alone. It is a book about how we see people as we want to, as we need to, we endlessly project our needs and desires onto them, however far removed from reality that may be. Everything is misunderstood, miscommunicated. Human frailty and strength. The hopelessness and necessity of hope. I know that this is a book that I will frequently return to.

Likewise, the best non-fiction book I’ve read recently would have to be The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers by Virginia Spencer Carr. I make no secret of the fact that I am slightly obsessed with Ms. McCullers. Discovering her work has been one of my highlights of this year. It is inspiring, sad, beautiful and strong. Evocative, poetic, humane. There aren’t enough words for how I feel about her work. Then there was the haunting dark-eyed woman that stared out at me from the Google Image Search. She looked so child-like and yet she wrote of these eternal human struggles in such a powerful way. I was hooked, I was intrigued and I had to know more. This biography was really, really thorough. All the scandalous aspects of her life are examined in details – of particular interest is her tumultuous relationship with Reeves McCullers. She married him quite young, divorced him a few years later, then after he’d gone to fight in the war and she was a hugely successful writer, remarried him. This marriage ended in Reeves’ suicide, intended to be a double suicide, which Carson narrowly escaped from. It has all the makings of salacious gossip, but it is treated with such careful respect for all involved, while not afraid to look at the really messy, horrible parts of their relationship. Her instant success at such a young age, her endless struggle with the creative process, her spiritual loneliness, her unrequited loves. I think she was a beautiful and sad individual, troubled and talented. Through all she went through, she seemed to maintain a really strong sense of self and spark. Her life story was terribly melancholic, but I also found it hugely inspiring.

One of my favourite parts was when McCullers and Tennessee Williams got their revenge on an interfering neighbour by pouring good scotch into their pig trough; they spent the evening sitting and laughing at the pigs getting drunk. Williams said of the event: “It was an expensive amusement – all that scotch – but we both felt better afterwards.”