Books (Incoming)

[desayunoencama]

So yesterday I did manage to buy a few books, something that may be counterproductive since I really need to get rid of a lot of books. But I can't control myself. Maybe I should join something like BookMooch and thereby trade books I no longer want for things I do. At any rate, it might help keep them from only coming in instead of also going out...

Any recommendations from any of you who belong to one of these things are very welcome.

Anyway, much of what I bought were extra copies of things I already had. Some of these were specifically for my mother, like some old R. A. MacAvoy novels I thought she'd like (THE GREY HORSE, THE BOOK OF KELLS), or Esther Friesner's MUSTAPHA AND HIS WISE DOG

Others were things like extra copies of Mary Stewart's MADAM, WILL YOU TALK? and AIRS ABOVE THE GROUND, because they were 3 for a dollar or 50 cents.

I did buy some things I'm looking forward to reading, including two May Sarton novels I didn't have, A RECOKNING and AS WE ARE NOW, since I'm still very much enjoying her prose.

I also got a Joan Aiken novel for adults, has anyone read her non-YA work? This one was THE GIRL FROM PARIS. No idea if it's any good or not but it was a dollar, so I didn't resist.

I also got copies of two YAs: E. L. Konigsburg's THE MYSTERIOUS EDGE OF THE HEROIC WORLD since she's always so reliably brilliant and Susan Beth Pfeffer's LIFE AS WE KNOW IT since a lot of people on LJ and elsewhere have been recommending it.

Isma and I have also been talking about Hannah Arrendt, which we've both been meaning to read, and I found a copy of her ANTISEMITISM for a dollar, as well as a collection of essays by Kay Boyle that I figured might be of interest (again a dollar, can you see where my impulse threshold is?).

My general impression, though, of the 4 places at which I bought books, was that there were slim pickings. Hopefully that'll change between now and next week, and I'll find some more stuff to send over to Madrid. I won't be back in the Us until May (maybe) and I'm also running through a lot of what I had on hand. Not that I don't have plenty of unread books in Madrid, but they're not things I'm finding I want to read, at least not just now.

(For instance, I've had a bunch of Lawrence Block's darker novels (Matthew Scudder series and others) for years, and have only just recently started reading them and enjoying them. I hope to stock up on Block, Westlake, Barnard, as I find titles I haven't yet read...)

I also need to look through the books I have here but have not yet read and see whatever I want to send over.

(I seem to be missing a package that never arrived from what we sent over last time, which had the Dana Stabenow SF trilogy, among other things. Sigh. Now I need to try and hunt those three books down again. I forget what else was in it. But I only realized it when I saw the dupe of book 2 in the series here, but not the whole trilogy, which I know I've now managed to pick up... Those poor lost book!)

Comments

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

The Grey Horse is one of my favorite books EVER. And I loved Konigsberg as a kid...A Proud Taste For Scarlet and Miniver started my Eleanor of Aquitaine fixation long before I saw The Lion in Winter.

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

It's a shame MacAvoy stopped writing (or stopped publishing) so many years ago, aside form a novella online only in 2005 (which I haven't read).

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Yes, though I did find her very uneven. The Grey Horse, Tea With the Black Dragon, and Twisting the Rope...LOVED. The Book of Kells...Liked. Much of her other stuff was kind of blah for me.

On the other hand, I rarely trust it when someone is ZOMG LOVE about everything someone writes, because no writer is going to be perfect all the time or appeal to the same people with every book. I love Charles de Lint passionately, but he's put out some blah amongst all the wow. So uneven is, perhaps, not really a huge drawback.

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

I loved BOOK OF KELLS almost as much as TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON, and it's on my list of books that shouldn't be out of print (congratulations on finding a copy, Lawrence). I liked THE GREY HORSE and TWISTING THE ROPE a lot, but wasn't overly impressed by THE THIRD EAGLE or either of her fantasy trilogies.

I share your distrust of people who enthuse about everything a writer has written - and unfortunately, I think some of the worst offenders are publishers ("hey, another book by someone called Tolkien. Print a million copies!").

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I've read some of Aiken's adult Gothics. They vary widely in quality, but the good ones are gleefully wacky deconstructions of the genre.

[jennifer-j-s.livejournal.com]

Years ago, I read Joan Aiken's adult novels. They are for the most part romances in the Gothic tradition, and better than her sister Jane Aiken Hodge's books, imho.

I think my favorite was A Cluster of Separate Sparks. I don't remember the title you picked up, though.

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the kibbitzing. Will keep my eyes open for A CLUSTER OF SEPARATE SPARKS.