Never too Late to Read Classics discussion

Good to know. It seems like it will be interesting.

Just arrived today:




The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter by Matei Călinescu

Going to wait to finish at least a few from my current reading before I start on this one, but it's one of those books that I've heard of "in name only" (so to speak) over the years, but never thought that I'd actually get the chance to read it in English one day.

But as per usual, NYRB Classics to the rescue...

I recently added to my Agatha Christie collection by buying Murder on the Links.

Borrowed today from the library, and due 24 March 2018:

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (1874-1942)
Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood by Michael Walker
Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine by Margaret Helfgott
Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball's Longest Game by Dan Barry

Jim

My latest purchase were some Russian and French classics. It was a $5 sale at Barnes and Noble and I was a bit spend happy.
I bought:
Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
and I had to finish my set of The Three Musketeers.
Twenty Years After by Dumas
The Red Sphinx by Dumas
and The Man in the Iron Mask by Dumas
and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Hugo

You hit the jackpot, Patrick. Those will keep you busy reading for a while.

As usual, my favorite used bookstore was a proverbial goldmine and I did as much damage as I could afford:

The Collected Poems of Lucio Piccolo , translated by Brian Swann & Ruth Feldman
The German Lesson by Siegfried Lenz
Selected Writings of Antonin Artaud, edited by Susan Sontag
History: A Novel by Elsa Morante
Cavalleria Rusticana and Other Stories by Giovanni Verga
Omeros by Derek Walcott
The Wreck of the Batavia: A True Story by Simon Leys
Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate by Harold Bloom
Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany , edited by Jay Jennings

Those were my personal highlights, especially Omeros, the Charles Portis anthology (I should have just about everything of his that's currently in print) and Bloom's study of Wallace Stevens, one of my all-time favorite poets.

But also managed to pick up (because I just couldn't help myself):

Letters to a Young Novelist by Mario Vargas Llosa
Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard
The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle
F: A Novel by Daniel Kehlmann
Man Walks Into a Room: A Novel by Nicole Krauss
Stay Up With Me: Stories by Tom Barbash

That should keep me well covered for quite awhile after I finish my current reading shelf... especially considering last week I bought Ali Smith's Autumn , Janesville: An American Story , Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikötter, and The Worst Journey in the World by one of the greatest, most British-named authors I've ever heard of, Apsley Cherry-Garrard.

But this is the reason why I try to limit my visits to this bookstore to 2/3 times a year, max. So yeah, I have a bit of a problem when it comes to books. But I think it's the best problem to have in the world.

On March 10 I borrowed Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy from the library for a challenge in another GR group.

Jim

I just picked up a hardcover copy of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. This was one of the first "adult" books I ever read, since my father had a copy in his library. Some time over the intervening years he's copy disappeared so I decided to pick this up for my library.

The Enchanted April and A Passage to India.

All I can say is "Wow" Pillsonista. That must be a great used bookstore.

Jim, I like reading library books too, especially history and biographies. I hope you enjoy it.

Michael, that one is on my to-read list, since I have only read three of Verne's works so far.

Piyangie, The Enchanted April is wonderful. A Passage to Imdia has an interesting, at times infuriating, cast of characters.

Welcome back Piyangie!

I bought a copy of The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty at a second hand book shop today.
It was published in 1969 and by the time I get around to reading it, it will be a classic according to our group.

Piyangie, Nice additions! Love Elizabeth von Arnim personal story so makes reading her even better.

I have not read A Passage to India have it but keep moving it down on the pile. Have not heard very good reviews from Members. Maybe someone else has liked it??

Once again, my local library comes through for me...

I was able to pick up two by Janet Malcolm: Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers and The Purloined Clinic: Selected Writings. I don't know if I'll ever like anything of hers as much as I love In the Freud Archives, but I've never encountered anything that she's written which hasn't been worth reading.

But the highlight has to be Magnetic Point: Selected Poems by one of Poland's greatest post-war poets, Ryszard Krynicki and translated by the fantastic Clare Cavanagh.

I'd only become acquainted with Krynicki's work fairly recently, after the publication of Our Life Grows. After reading that I tried to get my hands on anything of Krynicki's that had been translated into English, and that's when I found Magnetic Point, which I think is even better than Our Life Grows.

I read A Passage to India last year and there was only one character that I really liked, but I think Forster may have done that on purpose to show the interaction of the British with the native Indians.
Of his books, I really liked Maurice and A Room with a View(which was one of our books of the month).

Catherine Habbie's The Tryptych and The Tryptych II




Some lovely additions to my library!

I bought these books in May:
Middlemarch - George Eliot - a Barnes & Noble edition bought in preparation for the Hefty Classic starting in July!

The Clocks - Agatha Christie
The A.B.C. Murders - Agatha Christie
The Warden - Anthony Trollope

I finally found a used paperback copy of The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke, after more than a year of searching.

As we often add used books to our personal libraries, many of us may come across colored Penguin books. Some of us may even already own such books. I found this video that explains what basic genre each color of Penguin book represents.

https://youtu.be/yLZuniPjEdw

I had no idea Samantha! Interesting video I may have to revisit!

Today I bought a used Penguin copy of Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell.

I just bought The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein, 2010 & 2062 Space Odyssey books by Arthur C Clark, Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons and Spin (forget the author). I’m finishing up Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov then I’m digging into the Space Odyssey books and Hyperion.

Those are great finds Rosemarie

You have some good books there too, Patrick.

With birthday money from my mom, I jumped to erase 2 books off my amazon list, & they arrived today. Hans Christian Andersen's Complete Fairy Tales from Canterbury Classics (leather bound with gold-rimmed pages) and The Outsiders 50th anniversary edition with 44 pages of extra content. I don’t normally do hardback books, but for special classics like fairy tale collections and an anniversary edition of one of my favorite novels I’ll happilu take quality hardback.

Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Stories and Tom Kristensen's Havoc.

I've been wanting to get my hands on Kolyma Stories for ages, and this is the first fully unabridged translation into English (the second volume will be released next year).

But having now read a couple of the stories, I know I will not be able to read it straight through. It's just too much to take. You don't realize how much you cannot even imagine, let alone understand, until you're faced with the experience of existential suffering, even if it's only in writing.

Older book but Donna Parker at Cherrydale. When able to I'll get the rest.

Also got Barnes and Noble collection edition Little Women and other Novels and The Complete Peter Rabbit.

Very happy with my 2 purchases.. I got Howard's end by E.M. Foerster and Villette by Charlotte Bronte. The Bronte I have read but the edition was a not very nice, old used copy. It was a bit smelly and I think it detracted from my enjoyment of the story. So I now have Villette and Howard's end in the penguin english library editions to add to my collection. ;)

Lucky you Tracey! Just douse them with perfume and carry on reading...:)

I know it’s the stories that matter, but I like my used books to be in good condition. Tracey, I think a book in poor shape would distract me, too. You are feeling the cover and pages the whole time reading and looking at such as well. The whole experience should be enjoyable.

Thanks all for reminding me about my used bookstore. Sometimes I'm reading a series from my library and a book or two is unavailable. Used book store, here I come!

Sydney wrote: "Thanks all for reminding me about my used bookstore. Sometimes I'm reading a series from my library and a book or two is unavailable. Used book store, here I come!"

LOL!

Have fun.

Samantha wrote: "I know it’s the stories that matter, but I like my used books to be in good condition. Tracey, I think a book in poor shape would distract me, too. You are feeling the cover and pages the whole tim..."

I read a lot of old books. What's really discouraging are those books with dried food on the pages. Sheesh! Can't the food dropper clean it off? LOL. I regard it as my "duty" to clean them up for the next person. Also, brushing off the mold on pages near the binding is easy to brush off with a Kleenex. The library has told me that mold can spread from book to book. Just doing my part! (smiling here)

Libraries and used bookstores should all have standards. When I worked at a Salvation Army thrift store, we flipped through and checked books that seemed remotely questionable. Books that weren’t in good condition - clearly once wet or had food on them, torn, falling apart, etc - were boxed up to be recycled. Sounds sad to so booklovers, I’m sure, but the used book market is huge, even in thrift stores. At my local Salvation Army store books are stacked on shelving to the ceiling with every shelf 2-3 layers deep of books.

Tracey wrote: "Very happy with my 2 purchases.. I got Howard's end by E.M. Foerster and Villette by Charlotte Bronte. The Bronte I have read but the edition was a not very nice, old used copy. It was a bit smelly..."

I often will buy a used copy of a book I already own if I find it in the edition I most want. Eventually, I give or trade away the second version as my shelves/stacks can't take too many extra books.
Sometimes it's to keep an author's work in one publisher, either Penguin, Oxford WC, Vintage etc. and sometimes it's to get many varieties, as with my Graham Greene's which includes green, orange and black Penguins, Avon, Bantam, Viking, Washington Square Press, and Compass Books editions, over half of them used.

Which Graham Greene novel would you recommend, Brian? I've never read any of his books.

Brian, that’s what I did with The Outsiders. After my edition from middle school got worn out, I bought another paperback in I think 2007. The hardback I just got for my birthday is extra, but with all the bonus content for being a 50th anniversary edition the book is special. I’ll keep that one mint condition, while I might already have a couple markings in my old paperback.

Hello again . I have many used books on my shelves and usually I'm not averse to old book smells, my copy of Slaughter house 5 was is so old that the pages look like they've been dipped in strong black tea and left to dry! But the Villette hardback was something else and my eyes felt irritated with the smell. Anyway used books as a rule are great and I even like finding annotations and the last owners book mark, I've found old train tickets, theatre receipts and shopping lists in some of my pre loved copies.
I will say this though, it's so lovely to get a brand new book, a special treat that never gets old. :)

Kathy wrote: "Which Graham Greene novel would you recommend, Brian? I've never read any of his books."

I found The End of the Affair to be his most accomplished.

Like Thomas Hardy, Greene categorized his works, defining his more literary works as 'novels' and his lighter works and suspense books as 'entertainments.' I like both.

I believe Colin Firth is narrating the audio book. Now I have to hear it!

Samantha wrote: "Brian, that’s what I did with The Outsiders. After my edition from middle school got worn out, I bought another paperback in I think 2007. The hardback I just got for my birthday is extra, but with..."

i would think S.E. Hinton would be quite an influence on young girls who loved reading and writing, especially those growing up when you did in the South/Southwest U.S. You do need a collector's edition copy that will be kept forever. Two years ago I bought a signed hardback edition of my favorite baseball player's autobiography to keep and also bought a paperback to actually read. I thought of it now because the player grew up in Big Cabin Oklahoma 50 miles from Tulsa where S.E. Hinton grew up.

I found The End of the Affair to be his most accomplished.

Like Thomas Hardy, ..."

Thanks, Brian. I'll at The End of the Affair to my TBR. I like those divisions of novels and entertainments.

I found last night and downloaded free Kindle editions of Dracula and The Wind in the Willows. I love how the Goodreads website can link directly to purchasing books on Amazon. It seems like Goodreads even links to the best deal. I also found a 99 cent Kindle edition of Don Quixote. I think I have a paperback copy at my mom's, but I'm cool with a cheap ebook copy, too.

Samantha wrote: "I found last night and downloaded free Kindle editions of Dracula and The Wind in the Willows. I love how the Goodreads website can link directly to purchasing books on Ama..."

Amazon owns Goodreads and they use the connection to help Amazon sell more books. The connection has its advantages and disadvantages. i often buy from Amazon and have Prime.
The automatic connection with an Amazon Kindle purchase to my Goodreads bothers me. One time I page-turned to the end of the Kindle to see how many pages I had left and it automatically notified my Goodreads status that I had finished that book, when I had only looked at the last page.

Brian, I got very frustrated with Goodreads for automatically saying I had finished a book as well. I then manually went in and changed my read dates, but I feel like that is a setting that we should get to customize.

I recently noticed my local Wal-Mart's aisle of books seems to be gone, unless they moved it and I have yet to find it. If gone, that means literally the only place to purchase books in my entire parish is now thrift stores and garage sales. SAD. If I want a particular book, Amazon (also prime) is my usual go-to, unless I want a B&N collectible classic edition. Abebooks.com is a great place to find books, too, if you live in a bookstore desert like me. Minimum 20+ minute drive to any bookstore in Baton Rouge or nearby cities in Livingston Parish.

Just purchased Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray. Really looking forward to reading it but I have to finish my Agatha Christie book first.

Nice purchase Doreen!

Adam Bede by George Eliot. Want to read all of Eliot's books.

I have read most of George Eliot's books, except for Romola which is sitting on my self.
I bought six books in July, one at a used book store and five from a thrift store-The Little Town Where Time Stood Still, The Golden Bowl, In a Glass Darkly, Embers, The Longest Journey and The Wild Irish Girl: A National Tale.