October 2, 2006

At the Vic Book Sale

I went mad at Half-Price Monday and acquired the following:
Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson, because I love the other books by her I’ve read; Survival by Margaret Atwood just because; Atwood’s The Journals of Susannah Moodie for my ghost course; Babel Tower by AS Byatt because sometimes I really like her; FINDS OF THE DAY Goodbye Without Leaving, Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object, Another Marvelous Thing and A Big Storm Knocked it Over ie almost everything by Laurie Colwin; Crocodile Soup by Julia Darling, because I liked her Guardian Poetry workshop way back when; An American Childhood by Annie Dillard, because I used to own it and left it in Japan; Mavis Gallant’s Paris Notebooks, because I read it years ago and loved it; The Remains of the Day because I’ve never read it and Kim Dean said I should; Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri because Kim Dean picked it up and said “Read this” just as Amy Tan said she would on the book’s back cover; Heat Wave and Spiderweb by Penelope Lively because I LOVE her; Martin Sloane because it was a dollar; Moo because I’m in the mood for campus fiction; Park and Ride by Miranda Sawyer because I’ve read it and liked it, and I’m up for “adventures in suburbia”; and The Queen and I by Sue Townsend, which also used to belong to me but I had to leave it behind in England. All this for $27. Oh yes, it had been a fine fine day. It’s nice that I like authors that are so unfashionable I can pick them up in droves for pennies.

October 3, 2005

I've been shopping

First, I can’t stop listening to “Helpless” by Buffy Sainte-Marie. You can find it here.

Second, the following books were exuberantly purchased from the Vic Book Sale.

1) Passing On by Penelope Lively
2) The Fourth Hand by John Irving (for Stu)
3) Judgement Day by Penelope Lively
4) A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel
5) Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
6) Eight Months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantel
7) A Fine Old Conflict by Jessica Mitford.

Heads are gonna roll.