From the Boekenmarkt Spui:
Hugo Claus, “Het Verdriet van België” (“The Sorrow of Belgium”). A classic, apparently, recommended by Marijn. At a hefty 774 pages, this should keep me going for a while. “Sometime, Never: 3 Outstanding Tales of Science and Fantasy”. I can hear my mother sighing deeply… but this is good stuff! It’s William Golding [...]
Ok, there are some genuine holiday posts in the works, I promise. I’ve gone through the mountain of photos I took and picked out a molehill of good ones, so One Day Real Soon they’ll appear here.
Today though, I’m rhapsodising (is that a word?) about my first Boekenmarkt Spui in three months. Whee!
Flann O’Brien’s The [...]
Only one this week, but it’s a doozy: Goudy’s type designs : his story and specimens : being a virtual facsimile of the Typophiles chap books XIII and XIV. This gorgeous pocketsize volume is accompanying me to New Zealand, where I can gloat over it at my leisure. Thanks very much Robert, glad you liked [...]
Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (just too late to feature in a game of HipBone with some Kiwi mates) Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy
These three from the Boekenmarkt Spui.
Munchkin. I know it’s not a book. Get over it. It’s fun.
It’s been two weeks, and quite a lot has arrived… I’ve read a good chunk of it, and I just cleared most of my pending reviews on LibraryThing, so I’ll be pretty brief here.
Nobilis, R. Sean Borgstrom. This is an RPG (roleplaying game) but I ordered it for the backstory and world creation. Reviewed on [...]
The Annotated Alice, Lewis Carroll’s twin masterpieces annotated by Martin Gardner. Several years ago now I briefly owned a copy of this edition. I showed it to a girl I fancied, on the day I bought it, and she said “For me? How kind!” So of course I said “I knew you’d like it,” and saved my teeth-gnashing for [...]
Still no City of Saints and Madmen.
Marie Nilsenova’s PhD thesis, Rises and Falls: Studies in the Semantics and Pragmatics of Intonation. Again, it’s fun to know people who write books! Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games, which is about a different sort of game theorist. From the kringloopwinkel, where we also bought an electric organ. Introduction [...]
It’s started again…
Nabokov’s The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, much easier going than Pale Fire (I’m still working on that one though). I vaguely remembered this as not very impressive but I’ve totally come around about it — it’s not as beautifully written as Lolita but also not as emotionally difficult, and it has some [...]
Edward Gorey’s Amphigorey. Actually this was last week’s acquisition, the first of the three, courtesy of Ralph (thanks again!). Except that it’s misbound, with half of two stories repeated instead of half of two others, so I’m going to have to send it back. A shame, because apart from that I think it’s the loveliest [...]
House of Leaves, or perhaps I should say “Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, by Zampanò, with introduction and notes by Johnny Truant”. It’s complicated — basically it’s an annotated version of the partially destroyed notes for a critical work concerning a documentary film about a haunted house. Although you could also suggest that the [...]