Eight Is Enough

I bought eight books on Saturday.  I haven't been out shopping for books in a while and I was really feeling the urge to go out and buy stuff.  So I did.  And it was much more satisfying than buying books online (which is what I am reduced to most of the time, given the collapse of bricks and mortar book selling and a lack of time).

Existential Ennui got a copy of something called X v. Rex by Philip Macdonald a few weeks ago and after reading about his copy, I wanted one, too.  (A lot of what he, EE, writes about has this effect.)  I found one but published under a different title.  Nothing special, just a paperback from 1983.  Bought it just to read, not to collect.

And I got a paperback copy of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold for 50 cents.  I have never read a John Le Carre novel.  I've listened to and read interviews with him and always read about him but never got around to reading any of his books.  Can you be a fan of someone if you only read about him/her and never actually read their work?

I already have multiple copies of Joseph Mitchell's The Bottom of the Harbor but I couldn't pass up this one for only three dollars.  This copy is a first edition of the 1994 Modern Library edition of the book.  Not rare but it is a pleasure to hold, embodying all that mumbo-jumbo about how good a book can feel in your hands and how an electronic book can't provide a similar experience.  These nonfiction stories from the New Yorker about the New York City waterfront are some of my favorite things to read.  And re-read.  (I think his collection Up in the Old Hotel would be the book I would choose to have if I were to be stranded on a desert island.)

Okay, I already have a copy of Memory.  But I am taking a little trip soon and thought that this is something I would like to read while I am away.  So I bought a reading copy of it.  After paying through the nose for some old Richard Stark paperbacks I thought it would be wise to keep a pristine copy of Memory for my collection (though I must admit my Stark/Westlake books are for the most part a motley assembly of reading copies with only a few nice first editions).

This, Stuart Neville's The Ghosts of Belfast, I really dropped the ball on.  I should have bought this in hard cover when it was published.  But I was distracted by other things and never got around to it.  To make matters worse, I had a shot at a nice first edition of his new, second book but I was so down about not having the first in hard cover that I passed on it. 

 This was my only collectible purchase of the day - a first edition of this collection of Frank O'Connor short stories.  I have these stories in paperback - this copy is just to look at.

I knew very little about La Perdida by Jessica Abel.  A long time ago she did some work with the public radio program This American Life (perhaps the greatest thing on American radio) and that was enough for me to take a chance on it.  I almost always know a lot about a book before I buy it or read it so it was kind of fun to take a chance on something new.  This is about as wild as I get.

X'ed Out by Charles Burns was my final purchase of the day - and I bought it new and paid full price for it, unlike all my other items.  I think the egg on the cover has some sort of hypnotic attraction thing going because I did not plan to buy this.  I was going to wait and read it at the library or wait until all three volumes were published.  But once I had it in my hands, I had to have it.  I am not a fan of Charles Burns (I never even finished Black Hole) and don't know much about Tintin so I think that egg must be the reason I bought it.  Quite frankly, the book is strange and I don't know what to make of it.  But I can't stop looking at that egg.