I heard, last week, that Goodwill was having a two-for-one sale on books. I didn't go because I had just bought a bunch of books. But now it's obvious why they had it -- today there are 4 shopping carts stuffed to heaping with books (a heaping cartful of books?). There are as many new books as there are books still on the shelves. And by "new", I mean Your 2007 Chinese Horoscope is unbelievably current.
I picked out The Chosen by Chaim Potok, Joyce Carol Oates's You Must Remember This and an anthology of Nobel Laureates' quotes called The Words of Peace. That last one I'll try to send to Soka Gakkai International president Daisaku Ikeda.
I couldn't even get to the bottom of some of the carts. Among the volumes I did see but eschewed were: The DaVinci Code; a volume of Chekov plays; Windows 98 for Dummies; multiple copies of the same Grisham book, The Broker; and a couple of Star Trek novels (by the way, Tek Wars kind of yo-yos on and off the Goodwill shelves; I don't know if one copy keeps getting b ought and returned, or if there are still multiple copies of it loose and roaming the Omaha streets). It appears also that there's been a rash of Barbara Cartland dumps -- at least 2 people must have relinquished their extensive BC libraries.
Speaking of Tek Wars, it's my belief that Denny Crane is a better character than Captain Kirk. We do not bother with the hack TJ Hooker. I don't know if Shatner ever played Hamlet, so we conclude that Denny Crane is his crowning achievement.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Well, the cover came off The Idiot. It was expected, but now I can't impress people on the bus because they won't know what I'm reading. I wonder if other passengers think like me: that the main concern of everyone else is -- me! What hat am I wearing (this has come up as a topic, actually)? What am I reading? How many pages have I read? Will I get off at the usual place?
How boring their lives must be if that's all they can find to think about.
I'm on p. 183 of the Signet Classic paperback edition, and I'm liking The Idiot very much now. It took weeks to struggle past the first chapter, but now, I care. I always have trouble keeping names straight in translated books (for they are foreign to me) and there are a myriad characters in The Idiot. So I'm concentrating on only a few, and just sort of cruising past the others. I'm sure glad I didn't live in 18th Century Russian Society (or did I???) -- the things that "scandalize" those poor, weak creatures -- like the look on someones face. What babies. If your sense of dignity depends on what someone else is wearing, or whom they chose to "receive", then it's fragile indeed. Those Russkies could use some sort of revolution, or maybe a dictatorship of the proletariat or something.
I read Fathers and Sons by Turgenev a couple of years ago. I remember it as being a struggle also -- though it's a much shorter book. But it makes a key point about manners: "Man is capable of understanding everything -- the vibration of ether and the radiation of the sun; but he can never comprehend why another person should blow his nose in a manner different from his own."
That was spoken by the main character, the "Outsider", which is a type Turgenev evidently invented (though it wasn't perfected until the TV show Have Gun, Will Travel).
How boring their lives must be if that's all they can find to think about.
I'm on p. 183 of the Signet Classic paperback edition, and I'm liking The Idiot very much now. It took weeks to struggle past the first chapter, but now, I care. I always have trouble keeping names straight in translated books (for they are foreign to me) and there are a myriad characters in The Idiot. So I'm concentrating on only a few, and just sort of cruising past the others. I'm sure glad I didn't live in 18th Century Russian Society (or did I???) -- the things that "scandalize" those poor, weak creatures -- like the look on someones face. What babies. If your sense of dignity depends on what someone else is wearing, or whom they chose to "receive", then it's fragile indeed. Those Russkies could use some sort of revolution, or maybe a dictatorship of the proletariat or something.
I read Fathers and Sons by Turgenev a couple of years ago. I remember it as being a struggle also -- though it's a much shorter book. But it makes a key point about manners: "Man is capable of understanding everything -- the vibration of ether and the radiation of the sun; but he can never comprehend why another person should blow his nose in a manner different from his own."
That was spoken by the main character, the "Outsider", which is a type Turgenev evidently invented (though it wasn't perfected until the TV show Have Gun, Will Travel).
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
A Shopping Trip
Traipsed over to Goodwill today - looks like they've gotten a new shipment (at least one!) since my last shopping trip. Quite an assortment: I bought paperbacks of Washington Square, The Natural, The Andromeda Strain, David Copperfield (so I can see what "that David Copperfield crap" means, ha ha), the Pocketbook of Ogden Nash (poetry fix; also, I was once in a band called Ogden Edsl, named in homage to Mr. Liquor is Quicker), Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman (unfamiliar with that one) and - what I had actually hope to find -- two books by Agatha Christie. I like Dame Agatha because she provides escapism, and is not a mindless hack (more on mindless hacks we love in a future post ((one's name is Winston, another's is Mary Higgins - but I don't want to mention anyone right now)).
I like Poirot better than Miss Marple, but I do like Miss Marple. I don't like those two Thin Man wannabes she plays with sometimes. Quick: Which characters were created by a British Dame, and which by a Yank named Dash -- Tommy and Tuppence/Nick and Nora?
But I digress. Agatha Christie's one of my favorites (As is the Yank named Dash).
Other things on the Goodwill shelves today: a hardcover of Tom Wolfe's A Man In Full, taking up a lot of room - that is one big hardcover; a novelized episode of Knott's Landing; a book of quotations by Louis L'Amour;, about a dozen John Grisham paperbacks;, The Iliad; Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?; We're Right They're Wrong (I think) by James Carville; Mutiny of the Bounty -- and about a thousand others. Really, at least a thousand.
I almost bought the Knott's Landing. I did pick up a stuffed toy for the dog to chew up -- an M&M character doll. Go boy - bite!
The bill came to about $13. The toy cost $1.99 and was the most expensive item. Go boy!
I like Poirot better than Miss Marple, but I do like Miss Marple. I don't like those two Thin Man wannabes she plays with sometimes. Quick: Which characters were created by a British Dame, and which by a Yank named Dash -- Tommy and Tuppence/Nick and Nora?
But I digress. Agatha Christie's one of my favorites (As is the Yank named Dash).
Other things on the Goodwill shelves today: a hardcover of Tom Wolfe's A Man In Full, taking up a lot of room - that is one big hardcover; a novelized episode of Knott's Landing; a book of quotations by Louis L'Amour;, about a dozen John Grisham paperbacks;, The Iliad; Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?; We're Right They're Wrong (I think) by James Carville; Mutiny of the Bounty -- and about a thousand others. Really, at least a thousand.
I almost bought the Knott's Landing. I did pick up a stuffed toy for the dog to chew up -- an M&M character doll. Go boy - bite!
The bill came to about $13. The toy cost $1.99 and was the most expensive item. Go boy!
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Sex!
Spring, young man's fancy, etc.
Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H.Lawrence. Movies based on Lawrence look like they were shot through velvet -- textured and ostentatiously dense. LCL, however, is very accessible, quite transparent in its sympathies. (Lawrence was, evidently, quite sick when he wrote it; perhaps that has something to do with it). Here is another woman (and her sister too!) quite open about being a sexual creature, one who enjoys sex (remember, this was written in the 1920s). And early on the argument is made: "...You are in some way an organic whole with all life. But once you start the mental life you pluck the apple. You've severed the connection between the apple and the tree: the organic connection." The book is not about sex, it's about nature; nature is expressed as sex, and the (tee hee) dirty words are the growls and barks of natural beings n their habitats.
I think. I'm open to the suggestion that it might be about sex. Heh heh.
Running With Scissors by Augustin Burroughs. I can't imagine why, when the manuscript reached an agent, or however many publishers it was submitted to, some supposed adult didn't say: "Call the police -- this is a catalogue of uninterrupted child abuse by a whole lot of people." Instead, they published it, sold the movie rights and made a lot of money. A horrible, disgusting experience all around. Everyone connected with this book is a sleazeball. A horrific experience. I'm very disappointed in Annette Bening (among others). Disgusting.
Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H.Lawrence. Movies based on Lawrence look like they were shot through velvet -- textured and ostentatiously dense. LCL, however, is very accessible, quite transparent in its sympathies. (Lawrence was, evidently, quite sick when he wrote it; perhaps that has something to do with it). Here is another woman (and her sister too!) quite open about being a sexual creature, one who enjoys sex (remember, this was written in the 1920s). And early on the argument is made: "...You are in some way an organic whole with all life. But once you start the mental life you pluck the apple. You've severed the connection between the apple and the tree: the organic connection." The book is not about sex, it's about nature; nature is expressed as sex, and the (tee hee) dirty words are the growls and barks of natural beings n their habitats.
I think. I'm open to the suggestion that it might be about sex. Heh heh.
Running With Scissors by Augustin Burroughs. I can't imagine why, when the manuscript reached an agent, or however many publishers it was submitted to, some supposed adult didn't say: "Call the police -- this is a catalogue of uninterrupted child abuse by a whole lot of people." Instead, they published it, sold the movie rights and made a lot of money. A horrible, disgusting experience all around. Everyone connected with this book is a sleazeball. A horrific experience. I'm very disappointed in Annette Bening (among others). Disgusting.
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