I promise that I will give up buying books for a while now after this month. Having no shelving as of yet for books means that I just keep piling ‘em up and hoping that they will fit somewhere when we move, and I can’t keep on. However, this month has seen me tempted terribly by both pretty classics (Penguin and Oxford, I’m looking at you), and a ridiculous book sale in the only independent bookshop left in Stoke-on-Trent. It would be bad not to patronise them when they have a sale on, surely?
Webberley’s Bookshop
All but five of the following books were from the sale, bought over four visits.
- Allen Ginsberg – Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems £2.99
- Daljit Nagra – Look we have coming to Dover!*
- Thomas Hardy – Wessex Poems*
- Ian Duhig – The Speed of Dark*
- Maurice Riordan – Floods*
The Ginsberg was spied in the Oxfam on Turl Street in the centre of Oxford when I went down at the start of the month with a group of Y10 and ex-Y11 students from work for a two-day (one night) residential at my college, St. Hugh’s. I did visit The Last Bookshop (as mentioned in a previous book-haul post), but didn’t come away with anything from there.
- Federico Garcia Lorca – The House of Bernarda Alba and Other Plays*
- Sophocles – The Theban Plays**
- Bertolt Brecht – The Good Woman of Setzuan*
- William Shakespeare – Love’s Labour’s Lost* – Four Comedies : The Taming of the Shrew – A Midsummer Night’s Dream – As You Like It – Twelfth Night* – Anthony and Cleopatra**
- Oscar Wilde – A Woman of No Importance* – Salome*
I already own a copy of the Sophocles plays (the Oedipus trilogy) in a Robert Fagles translation, but this is a different translation, which I thought would be interesting to compare it with. Also it’s a nice Penguin Classics edition.
In the same way, I already own a copy of The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night, but for the price I thought it daft not to get this four-in-one text; it works out at 5p a play. Also, it frees up some room, as the four-in-one take up far less room than my copies of those two plays do individually.
- Sivadasa – The Five-and-Twenty Tales of the Genie***
- The Tain***
- William Beckford – Vathek**
- W. Somerset Maugham – Liza of Lambeth*
- Colette – Cheri**
- Jane Austen – Emma***
- Henry James – Washington Square**
- Henry Mackenzie – The Man of Feeling**
- Laura Schwartz – A Serious Endeavour: Gender, education and community at St. Hugh’s, 1886-2011 £10
- Philip Ardagh – The Archaeologist’s Handbook**
- Tracey Turner – Foul Facts from the Perilous Past**
- Richard Mackay – The Atlas of Endangered Species***
The first of these was also bought when I was down in Oxford, from St. Hugh’s College itself. It was written for the 125th anniversary of the college in 2011, but I never got a copy when I was actually studying. The other three of these are for use at work.
Now, the next book (I hope) speaks for itself:
How ACE. This was also from the book sale (**)
Now, lastly, these weren’t:
- Virginia Woolf – The Lady in the Looking-Glass**
- Voltaire – Candide and Other Stories 99p
- Marcel Mauss – The Gift £1.49
The Gift is one of the key texts that I used at Uni, and which I’ve meant to get my own copy of ever since I was studying. Also, on the subject of this book (and more specifically it’s author), our youngest son has a toy mouse that we’ve named Marcel. Only us…
Now- NO MORE BOOK BUYING!
* 20p
** 50p
*** £1
Electric Puppet 