More books!
- Solomon Northup – 12 Years a Slave £1.25
- The Britannica Book of Genetics 50p
- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – The Communist Manifesto 1 of 3 for £1
- Michel Foucault – Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison 2 of 3 for £1
- Henrik Ibsen – Four Major Plays 3 of 3 for £1
- Patrick Moore – On the Moon £1.99
I also picked these books up from my parents’ house:
- Philip Pullman – The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, The Tiger in the Well and The Tin Princess
- Philip Reeve – Mortal Engines
- Eleanor Updale – Montmorency
Yes, they are all childrens/teen fiction, but as with many of Pullman’s works, this quadrilogy of ‘Sally Lockhart’ books are as good as any adult novels in both style, plot, langauge and themes, and the Reeve book I haven’t actually read, but want to as it is a dystopian work in a similar vein to many sci-fi classics. Hell, why am I defending myself here for wanting to read or re-read children’s fiction? I feel as though this is an argument I am having with myself, and am sure that I am the only person who needs convincing that it is okay. When it comes to classic and decent fiction, the boundary between children’s and adults is decidedly and rightly blurred, and is one that is getting more and more irrelevant for me as time goes on. Blame Ted Hughes and his children’s poetry, which is also adult poetry; blame Lewis Carroll; blame Tolkein and J.K. Rowling.
…and on the theme of children’s works (and Ted Hughes) I also got this:
I already own the tie-in version of this that was produced at the time of the film ‘The Iron Giant’, but that has certainly seen better days, and so when I saw this ‘Faber Classics’ edition with the 1980s cover restored, I thought that it was worth the £2.99 that I paid for it. You can’t tell here, but the title and the rivets around the border are all in shiny gold foil and are imbossed, which really adds to this edition and makes it a nice collectors piece. The book also looks far more substantial in this format, as the text is rather large and so the book has been padded out to over 100 pages. Also, this is the first brand new Faber & Faber book that I have bought since Seamus Heaney’s ‘Human Chain’ in paperback in 2011 (as opposed to second-hand), and so it is the first time I have seen the new Faber typeface in print:
It looks a bit odd initially alongside the double-f logo, but I don’t think that it looks at all bad. it certainly has a nice 1920s/30s feel to it, harking back to the Faber of Eliot, and that is never a bad thing. Here is the font in greater detail, taken from their website:
Image: faber.co.uk
Hopefully, I may see that grace my poetry in the near future… Yeah, right. I can but dream…
Lastly, two of our local libraries have been having booksales, and so I got these few:
- Jon McGregor – even the dogs 10p
- Frank Herbert – Hellstrom’s Hive 10p
- Mohsin Hamid – The Reluctant Fundamentalist 10p
…and these…
- Ian Fleming – Goldfinger 25p
- Irvine Welsh – Trainspotting 25p
- Thomas Hardy – Jude the Obscure 25p
- Philip Reeve – Predator’s Gold 25p
- Jenny Turner – The Brainstorm 25p
- Archie Brown – The Rise & Fall of Communism 10p
I’m wondering with these new book posts whether I should start doing them monthly instead of as-and-when I buy. I just think that that would be a bit easier and make this blog a bit more tidy. Also, I hope to sort out all my arch & anth, poetry and other books soon so as we can buy some bookcases, and then I can actually start using them again and have easy access to them, rather than them being piled up and very impractical. I’ll let you know how I get on, and promise to post some pictures once the shelves are assembled and the books arranged. Watch this space!
Electric Puppet 