Again, our two children came out best from this latest sale at one of our local libraries, getting well into double-figures for only a few pounds. However, I did manage to get a few (the last two are not from the library though):
- Vladimir Nabokov – King, Queen, Knave 25p
- Christopher Hope – The Love Songs of Nathan J. Swirsky 25p
- John Preston – The Dig 25p
- Ian McEwan – On Chesil Beach 25p
- John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men £1
- Philip K. Dick – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? £1.50
I’ve already read ‘Of Mice and Men’, as I studied it at GCSE, but have never had my own copy until now, and the Preston book ‘The Dig’ is a fictional account of the discovery of Sutton Hoo in 1939. I have to commend the cover of the Nabokov book, too, as it is in the same vein as the ‘Just So Stories’ cover that I was so taken by in my ‘Thoughts on…’ post a few months back. Here it is in more detail:
I just love the simplicity of the image, on what is already a simple design (the 2000’s Penguin Modern Classics silver-stripe covers). It doesn’t have the playfulness of the ‘Just So Stories’ cover, with the swinging leopard’s tail, but I still think that this is a perfect example of less-is-more.
I’m also slightly annoyed with myself for buying the McEwan book, as I’ve said for a while that I’d never buy any of his simply because they seem to me to be too populist, but I didn’t think that I could argue with 25p. To be fair, the Classics that I am so enamoured of are only such due to being ‘popular’, but I tend to think of McEwan’s books to not be overly literary, due in part to them having won all of the awards that are over-hyped and over-biased. Anyway- only reading it will tell me whether it was a good move or not, and I will probably end up loving it and needing to buy all of his other books too. Probably.
Electric Puppet 