Archive for the 'book sale' Category

The Book Sale

Published on 27 August 2008 in book sale and books. 4 Comments

Well, another year, and another Save the Children Book Sale has come and gone.

Messy desk

Total spent: $120.50, over 4 days. (Yes, we went back a few times. I went three times, and M dropped in during the week after class.) All the books are piled up in my study around me. It feels like I am surrounded by books at the moment.

Fiction/science fiction/fantasy
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Decameron by Boccaccio
Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh
The Guardians by John Christopher
Camp Concentration by Thomas Disch
Sprookjes van Moeder de Gans by Christine Doorman (Mother Goose Tales)
The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy
A Maggot by John Fowles
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
An Alien Light by Nancy Kress
Nekropolis by Maureen F. McHugh (just read this, v. good!)
Di Tepi Jeram Kehancuran by Mira W (”Beside the rapids of destruction”. Indonesian romance. I can put up with melodrama in Indonesian, but can’t bear it in English.)
The Windsingers by Megan Lindholm
Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt
A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt (M’s pleased, he’s been looking for this for ages!)
The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit
The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott
Collision Course by Robert Silverberg
Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg
The Longest Way Home by Robert Silverberg
Recalled to life by Robert Silverberg
The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki
For the Defence by Kate Wilhelm
Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones
Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny

Nonfiction
Cai gen tan: rensheng de ziwei, Cai Zhizhong manhua (Vegetable Roots: The Flavour of Life. Cartoons by Cai Zhizhong. This and the next two books are cartoon versions of these classics.)
Manhua Sunzi bingfa: bingxue de xianzhi; Cai Zhizhong manhua (Manga Sun Tzu Art of War: Great Military Strategist. Cartoons by Cai Zhizhong)
Mengzi shuo: luan shi de zhe zi; Cai Zhizhong manhua (Mencius speaks: Philosophy for troubled times. Cartoons by Cai Zhizhong)
The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World by Luciano Canfora
Shao nian kai ge by Chen Kaige (Triumphant songs of youth; author is the Chinese film maker who made Yellow Earth and Farewell My Concubine. The title of this memoir is  a play on his name: kai ge means “paean, song of triumph”.)
Buddhist Scriptures by Edward Conze
Ecology for Beginners by Stephen Croall and William Rankin
Far East English-English English-Chinese dictionary of idioms and phrases
My Dark Places by James Ellroy
Stop Procrastinating!: Master the Art of Doing It Now by Rita Emmett (hah!)
Penguin Book of English Verse edited by John Hayward
The Great Museum: The Re-presentation of History by Donald Horne
Kramers Pocketwoordenboeken Engels-Nederlands
Kramers Pocketwoordenboeken Nederlands-Engels
Harvest Cookbook by Mark Pearson (vego)
Oxford Book of English Prose chosen and edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
Oxford Book of English Verse 1250 – 1918 chosen and edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence by Carl Sagan
The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Van Loon (loved this book when I was a kid)
Chinese Poems selected and translated by Arthur Waley
A History of Malaya by R.O. Winstedt

Plus a series of flashcards: Wucai xin fangzi (New Multicoloured Flashcards) from Wenhua Tushu Gongsi, Taibei (no date).

Total 47 books, 26 fiction, 21 nonfiction (is poetry counted as fiction?).

I’m going to have to tidy my desk before I can work. I have tomorrow and Friday afternoons off - the idea is that I am going to get stuck into writing. I’ll be so relieved when the conference paper that’s due in a couple of weeks is at least drafted. Oh, and I have to do my Dutch homework, too.

Edit: Left one book out, the Zhongwen Baike Da Cidian (”Great Encyclopaedic Chinese Language Dictionary”). Thus, total 48 books, 26 fiction, 22 nonfiction.

More books

Published on 10 August 2008 in book sale and books. 5 Comments

If you’re a librarian, you’ve probably had this experience before: you tell someone you’re a librarian and they respond: “Oh, you must like books!” This always irks me somewhat, but then stereotypes usually do. I often feel a kind of stupid pleasure when I can buck the trend and not match up to the stereotype. Take that other librarian stereotype: librarians are neat and organised. M can attest to the fact that this is not true in my case. In the case of the book thing, however, I do like books. In fact, my liking books contributes to my non-neatness: I have so many that I have messily overflowing bookshelves and too many stacks of books.

But I digress. I don’t really want to write about stereotypes - I just wanted to mention the Save the Children Booksale. There’s one on this weekend:

Save The Children South of the River Branch
Venue: Cannington Exhibition Hall
Albany Hwy, Cannington
7 August 6pm - 9pm
8 - 10 August 9am - 7pm
11 August 9am - 12pm
Books half price on Sunday 10 August and $10 boxes of books on Monday 11 August.

M and I went yesterday after I got home from Dutch class. This one is smaller than the North of the River one and it was very quiet in the hall when I was there, but I enjoyed not having to push against other punters, and I did make a few interesting finds. Books like a two-volume Engels Woordenboek (English-Dutch dictionary) compiled by K. ten Bruggencate and A. Broers, published in both Groningen and Batavia. The first edition, from the preface, was published in 1894, but it looks like I have the 1948 edition, which is the veertiende verbeterde en vermeerde uitgave bewerkt door P. J. H. O. Schut, leraar aan het gymnasium te Breda en Dr R. W. Zandvoort, hoogleraar aan de Rijksuniversiteit te Groningen (fourteenth improved and enlarged edition by P. J. H. O. Schut, master (teacher), Breda gymnasium and Dr R. W. Zandvoort, Professor, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) in 1948. This cost me $9.50. I am not sure if the spelling in this set will have been revised yet, but it doesn’t matter as I will use my more up-to-date dictionaries for most study purposes.

Other interesting finds: by Ntozake Shange, For colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf (what a great title!), by Kit Pedler, The quest for Gaia, by Peter Worsley, The trumpet shall sound: A study of ‘cargo cults’ in Melanesia, and by May Sarton, Journal of a solitude.

The North of the River Save the Children booksale is on in a couple of weeks! I’d thought this sale usually happens in July and that I would miss it this year, so I am well pleased. I do love secondhand booksales; some of my most fun experiences in Amsterdam were the book markets in Dam Square and Spui (and you thought I’d say the coffee shops and the red-light district, right? ;) ).

Book Sale

Published on 24 February 2007 in book sale and books. 4 Comments

Thanks to Simone for the great tip - the MercyCare Annual Booksale is on this weekend.

M and I went along last night and were impressed by the range of books available.

Fiction
Monica Ali, Brick Lane
Greg Bear, Eternity
Best Science Fiction Stories
Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
Alan Dean Foster, Life Form
David Gemmell, Waylander
Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb, Cormyr
Robert A Heinlein, Farnham’s Freehold
Susan Johnson, Women Love Sex

Simone Lazaroo, The World Waiting to be Made
I’m sure I’ve read this, but it looks worth re-reading.

Ngaio Marsh, Clutch of Constables
Ngaio Marsh, Surfeit of Lampreys
Guy de Maupassant, Selected Short Stories
Valerie Miner, Blood Sisters
V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
Sara Paretsky, Guardian Angel
Sara Paretsky, Killing Orders

Georges Perec, Life: A User’s Manual
This is one I’ve wanted to read for ages.

E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
I’ve read this, and wouldn’t mind re-reading it. The novel was better than the movie.

Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
I can’t believe I never finished reading this one! I ought to, before she publishes her next novel…

Vikram Seth, An Equal Music
Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
Robert Silverberg, Those Who Watch
Theodore Sturgeon, More than Human
Sheri S. Tepper, Raising the Stones
A.E.Van Vogt, The World of Null-A
Sean Williams, Metal fatigue

Non-fiction
Collins German Pocket Dictionary
Eva Cox, Leading Women: Tactics for Making the Difference

Elliott Erwitt, DogDogs
This is one of those books of photos put out by Phaidon. Cost: a princely $2.00.

E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art
Robin Hughes, Australian Lives : Stories of Twentieth Century Australians
Paul Marshall, Raparapa: Stories from the Fitzroy River Drovers
Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism
Susan Mitchell, Icons, Saints & Divas : Intimate Conversations with Women who Changed the World

Alan Moorehead, The Fatal Impact
I read this book in high school, and don’t remember it very well.

John Mortimer, In Character
This one includes an interview with Georges Simenon, among others. Did I mention I’m a Maigret fan?

Josefina Muriel, Monjas coronadas
This is an unusual book from Mexico (it’s in Spanish). I believe the title translates to Crowned Nuns. It appears to be a history of convents in Mexico. I bought it for the pictures (it was only $1.50).

Stevie Smith, Me Again: Uncollected Writings
Ivan Southall, Fly West

Struan K. Sutherland, Venomous Creatures of Australia : A Field Guide with Notes on First Aid
Who knows, I might remember enough to know what to do if I ever come face to face with a taipan, or if I ever annoy a male platypus enough for it to sting me - did you know the male platypus has a pair of “stout but sharp” poisonous spurs on its hind legs? There are apparently no recorded deaths by platypus but the stings can cause “extreme pain and swelling at the site of the wound for days”.

Paul Theroux, Riding the Iron Rooster
The Macquarie Dictionary of Australian Quotations

M selected nine of these titles, me the remaining thirty four. All for the grand sum of $58. It was a very muggy evening and all that fossicking left me sweaty and streaked with dust. I had fun!