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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

The Haul (breathe, breathe)

I have a bloated feeling from the Lifeline Book Fair, and I only spent a few hours there. It's because I went on Saturday and bought what for me is a moderate amount of books, and then I went back on Sunday for the last half hour when they charge $10 for all you can fit into a green bag, and I gorged myself, mostly on poetry books that no-one else seemed to want except me.

Blimey, if I thought I had no room for my books before, now the situation is utterly ridiculous. But I can justify each purchase, truly! Well, I can justify it to myself, anyway. But now the piles of books teetering around my home office are even higher...

Here's the list.

Fiction
-- Angela Carter (ed), Wayward Girls & Wicked Women, (replacing a copy I once lent and never got back)
-- Angela Carter, Fireworks: nine stories in various disguises
-- Dymphna Cusack, The Half-Burnt Tree
-- Dymphna Cusack, Black Lightning (no, Bernice, I didn't have it. But I do now)
-- Dymphna Cusack, Say No to Death (I already have a copy of this, but this one has a pristine dustjacket)
-- Harold Bell Wright, That Printer of Udell's (1903, seems to be a novel about a letterpress-printing family in the American mid-west)
-- William Morris, A Dream of John Ball
-- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (1 volume, always wanted one of these, and it's a nice old one with glossaries of characters, etc. Happy Birthday, Bill)
-- Roger McDonald, 1915
-- David Whish-Wilson, The Summons
-- James Bailey, Man, Interrupted
-- Emma Tennant, The Bad Sister
-- Charmian Clift/George Johnson, Strong-man from Pireaus and other stories (hardback)
-- Lionel Shriver, The Female of the Species
-- Zoe Fairbairns, Benefits (dystopian feminist novel, highly recommended, and I've got a copy, but this one has a better cover)
-- Peter Draffin, Pop: A Novelty, with illustrations (everywhere!) by Martin Sharp
-- Kerryn Goldsworthy (ed), Australian Short Stories (not only a good selection, but a killer photo on the back :) )

Non-fiction
-- Style Manual for authors, editor & printers, 3rd Edition. (I seem to have a collection of editions now)
-- J.G. Cone, Cone's Book of Handicrafts (1961, with sone fabulous low-tech fun, including how to make the panoramic drawing frame featured in last week's Collectors)
-- Esther Hautzig, Let's Make Presents: 100 Inexpensive Gifts (1964, packed with good blogposts)
-- J. Hagan, Printers and Politics: A History of the Australian Printing Unions 1850-1950)
-- Charmian Clift, Images in Aspic (1st edition paperback)
-- Laurence Whistler, Rex Whistler, his life and drawings (This book is a definite blogpost in itself)

Poetry
-- Denise Levertov, The Freeing of the Dust
-- Catherine Reilly (ed), Scars Upon My Heart (a collection of WWI poetry & verse by women. Really happy about this one.)
-- Penguin Modern Poets 8: Edwin Brock, Geoffrey Hill, Stevie Smith (LOVE Stevie Smith)
-- Vivian Smith, Selected Poems
-- Jon Foulcher, Convertible
-- Jon Foulcher, New and Selected poems
-- David Holbrook (ed), Iron Honey Gold, 4 vols of anthology.
-- Lily Brett, In her Strapless Dresses
-- Lily Brett, Mud in my Tears
-- Stephen Spender, Poems
-- Martin Johnston, Selected Poems and Prose
-- ANU Staff Centre Poet's Luncheon Menu, 29 November 1977, with poems by Rosemary Dobson, David Campbell, Geoff Page, Roger McDonald, RF Brissinden, and AD Hope, SIGNED BY ALL and was only 50c in the pamphlet section. Bonus!
-- Les Murray, New Selected Poems
-- Derek Walcott, The Bounty
-- e.e. cummings, selected poems 1923-1958 (lost my other copy)
-- Deborah Westbury, Flying Blind
-- Robert Graves, Love Respelt (I actually bought this as one of my design 'warning' books, as it is a dreadful one-section, machine-stitched binding, which ruins the careful layout of the text. Such a shame.)

Comics
-- Larry Pickering, A decade of Pickering (now I can let my individual copies for each year lie fallow)
-- Stan Lee, The Amazing Spiderman (1979 anthology)
-- The Completely MAD Don Martin (one of the only things I like in MAD comics)
-- Northbourne and Glory Bound (a Canberra comic anthology from 2000. This is an ex-library copy that I can read and keep my other copy nice)

Reference
-- Roget's Thesaurus (a copy for the Book Stud, because I'm always wishing I had one)
-- Collin's Australian Pocket English Dictionary (ditto)
-- Collin's Authors' and Printers' Dictionary (I think this is my 3rd copy now, but this one has a FABULOUS bookplate, so I'll cast off one of my other copies. Anyone want one?

As far as the weirdest one I saw, I think this takes the cake:

try for dry

When I saw it, my first thought was a polemic about drier types of white wine (it's a nice bit of typesetting), or maybe even alcoholism, or maybe growing a cactus garden. But no, it's "a commonsense approach to the problem of Urinary Incontinence". Heh.

No, I didn't buy it. I don't need THAT many books.

14 comments:

Amanda said...

Denise Levertov, The Freeing of the Dust

OMG flashback!

to 3 Unit English 1993.

I always liked that line "he's out of Appalachia" having never heard that way to say someone's from somewhere, and not knowing where Appalachia was but knowing it was a great word. Stuck in my mind to this day.

genevieve said...

We all need books on bedwetting that are well set up, don't we.

The Shriver is virtually a collector's item now, because of small print runs. Very nice haul, Duck. Wow. The Carters, the Cusacks, the poetry, the blogging resources, the pic of KG. You've got it all.

cristy said...

Paul and I saw your car as we left, but obviously not you (since we don't know what you look like...).

Teej Mahal said...

Very nice.

I'll be putting mine up tomorrow.

lucy tartan said...

I've got that edition of Australian Short Stories too!

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

That's it, I'm never coming to any grogblog ever. That photo is over 20 years old.

Also, it is the photo that convinced me I must never, ever have another perm, a promise to myself that I have kept.

That is a truly great list of books, though, especially the Carters, Cusacks and Clifts.

Mummy/Crit said...

wow.We went on Friday Morning on our way to the coast. I'll put up a list as soon as I get my act together.

[i]-- Esther Hautzig, Let's Make Presents: 100 Inexpensive Gifts (1964, packed with good blogposts)[/i]

is this the same Esther Hautzig who wrote [i]The Endless Steppe[/i]? Intriguing.

Zarquon said...

It looks like you'll have plenty of time to read those books: BBC News

Anonymous said...

Oh I'd love a copy of Authors' n Printers'.

I've got a cute little book with a sexed up sci-fi cover I could pass your way - skinny too - you could squeeeze it into a bookcase. (I remember you wrote about those once, now I notice them everywhere).

wanna swap??

Ampersand Duck said...

Seepi, you can have it... I think if I did a swap all my book piles would fall over, but thanks for the offer! Just email me your snail mail deets

-- ampersandduck [bip] gmail.com

and I'll send it to you!

Ampersand Duck said...

Crit -- dunno, there's nothing on the book about her, but it's not a very common name, is it?

And Zarquon -- what a great link! Makes me feel much better, believe it or not :P

Mummy/Crit said...

Google to the rescue says yes. i didn't see any copies of that book, but there were others about making gift-y things that she had written.

I made a comment on your Anzac day post that didn't see the light of day. Perhaps I pressed the corner X button before I published... anyway it turned into a full-fledged rant at my place.

lucy tartan said...

Don't know if Zarquon will read this, but thanks for the link from me too. I love how he says the secret is to do as little work as possible, and of course to remember to keep breathing.

Anonymous said...

Damn it - the Cusack was destined for your Xmas present this year...