I went to the bookstore on Friday afternoon to drop off some trade-ins and order a few books for my wife and kids for Valentine’s Day. I had no intention of buying anything, but a bit of random browsing led to me leaving with Ben Marcus’s collection Notable American Women (how could I resist that blurb?), a collection of George Saunders essays, and René Leys by Victor Segalen—the NYRB edition stuck out, and then the blurb sold me on this tale of a Westerner trying to access the Forbidden City of imperial China.
I’m reading Ben Marcus’s The Flame Alphabet right now, along with some short stories by Yoko Ogawa, as well as Lars Iyer’s latest, Exodus; I’m pretty sure René Leys is on deck after one of those.
Biblioklept 
Bookstores will always have treasures that cannot be passed up!!!
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In case you’re interested here is a superb analysis of Rene Leys (plot spoilers abound, though, so it might best be read afterwards):
http://www.thelectern.blogspot.com/2011/10/rene-leys-victor-segalen.html
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Thanks for the link–good looking write up. I’ll come back to it after I read the book.
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