Last Friday, I drove across a bridge to a library on the other side of the city for a Friends of the Library sale. I was hoping for a nice leisurely afternoon browse, figured I’d find a few titles worth my efforts, and I’d fill out the 10 dollar brown paper grocery bag with books I could trade for store credit elsewhere. I ended up filling the bag almost immediately, mostly with heavy hardbacks, resulting in my weak arm quickly settling into a painful fatigue that killed my browsing vibe.
Here are the books I picked up:
–A paperback copy of Thomas S. Klise’s cult classic The Last Western. It was in the “nonfiction” section, which I didn’t really browse that studiously, but its cover nevertheless stood out to me. I bought a copy of it from an online used bookseller online six years ago (and was very disappointed that the seller had appended a retail barcode sticker to its cover).
–A paperback omnibus of Salem Kirban’s early seventies “prophecy” apocalypse novels 666 and its sequel 1000. I’d thumbed through a worn copy of 666 sometime last year—the title of and its cracked spine calling to me from the shelf of the sci-fi section. Kirban’s “novel” is a millennialist screed conveyed in a tawdry postmodern manner, and it didn’t seem worth the eight bucks the used bookstore was asking at the time—but I didn’t mind snuggling it into the paper bag last Friday, oddity that it is.
–A hardback copy of Don DeLillo’s novel Zero K. I skipped it when it came out, and I don’t think DeLillo’s done anything good since Point Omega.
–A hardback copy of John Barth’s novel Every Third Thought. I think that Barth’s best work is decades behind him, but every now and then I try something newer, and this 2011 novel is one of his shorter recentish efforts.
–A hardback copy of Leni Zumas’ novel Red Clocks. I had never heard of this book, but the spine enticed me enough to pick it up when I was browsing the “sci fi” section at the booksale, and the premise–America has outlawed and criminalized abortion–seemed depressingly dystopian enough to take it with me.
–A hardback copy of Sven Birkert’s collection of literary criticism, An Artificial Wilderness. Includes chapters on Thomas Bernhard, Umberto Eco, Borges, and “The School of Gordon Lish” among many, many others.
–A Vintage Contemporaries Edition of Raymond Carver’s Where I’m Calling From, a collection I have not read in over two decades.
–A hardback copy of Jesse Ball’s novel How to Set a Fire and Why. I liked his 2011 novel The Curfew, so maybe I’ll like this?
–A hardback copy of Jeanette Winterson’s novel Frankisstein; reviews of this 2019 novel intrigued me at the time it was published (and I do like a good Frankenstein riff).
–A hardback copy of Robert Coover’s novel Huck Out West. An amazing sequel to Twain’s novel; I reviewed it on this site years ago. This handsome edition shall replace the ugly advance copy I got years ago. I might need to revisit it in anticipation of Percival Everett’s take on Twain’s Huck’s Jim—James.
–A hardback copy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s late novel Little Boy, which The Guardian described as a “novel-cum-memoir-cum-grand finale.” (Too much cum, The Guardian.)
–A Library of America edition of The Complete Novels of Eudora Welty. I hate to admit what I will now admit: I love love love Welty’s short stories, but have never read one of her novels.
–A hardback copy of Walker Percy’s Thanatos Syndrome. Again, a late-period work by old master, likely not his finest stuff, but hey. I burned through his first four novels a few years ago—Lancelot was my favorite.
Biblioklept 