The Two Towers

No, not the ones from Tolkien…..

But rather, these two:

The grim & foreboding Black Tower from P. D. James.

The sentence of death had been communicated, as he suspected such sentences usually were, by grave looks, a certain false heartiness, whispered consultations, a superfluity of clinical tests, and until he insisted, a reluctance to pronounce a diagnosis or prognosis. The sentence of life, pronounced with less sophistry when the worst days of his illness were over, had certainly produced the greater outrage.

It was, he had thought, uncommonly inconsiderate if not negligent of his doctors to reconcile him so thoroughly to death and then change their minds. It was embarrassing now to recall with what little regret he had let slip his pleasures and preoccupations, the imminence of loss revealing them for what they were, at best only a solace, at worst a trivial squandering of time and energy. Now he had to lay hold of of them again and believe that they were important, at least to himself.

And the delightful world of Trollope’s Barchester Towers.

The great characteristic of the Stanhopes might probably be said to be heartlessness; but this want of feeling was, in most of them, accompanied by so great an amount of good nature as to make itself but little noticeable to the world.

The Stanhopes would visit you in your sickness (provided it were not contagious), would bring you oranges, French novels, and the last new bit of scandal, and then hear of your death or your recovery with an equally indifferent composure. Their conduct to each other was the same as to the world; they bore and forebore…

I have been enjoying my time in both worlds, albeit in different shades of light. 😉

And what serendipity it was, when I came across this passage in the later parts of the P. D. James:

She became aware of the weight of the book on her lap. It was a paperback edition of Trollope’s ‘Last Chronicle of Barset’. It had lain there all the afternoon. Why, she wondered, was she so strangely reluctant to read it? And then she remembered. This had been the book she was rereading on that dreadful afternoon when Victor’s body had been brought home. She hadn’t opened it since. But that was ridiculous. She must put the thought out of her mind. It was stupid, no, it was wrong, to spoil a book she so loved – its leisurely world of cathedral intrigue, its sanity, its delicate moral sensibility – by contaminating it with images of violence, hatred and blood.

🙂

And oh, for what it’s worth, in case anyone is actually still interested to know which book I finally picked for my birthday treat last month…… I did not.

Yeah, sorry for the anticlimax. :p

I treated myself to this instead.

It was a Bailey’s Valrhona Chocolate Ice Cream cake.

I did, however, receive this as a gift from a dear blogger friend, all the way from Sarajevo.

Any Murdoch fans here?

Vintage madness

Gorgeous, aren’t they?

Can one actually complain of having too much of a good thing, when the ‘good thing’ in question happens to be….. books?
Nah, I didn’t think so too. :p And that is why I am still more than thrilled to share these beauties here, even though I had just posted on the last book haul barely (gasp!) two weeks ago!
Dear readers, you don’t mind, do you? 🙂

Technically, these are actually still considered as being April’s haul since they were picked up on the last day of the month. Really didn’t expect the dear ol’ trusty hypermarket to have such an abundance of riches still, after all that it has already yielded in the past weeks. Henry Green and Marcel Proust? Never would I have imagined bumping into them here!

I was especially elated with the Proust, not just because it is a thing of beauty in itself, but also because it sort of helped to seal my resolve to attempt at collecting the entire six volume in this lovely Vintage Classics edition, after having the first volume in my possession for the past few years.

Volume I and Volume VI.

And so it is with hope (by a long shot, though) that the rest of the volumes would appear in due course.

And as it happened, Volume II turned up exactly one week later!

I know, I know….. I am definitely being spoilt rotten. :p

Three down, three to go. Onward with the quest to find the remaining volumes to complete the set!

It would appear that my personal library is now taking on a different shade….. one that is pre-dominated by those tantalizing bright red Vintage spines.

And that’s not such a bad thing after all, is it? 😉

 

Just looking at these covers are enough to make me happy. 🙂

Spotted any particular personal favourites amongst these?

My Vintage February

My February book haul has been an unexpectedly fruitful one. But what was even more unexpected was the source of the bounty – the hypermarket in my neighbourhood.
Although I have had success before, in coming across a couple of good finds from their bargain bin offering (at RM 5, or the equivalent of less than a pound each), it was more of a few and far between kind of affair. The quality and choice was never as abundant as how it has been in recent weeks.

And I was definitely one happy shopper who went home with more than just groceries! 🙂

I didn’t know that Jane Campion (director of The Piano) had made a film on the tragic romance between John Keats and Fanny Brawne until I came upon this edition of Keats’ complete poems and selected letters. Will have to check that out.

 

I actually already have the Yates in my other Vintage copy of his Collected Stories, but I found the cover of this one rather irresistible, hence the indulgence. The Hartley is another brilliant find which I am very excited about! As with the Murdoch and Peake.

 

Lovely covers, aren’t these? I wonder if I should watch ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ first before reading the book. I didn’t know that Seven Pillars of Wisdom was actually the memoir of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, did you?

 

The Shepherd’s Life and Walking to Vermont were the only ones that were bought from another sale elsewhere. I’ve heard quite abit of good things about the Rebanks, and although I knew nothing about the Wren, the tale of one man’s journey on foot from New York’s Time Square to the Green Mountains of Vermont sure sounds fascinating enough!

And just when I thought that I should be done for the month, guess what I found on the very last day of February when my mum asked me to drop by the hypermarket to pick up some toilet rolls that were on offer just for the day? :p

These two beauties! :))))

I don’t suppose it would be a surprise to anyone here to know that I have started to look forward to my weekly grocery errands with so much more enthusiasm! 😉

 

Unrepentant

Behold, the latest batch of beauties to have been added into the fold…..

Although it appears that I have been unrepentant over my reckless book buying habits, and that the staggering figures as revealed from my earlier post on taking stock of my entire library seem to have had no apparent effect on me, I can safely vouch that this is not true (well, not entirely anyway).

While it is true that I will not be able to stop buying books in the foreseeable future (and I don’t intend to, either), it is however, going to be a much more subdued/ restrained affair from now on (so she says…). At any rate, that is the plan. Along with the other plans to read more from my own stacks and to get rid of  give away the ones I no longer need/want in my collection. In other words, to be a better curator of my library.

Will just have to see well how things go according to plan, I guess.

And now, onto the books……

These were gotten from another recent book sale that could well give the Big Bad Wolf a run for its money, I would say. Brand new and priced at RM 5 (around USD 1.20) each, it’s easy to see why they were so hard to resist, isn’t it? :p

I recall reading some good stuff about Sun-Mi Hwang’s The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly some time ago, but even if I had known nothing about the book, the sheer beauty of the cover and illustrations in it would have sold it to me. Nina Sankovitch’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Celebrating The Joys of Letter Writing was a no-brainer for me, seeing that it’s all about a favourite subject of mine. Dianne Hales’ Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered happens to be a new discovery for me, as I wasn’t aware of the fact that Mona Lisa was a real person and not just a painting! :p

The Paris Review Book: of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, … and Everything Else in the World Since 1953 should be an interesting one to dip into….  “This astoundingly diverse anthology, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Paris Review, is jam-packed with resonant and provocative work from some of our greatest writers, past and present: W.H. Auden, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, Elizabeth Bishop, Truman Capote, William Burroughs, Susan Sontag, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, Jonathan Franzen, Ian McEwan and Alice Munro, to name just a fraction.”

A Buzz in the Meadow: The Natural History of a French Farm by Dave Goulson, is yet another one that had me sold on its cover alone. Fortunately, what is offered between the covers seems to be just as promising. “Goulson has that rare ability to persuade you to go out into your garden or local park and observe the natural world. The subtle glory that is life in all its forms is there to be discovered. And if we learn to value what we have, perhaps we will find a way to keep it.”

The Affairs of Others: A Novel by Amy Grace Loyd was picked because I recalled having read something about the book sometime back that had piqued my curiosity then. I thought it was worth a try for the price….

Matthew Dennison’s Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West is said to be “…. the first biography to be written of Vita in thirty years that reveals the whole story and gets behind ‘the beautiful mask’ of Vita’s public achievements to reveal an often troubled persona which heroically resisted compromise on every level.”

An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler is a meditation on cooking and eating that weaves philosophy and instruction into approachable lessons on feeding ourselves well. I am no cook, let’s get that clear first. But I enjoy reading essays on cooking, just like how I enjoy essays on gardening even though I do not garden (other than the occasional watering of my mum’s plants). Like armchair travelling, these are my versions of ‘armchair cooking’ and ‘armchair gardening’, minus the sweat and dirt, I guess. 🙂

Sinclair McKay’s Ramble On: The Story of our love for walking Britain seems to fit the bill nicely for some mild armchair travelling.

Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces by Miles J. Unger, attempts to portray the artist’s life through the story of six of his masterpieces. Sounds like a fascinating read to me. Am looking forward to it.

Judith Flanders’ The Making of Home: The 500-Year Story of How Our Houses Became Our Homes is one that has been on my radar for some time. I have always found the subject matters in her previous books appealing (The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime; Consuming Passions – Leisure and Pleasures in Victorian Britain;  The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed), so I was quite thrilled to find this at the sales (did I mention it has a lovely cover too?).  

And being the Francophile that I am, I was especially happy to be able to add David Downie’s A Passion for Paris: Romanticism and Romance in the City of Light, into the basket as well.

Rachel Allen’s Coast: Recipes from Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way is a feast for the eyes (and probably stomach, for those who intend to put the recipes to good use) with beautiful shots of the rugged Atlantic coast of Ireland.

Food Heroes: Sixteen Culinary Artisans Preserving Tradition by Georgia Pellegrini looks to be a promising read as well. Filled with colorful anecdotes, photographs, and recipes, this book offers an accessible introduction to the artisanal food movement, and vicarious living for armchair travelers, food lovers, and others who might won­der what it would be like to drop everything and start an olive farm, or who yearn to make and sell their own clotted cream butter. No harm dreaming, eh? 🙂

The Italians: A Full Length Portrait featuring Their Manners & Morals by Luigi Barzini, examines “the two Italies”: the one that created and nurtured such luminaries as Dante Alighieri, St. Thomas of Aquino, and Leonardo da Vinci; the other, feeble and prone to catastrophe, backward in political action if not in thought, “invaded, ravaged, sacked, and humiliated in every century.”

Elergy for Iris by John Bayley, poignantly describes the love affair between the writer and Iris Murdoch (his wife of forty two years) and the dimming of her brilliance due to Alzheimer’s disease. I have yet to read anything by Murdoch although she has long been on my list of to-read. Maybe this will help to move things up abit.

Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present edited by Lex Williford & Michael Martone. This anthology is said to consist of the most highly regarded nonfiction works published since 1970 by fifty contemporary writers including Cheryl Strayed, David Sedaris, Barbara Kingsolver, Annie Dillard, Amy Tan &David Forster Wallace with pieces ranging from memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism.

I discovered Lucy Knisley’s graphic novels in this same book sales last year, when I found a copy of her book Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, and have since been on the lookout for more of her works. So to find a copy of her illustrated travel journal French Milk this time round, was rather blissful.

Ken Jennings’ Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks “…… takes readers on a world tour of geogeeks from the London Map Fair to the bowels of the Library of Congress, from the prepubescent geniuses at the National Geographic Bee to the computer programmers at Google Earth. Each chapter delves into a different aspect of map culture: highpointing, geocaching, road atlas rallying, even the “unreal estate” charted on the maps of fiction and fantasy. Jennings also considers the ways in which cartography has shaped our history, suggesting that the impulse to make and read maps is as relevant today as it has ever been.” 
I am definitely no maphead, but this has somewhat piqued my interest.

Next comes the four books which I had ordered over the internet some time back and had them sent over to my friend’s place in the UK because I knew she would be making a trip back home this month, and that means I can save on shipping. :p

I am only now reaching the tail end of Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran (after having started on it some months back) but I had already decided early on that I wanted to read more of her books because I really like her writing. And I have to admit that I would not even have attempted Reading Lolita in Tehran if not for a dear friend’s high regards for it. I think I was put off by Lolita, a book that has never appealed to me before. I am glad to report though, that Nafisi’s book is so much more than what I had imagined it to be. I enjoyed the book very much and look forward to her Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter next.

Writing the Garden: A Literary Conversation across Two Centuries by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, may be yet another collection of garden writing, however, “….. it is not simply a collection of extracts, but real discussions and examinations of the personalities who made their mark on how we design, how we plant, and how we think about what is for many one of life’s lasting pleasures. Starting with “Women in the Garden” (Jane Loudon, Frances Garnet Wolseley, and Gertrude Jekyll) and concluding with “Philosophers in the Garden” (Henry David Thoreau, Michael Pollan, and Allen Lacy), this is a book that encompasses the full sweep of the best garden writing in the English language.”

Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides by Adam Nicolson (grandson of Vita Sackville-West) is the account of Nicolson’s love affair with the three tiny islands he had inherited for his 21st birthday (how cool is that!) and describes “…. their strange and colorful history in passionate, keenly precise prose—sharing with us the greatest gift an island bestows on its inhabitants: a deep engagement with the natural world.” Again, it was the cover that got my attention first, one day while I was browsing around the internet. Sadly, I could not locate an affordable copy of the edition that had my desired cover, and had to settle for another. I am thinking though, if I end up loving the book, I might yet continue to pursue the aforementioned elusive expensive cover. :p

Lastly, Richard Mabey’s A Nature Journal.

I probably don’t need to tell you why I had to have it, right? :p