Yesterday my Bookman and I both had the day off to celebrate the summer solstice. We had plans to bike over to the bird sanctuary and have a picnic but the weather didn’t cooperate. It was warm and humid and rained off and on all day. We went for a leisurely bike ride around our neighborhood lake and got rained on for our troubles. We didn’t get a picnic but we did enjoy lots of delicious organic fresh from the farm food from our first CSA farm box.
How did we while away a rainy afternoon? Bookman came up with Plan B: Half Price Books. It was a marvelously NYRB-licious outing:
- Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos. I loved the movie way back and have been keeping my eye out for a decent used copy for ages and finally one appeared. This is the only book in the pile that is not a NYRB
- Morte D’Urban by J.F. Powers. This won the 1963 National Book Award. The main character is a clergyman who is banished to the Minnesota hinterlands by his order when he becomes a bit too nationally popular on the religious circuit. How could I resist that? Plus the title is awesome.
- Wheat that Springeth Green by J.F. Powers. This one is the author’s last novel and is about a priest. I wasn’t going to take this one but Bookman said we had to.
- Short Letter, Long Farewell by Peter Handke. I couldn’t resist the “seedy atmospheric noir” description nor the sheer silliness of the plot: young German arrives in America hoping to get over his failed marriage. Ex-wife appears and starts pursuing him across the country. Is it love or vengeance?
- Born Under Saturn by Margot and Rudolf Wittkower. This is nonfiction and supposedly an art history classic in which the authors exam the idea that “artistic inspiration is a form of madness.” Intrigued? I was.
- Letters: Summer 1926 by Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Letters by awesome writers writing to each other about their lives and art during the course of one eventful year. How can you go wrong?
It might not have been the original celebration plan, but hey, book shopping is a great way to celebrate any holiday in my opinion! Now I’m off to do homework. Summer quarter has begun. More on that another time.
It sounds like a lovely way to celebrate the solstice. It’s hard to go wrong with books.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses! I just bought it too! So excited for the trash-tacular 18th century back-stabbing.
Your neat little pile of NYRB books is so appealing. Happy belated solstice!
Ooh, those all look so good. Especially the letters!!
Those look gorgeous and apart from old Choderlos I hadn’t heard of any of them! Delighted to hear that you and the bookman celebrated the solstice – I was wondering if you would and what you’d do!
Have fun with Choderlos! I loved this book
Softdrink, you are right, book shopping is easy entertainment.
Emily, too funny! Sometimes we are eerily on the same wavelength.
Daphne, I know I am so excited about the letters.
Litlove, we like our solar celebrations
I don’t know much about any of them either. I plucked the books from the shelf because of the NYRB imprint and brought them home because they all sound so good. It will be fun, I hope, to make some new discoveries.
Smithereens, so glad to hear that. I expect it to be even better than the movie!
Letters are a lovely way to spend time, so nice to have litle bits to read but to not have to meet an ending very often (like you do in short stories). There’salways another letter coming. Good luck with this next school period.
I thought of you and Bookman when the newscaster announced it was the summer solstice and wondered if you celebrated it as you do the winter solstice. The books are grand and a bike ride in the rain sounds kind of romantic!! I’ve been wanting to read Dangeous Liasons for a while and I think I may have Morte D’Urban on my bookshelves somewhere – from back in the day. It sure sounds familiar. One day I’m going to catalogue all my books on a computer program…one day.
Dangerous Liaisons is one of my favourite novels EVAR!!! You must read it ASAP!
Sorry about the rain, but it sounds like you had a nice day anyway–and a lovely pile of NYRBs! I really need to visit the Omaha HBP. It’s off my bus route, so I don’t often go there. I have the Handke book, too. When I took German in college he was an author who was recommended, though I think I prefer to read him in English now!
here are the two main entry point to no end of handke material on line:
http://handke-magazin.blogspot.com/
the new HUB to all Handke-blogs
and all
http://www.handke.scriptmania.com/
sites….
http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name
I enjoy learning little details like this: “we did enjoy lots of delicious organic fresh from the farm food from our first CSA farm box.” Huge fan of CSA. I challenge you to smuggle in your favorite recipe for pastured goat in your next book review! Best, Kevin
here are two entry point to lots of handke material, also about short letter
http://handke-magazin.blogspot.com/
the new HUB to all Handke-blogs
and all
http://www.handke.scriptmania.com/
sites….
http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name
I agree with softdrink. Book shopping is always a great way to spend the day. Born Under Saturn seems like an interesting read. There does seem to be this connection between creativity and insanity.
That sounds like a great way to celebrate the solstice. I really enjoyed Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and I hope you do too. The other ones I’m not familiar with, but they sound good, particularly the Handke. Sorry about the rain on your bike ride! That turns it into a bit of an adventure, right?
What an amazing way to celebrate summer solstice! That plan is the best Plan B I’ve ever heard- books are always a great way to celebrate things
Bookgazing, thanks! I totally agree with you on reading letters, they are such nice little chunks. Diaries are like that to.Couple that with the voyeuristic aspect and it’s a win-win
Grad, thanks for thinking of us! Summer Solstice isn’t as big a to-do as winter, in winter you need something to cheer you up but summer, how can you be sad? A bike ride in the rain is kind of romantic now that you mention it. I’ve got most of my books cataloged on LibraryThing. It was a lot of work and I still have some to do but it’s nice to be able to look up my books instead of trying to remember what shelf in what room of the house it might be shelved on.
Colleen, really? Ok, the next book of fiction I pick up will be Laclos
Danielle, yes the day ended up nicely. HPB is a nice place to visit every couple of months that way there is generally always something new. I think I’d prefer to read Handke in English too. I’ve pretty much forgotten most of my college German. My only comfort is that I can say I once read the first part of Goethe’s Faust in German.
Kevin, LOL, there will be no pastured goat recipes since we’re vegan but maybe I’ll slip in a cabbage roll recipe or stuffed squash sometime
Michael, thanks for the Handke links!
Junatia, I agree, can’t really go wrong with book shopping
Doesn’t the born Under Saturn book sound interesting? I’m curious what their conslusions will be. Does madness foster creativity or does the art world just tend to attract people who suffer from madness?
Dorothy, I am expecting I will like Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Rain on a short bike ride is not so bad it just kept us from our longer ride and a picnic but I still managed to come home with grit and dirt all over my legs. I hate that. I was amazed how many other people were out in the rain though and everyone just seemed to be pretending it was bright and sunny. That was very amusing.
Lua, I love celebrating with books. It seems that book shopping somehow always manages to find a place in our plans
I’m curious to see what their conclusions will be as well. To me it seems that there are a lot of crazy people who are not creative, but I can’t really think of any creative people who at least a little crazy. So the Venn diagram would be big circle for crazies, and a small circle within that circle for creatives. Nerdery just kind of sneaks up on me (hangs head).
Nerdiness is perfectly accebptable here!
I hope I can manage to read it by the end of the year and I will be sure to share as many interesting bits as I can about it.
well, hopefully you can go on a picnic soon but HPB as Plan B is not bad at all either
You got some amazing loot. I never find any NYRB books at my HPB. These all sound great but the Handke in particular sounds like it’ll be a good read. Enjoy them!
I bought Les Liaisons D. at our last library book sale. After reading the comments on it I think I’ll have to move it up the TBR queue. I’d rather shop for books than anything else. I’m probably a bit strange though. I HATE shopping for shoes.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses reminds me of the movie… maybe you’d like to see it as you read the book. The one I’m thinking of isn’t the Glenn Close one but the lesser known one called “Valmont”, with Colin Firth as Valmont. Annette Bening and Meg Tilly also star. Sounds like your summer is going to be fun!
Stefanie, it is always so refreshing to see that there is someone else out there, an avid, astute reader — that chooses books that are nestled here-and-there — waiting for us — off the beaten path. [It remains that I wish I were as prolific a reader as you].
I just love to tune in to your happenings, and see that you get excited about books that are somewhat obscure — in other words, none of these finds of yours are exactly “breaking the charts” right now.
Yet — oh, so beautiful, to find them. To carry them home. To lovingly read them.
Personally, I take my book-buying advice from ol’ Henrik Ibsen, who once said “The majority is always wrong.”
Happy obscurantist reading to you!
Were I to begin thinking of it now, [and finish somewhere around Christmas -- not this next one, but the one after that] I could not come up with a better way to have redeemed your precipitously-truncated picnic day, than how Bookman did it!
It sounds like a lovely celebration of Solstice. You’ve brought home an interesting mix of books
I am very curious about the Letters. Can’t wait to see your post when you eventually read this. Happy Solstice (a bit late!)
Iliana, my HPBs seems to go in cycles when in comes to NYRBs. Sometimes there is not one to be found in the whole place and then suddenly there are a whole bunch. My little NYRB collection grows in small spurts
Katrina, I hate shopping for shoes too. Actually I hate shopping in general except for books. I have decided when I finish the current novel I am reading Laclos is going to be next!
Arti, I’ve see the both the movies but totally forgot about Valmont. I don’t recal being very impressed but the one with Glenn Close I loved. I will have to watch the movies as a special treat after I read the book.
Cip, isn’t it fun finding good books that very few people are reading? I like the ones everyone knows about too and have groaning shelves full of them, but I like the adventure too of finding hidden gems. Perhaps winning the lottery jackpot could have beat out Plan B, but I am much luckier at book shopping than I am at winning the lottery otherwise I would be a millionaire by now
Iris, it was a nice day. Isn’t it fun finding “new” books you don’t know much about? so much potential!
Verbivore, don’t the letters look great? I am very excited about it. I think it will be my next before bed book after I finish the one I have going now.