The OF Blog: April 30 Used Book Porn

Monday, April 30, 2012

April 30 Used Book Porn

Thirty-six German-language books.  Thirty-three of them cost 10¢ each; the other three were 95¢ each.
 Did my biweekly trip to McKay's today.  Traded in my entire Sandman collection (I plan on buying the Ultimate volumes in the next year or so, so after not having read them again these past 2-3 years, I could justify doing so now in order to add to my "rainy day" collection of books) and certain others.  Ended up with almost $94 in store credit.  Spent about $65 or so on 48 books, one of which is a new 2012 release.  Not too shabby.  Going to read the Freud book in Spanish to see just how true the stories of how his English translator altered the semantics of his theories via Latinization of certain expressions.

The Livy is in Latin, the other five are in Spanish/Spanish translation.

The DeLillo will be read later for a Gogol's Overcoat read-on; the McCarthy completes my collection of his Border Trilogy, which I will read sometime in May/June, with possible reviews.

Heard positive things about the new Johnson novel; for years I have been meaning to read Ellison's posthumous novel.

I am a fan of Banana Yoshimoto's fiction.  I have not read these two novels, however.

11 comments:

ls johnson said...

Have you ever read Paul West? Be interested to know what you think of him.

Larry Nolen said...

No, can't say that I've even heard of him.

ls johnson said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_West_%28writer%29

Style, with a capital S. And a pretty fascinating way of writing history. Plenty to mine, and plenty of problems, but ugh! the language! Worth it for that alone.

ls johnson said...

or from the horse's mouth:

http://houseofpelerin.typepad.com/the-house-of-pelerin/2011/11/first-principles-clarice.html

Larry Nolen said...

Now that I've read your links, this is someone I'll have to add to a future e-book/book purchase. Thanks :D

Dave Cesarano said...

I've read Banana Yoshimoto's short stories in her Lizard collection. I wasn't tremendously impressed, but some authors do better with novels than short stories. I'm curious how her novels hold up. I've read some Japanese lit (Kawabata's Snow Country, some Mishima, and of course Haruki Murakami). I do enjoy it.

Larry Nolen said...

Her novels are very good, especially Kitchen and her latest, The Lake, which was a finalist for this year's Man Asian Prize. Those are the two I'd recommend most to read first.

Dave Cesarano said...

Thanks. I'll give them a shot when I next have an opportunity.

Murilegus rex said...

You realize you bought two copies of the same Ebner-Eschenbach book, Larry? Well I guess with 10¢ a copy it doesn't matter much. ;-)

The story of Freud's mistranslation is true in at least one central aspect: In German there is a very clear distinction between Instinkt (meaning an animalic instinct or inborn behaviour pattern) and Trieb (the word Freud used for his Eros and Thanatos). The two terms roughly equal the Spanish distinction between instinto and pulsión. By rendering Trieb as instinct and subsequently as instinto (while pulsión would have been a much more adequate translation), the semantics of Freud's central theoretical term was indeed heavily altered for the Spanish-speaking audience.

Larry Nolen said...

Gah! I thought I had separated those before purchasing them! They're so tiny that it was too easy to overlook them. Oh well, 10¢ isn't much of a waste in this case :P

Interesting word choice and one I'll pay very close attention to, obviously, when I do read that translation. Thanks for pointing that out to me :D

Anonymous said...

Apparently the larger collection of pages on which Juneteeth was edited from posthumously is now available:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Days_Before_the_Shooting

-Sci/Saj

 
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