The TBR pile got a boost today - as if it needs it - well, you know, all the new additions were cheap, very cheap, some cheap already with an extra 20% off in the discount bookshop because it's Book Reading Week, or National Book Reading Day or Just Bloody Read A Good Book Year or something, so the stickers in the shop window said (it couldn't have said any of those because I've just tried a search and nothing came up but the stickers said something like that, honest) - so 20% off Sex, Art Music by Cosey Fanni Tutti, the Dostoevsky short story collection and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. whoop!
Now. Pynchon. he's a bastard to read. right? so most people say. he has that rep. I know why. BECAUSE I'VE TRIED TO READ HIM AT LEAST 20 TIMES & GIVEN UP -
bastard. only James Joyce can compete in the classic-modern-but-unreadable stakes, surely. To make matters worse I have friends (well one at least) who have read him. really read him. cover-to-cover. which makes me feel inadequate. I swore after the last time I'd never try again but there sat the Vintage 2013 edition of Gravity's Rainbow with it's V2 (?) rockets on the cover looking like something from the great era of Soviet poster design (a little) and I'm reading lots about the space age right now so it was as if it was calling to me & more to the point the £3 sticker was calling to me, saying "Go on! How can you resist this price? Try again!" So like a fool I will.
The Dostoevsky collection is an ugly edition featuring a totally naff image of a couple on the cover as if it contains Romance stories. so bad I'm tempted to tear it off. but I've been after the story, Notes From Underground for a while and here it is. £2 minus 20% is...er...you do the maths.
Journey To The End Of The Night by Celine - yes - I got a Celine craving a couple of weeks ago & the Lord of Bibliochance delivered - £1.99. haven't read him for over 20 years. looking forward to it.
His Lordship (what am I on about?) also delivered Sex, Art, Music because I've been patient, thinking I'd see it cheap eventually whilst friends were showing off their copies on FB a few days after publication because, actually, they're bigger fans of fanny, I mean Fanni & Throbbing Gristle than I am. I'm just curious. at £5 minus 20%...which is...£4! I did it! I can afford to be curious, can't I?
Also in the pile: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy and Chariots of the Gods by Erich Von Daniken. I got some reading to do people. TTFN
That's quite a reading list, and value for money. Good luck with that. I'm currently dipping in and out of David Hepworth's excellent "Uncommon People: the rise and fall of the rock stars."
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