Acquisitions, May 2-8

In her charming blog on (mainly) 19th century fiction, The Little Professor, Miriam Burstein puts up a weekly post of her book acquisitions that I find makes very pleasant reading. So I am going to borrow her concept, and include CDs, LPs, DVDs, and miscellaneous paper I acquire, as well. Virtually all of the items I list are purchased for extremely low prices, especially during these, the days of my non-employment. I'm still getting severance checks, thankfully, so I invest a few dollars per week in keeping my brain supplied -- which also keeps my emotions cheered. (The last time I was unemployed, two years ago, I sold off my entire library and some of my wardrobe in a panic, which was a very stupid move; you don't get rid of the things that keep you going!)

Here is this week's harvest, last Saturday, May 2, through today. I'll include mail-order and Ebay purchases when they arrive, rather than when I order them.

• Richard Sheridan, The School for Scandal and Other Plays (Oxford pb). I got this at the Book Store (imaginative name, don't you think?), a paperback exchange in Appleton where I think the owners now know that all the obscure classics in good condition are a good bet to be purchased by me.
• Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Mariner pb). A Half Price Books opened here in Appleton a couple of months ago, and is a quite wonderful addition to the area; I was well familiar with the chain from its branch in the gay Oak Lawn neighborhood of Dallas. Great books such as this one wind up on the HPB clearance shelves, so I always check those shelves first; the real finds don't last a day in clearance.
• Marina Warner, Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (U. California pb). On a remainder table at HPB for $1.00.
• Henry McBride, An Eye on the Modern Century: Selected Letters of Henry McBride (Yale hc). Also remaindered at HPB. McBride was a leading art critic of the first half of the 20th century, who numbered among his correspondents Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Demuth, Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, and Carl Van Vechten.
  
• John Willett, Art and Politics in the Weimar Period (Pantheon pb). One of the best books about an amazing period. I read chunks of it twenty years ago, now I'm going to tackle the whole thing. (Abebooks)
• Tomas O Crohan, The Islandman (Oxford pb). One of the famous Blasket Island autobiographies that I wrote about in an earlier post. A local used bookstore, Shenandoah Books, got in four Blasket books that were part of a uniform Oxford paperback edition of seven Blasket titles. I dropped by Shenandoah yesterday to look at them longingly and found that the personable proprietor, Paul Skenandore, was having one of his periodic half-off-all-hardcovers-and-trade-paperbacks sales. So I nabbed them all. (Shenandoah, by the way, is where I sold my library in 2007; I've redeemed a number of those books, but of course many were sold off quickly.)
• Tomas O Crohan, Island Cross-Talk (Oxford pb). (Shenandoah)
• Peig Sayers, An Old Woman's Reflections (Oxford pb). Sayers was one of the other famous Blasket memoirists (along with Maurice O'Sullivan); this was her second volume, after Peig. (Shenandoah)
  
• Robin Flower, The Western Island (Oxford pb). (Shenandoah)
• Anne Bronte, Agnes Grey (Modern Library pb) I've had a preoccupation with the Brontes since I was ten or so. (Shenandoah)
• Robert Louis Stevenson, Selected Letters (Yale pb). Another buck remainder at HPB; a warm-up for the complete Stevenson letters in eight volumes (but thick in itself at 626 pages).
• Juana Manuela Gorritti, Dreams and Realities: Selected Fiction (Oxford pb). Another buck remainder at HPB. Part of Oxford's "Library of Latin America." Gorritti was the leading woman writer of 19th century Argentina.

• Perry Como, Como Swings (RCA Victor LP). I got this mono pressing for $0.79 on Ebay -- it sounds great. This is the album to hear if you thought Como couldn't sing up-tempo!