New from Vintage

The Red House by Mark Haddon

trade paper back | 272 pages 

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander

trade paper back | 240 pages 

Penguin Classics: Kingsley Amis Series

Take A Girl Like You

ePub eBook | 288 pages | ISBN 9780141961859 

That Uncertain Feeling 

ePub eBook | 288 pages | ISBN 9780141961866

The Riverside Villas Murder

ePub eBook | 224 pages | ISBN 9780141961750  

Book Haul: 02.25-03.01

People ask me where my money goes every pay day. I tell them, "Books!"  

A local mall went on sale recently. I ended up buying almost a dozen. Most of them were for friends. For myself, I got Anthony Horowitz's prize-winning Groosham Grange (1988), a book for young readers about "the seventh son of a seventh son." I've read the first few pages and I'm charmed. Whimsy's cool, but British whimsy is in another level.

 

My next stop at a bargain shop was a gold mine. That's more than what my back, my shopping bag and my resources could handle. Horowitz was in good company. I got Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, Heidi W. Durrow's The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, D. H. Lawrence's Four Short Novels, Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons, Chaim Potok's I Am the Clay and Mario Vargas Llosa's The Cubs and Other Stories. 

Heaven.

6 New Books for September

UK hardcover edition (£18.99) / Published by Hamish Hamilton 

Release date: August 27, 2012

Although Zadie Smith is identified with the kinetic White Teeth, NW is the novel she's most proud of. Set in the north-west corner of London, her fourth novel tracks the lives of four urban dwellers in their 30s whose predictable domestic bliss is suddenly threatened by the arrival of an unexpected stranger. 

US hardcover edition ($27.99) / Published by Harper 

Release date: September 11, 2012

Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue is about two friends whose modest second-hand vinyl shop is threatened when a former NFL quarterback decides to build a mega store close by.

Director Cameron Crowe expressed an interest in adapting Chabon's seventh book for HBO. That fast? And the book hasn't been released yet.

US hardcover edition ($26.95) / Published by Riverhead 

Release date: September 11, 2012

Dominican-American Junot Diaz dissects love and all its complications in This Is How You Lose Her, his second collection of short stories following Drown. He said that “It took forever to get the fucking stories I needed to do this project." No sweat considering it took 11 years for his Pulitzer-winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, to get published.

US hardcover edition ($27.95) / Published by Viking

Release date: September 18, 2012

It only took him one year to write a 384-page book. Prolific author T.C. Boyle follows up When the Killing's Done (2011) with San Miguel, a sprawling domestic drama about two families living on a wind-swept island off the coast of California. There's a twist. One family lived in the island in the 1880s while the other in the 1930s. How Boyle ties up the two is anyone's guess. One thing's for certain: San Miguel is going to be epic. Time to turn on the melodrama meter.

US hardcover edition ($27.95) / Published by Viking    

Release date: September 27, 2012

All his life, Harold lived in the shadow of his successful brother. A singular act of violence changes everything, forcing him to look after his brother's children and their ageing parents.  

A.M. Homes is known for her dark, humorous domestic fiction and May We Be Forgiven is no different. In her seventh novel, she explores sibling rivalry and tests the very limits of familial ties, love and forgiveness. It's a moody, edgy ride, but one, no doubt, worth taking. 

US hardcover edition ($30) / Published by Random House 

Release date: September 18, 2012

Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie on February 1989, a year after The Satanic Verses was published. It was a harrowing time for Rushdie and his family, marked by a nagging fear and a life of hiding. In Joseph Anton, the prize-winning author talks about the grueling time he spent living with tight security. Freedom is none too sweet when it's taken and finally, after nine long years, given back.  

Death by Book Binging

It was the day after the great flood. I was on my way home when the strap of my new bag broke off. That usually happens. I buy too many books that my bag just gives up and dies. 

National Book Store had their Cut Price sale recently and it was a very trying time for me. I tried to be rational and thought of the piles of unread books in my room. It didn't work. I tried to think of my unpaid credit card bill. It didn't work. Nothing seemed to work so I just went on buying. 

National Book Store SM Fairview

When I saw Rushdie, Roth and Dostoyevsky in the 50% off section, I felt my pupils dilate. I reminded myself that National Book Store is not BOOKSALE. Even though they were on sale, most of their books were still quite pricey. I whittled the 10 books I liked to eight. My best buy for the day was a Vintage Lust set (The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis + The History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding) which I got for only P202.50 (originally priced at P405). Mission accomplished; now I can die happy.

National Book Store Robinsons Movieworld Novaliches

Although their store is quite small compared to other branches, the titles they had on sale were right up my alley. I was able to buy Nick Hornby's High Fidelity for P75. I like H.G. Wells so I grabbed The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds collection (P59.50). My best buy was Jessica Zafra's Twisted Travels. It was originally priced at P250; got it for P25.  

All in all, I spent 3k worth of books. Now I'm dreading the mailman's arrival. My credit card bill might give me a heart attack.

Quick Reads: Two Books for Kinks and Goths

1. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice (1983)
Published by Plume, November 1990 • trade paperback • 253 pages

It's beyond kinky—it's off the charts kinky. Anne Rice is pretty liberal with her S&M vernacular, giving us a generous serving of male/female domination, royal tween worship and vicious acts of abuse and cruelty. The reigning  queen of goth injects eroticism, violence and pony play into the dusty, centuries old tale of Sleeping Beauty, turning it into something sadomasochists the world over will no doubt approve. It's disarming to say the least, but once the shock waves die down, you'll find yourself blushing. Don't be surprised if you end up devouring each page like the repressed catholic school girl that we all are.

2. Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe (1966)
Published by Washington Square Press, Inc., October 1966 • mass paperback • 432 pages

Edgar Allan Poe is a poet through and through and this is none more evident than his extensive collection of short stories. He writes in a flowery, sing-song manner that could, depending on the reader, be good or bad. Poe rarely veers away from his standard themes of paranoia, death and dementia. This inevitably results in monotony and predictability. Every so often, though, through stories like The Gold-Bug, Hop-Frog and The Black Cat, we're remind time and again of his dark, uncommon appeal and trailblazing ingenuity. He's a prolific short story writer; there's bound to be one story of his you'll end up gushing about.

Book Haul: 36 Books for March

It has the grim silhouette of a man on the cover with the book's title placed over his eyes. Bret Easton Ellis' Imperial Bedrooms (2010), his followup to Less Than Zero (1985), got mixed reviews, polarizing critics from reverence to repugnance. But whatever, right? This is the guy who wrote, The Rules of Attraction (1987). I'd buy all his books: good or bad.

 

There's a sense of anger and frustration in James Baldwin's prose. This is none more evident in Another Country (1962), a searing fiction on bohemians, bigotry and interracial relationships. Baldwin is a visceral writer. He's not always an easy read, but his faultless, impeccable prose never fails to impress.

Vintage has some of the most gorgeous trade paperbacks in the market. The book cover is almost always unforgettable; the interior layout and text, divine. This is the 1996 Vintage trade paperback edition of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. I bought it even though I already have an old, dog-eared mass paperback copy.

Stats

Total number of books bought in February: 36, Fiction: 33, Non-Fiction: 3, Written by Men: 34, Written by Women: 2

Full List

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta (2007) • Another Country by James Baldwin (1962) • The Assistant by Bernard Malamud (1957) • The Best American Short Stories of the Century (Expanded Edition) edited by John Updike (1999) • Big City Stories by Modern American Writers edited by Tom and Susan Cahill (1971) • The Company of Cats: 20 Contemporary Stories of Family Cats edited by Michael J. Rosen (1992) • The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri (2001) • The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle (2007) • Frost/Nixon by Peter Morgan (2006) • Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet (1982) • The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985) • Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga by Hunter S. Thompson (1966) • Homer & Langley: A Novel by E. L. Doctorow (2009) • Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis (2010) • The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis (1994) • Johnno by David Malouf (1975) • Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895) • My Father's Tears and Other Stories by John Updike (2009) • Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy (1965) • New Writers of the Purple Sage: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Writing edited by Russell Martin (1992) • The Noodle Maker by Ma Jian (1991) • The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher (2008) • On Location: Cities of the World in Film by Claudia Hellmann and Claudine Weber-Hof (2006) • Push by Sapphire (1996) • The Red Badge of Courage and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane (1893) • The Second Plane: September 11, Terror and Boredom by Martin Amis (2008) • Self Abuse: Love, Loss and Fatherhood by Jonathan Self (2001) • Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron (2007) • The Stories of Bernard Malamud by Bernard Malamud (1983) • Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (1891) • Victim: The Other Side of Murder by Gary Kinder (1982) • Vintage Amis by Martin Amis (2004) • Winter Birds by Jim Grimsley (1984) • Whittington by Alan Armstrong (2005) • World's End: A Novel by T. C. Boyle (1987) • World's Fair by E.L. Doctorow (1985)