BOOKLOVE: September 2013
This is the first ever BOOKLOVE post in a long while that was not preceded and not succeeded by an Essential Reading post, which means that I have blogged about something other than what I’ve acquired, what I’ve read, and what I will read. So you can say that this post is sort of special. Or maybe not.
Anyway, September was, as always, another good month of acquisitions. It seems that I really can’t rein in myself when it comes to book acquisitions but what can I do? To paraphrase what one friend said, this is a happy problem to have. Here are the books I acquired last month:
- The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman – Authoring one of the most controversial books in recent years, Philip Pullman never shies away from religious controversy. This book details a revisionist take on established views on Jesus Christ by dividing him into two persons: Jesus, a morally upright man and Christ, a manipulative figure who uses Jesus’ influence for his own benefit. This book is a part of the Canongate Myth Series, a series of books written by authors including Margaret Atwood and A.S. Byatt in which they reimagine different myths from different cultures.
- If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino – Calvino’s masterpiece and part of LA Times’ list of Essential Postmodern Reads, a copy of this recently popped up in one of UP’s secondhand bookstores and I just couldn’t resist buying it for myself especially since I’ve been collecting the titles in LA Times’ list.
- St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell – Catchy title aside, Russel has been regarded as one of the top emerging writers from America and she has been named as one of the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 list of writers that will define American letters. Plus, her debut collection of short fiction is said to be a good one and you know me, dear reader, I love me some short stories.
- The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker – Another book from The LA Times’ Postmodern 61 List about a man’s trip up an elevator during his lunch time. It sounds unbearably mundane but a lot of people swears by how good it is so there must be something under all that mundane-ness for this to receive critical acclaim.
- HHhH by Laurent Binet – Among this year’s participants in the Tournament of Books, Binet’s HHhH is one of those that caught my attention. It is about Operation Anthropoid, a planned assassination of a top Nazi official in Prague, and it interlaces the details of the operation with Binet’s own commentary on the process of his writing, and the process of fictionalization of a historical subject.
- Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace – A collection of short stories, some of them interconnected, is my latest buy of David Foster Wallace’s oeuvre. So far, I have yet to read any of DFW’s works but I am hoping that I can remedy it soon and perhaps I can start with this one.
Another month, another set of books added to my ever growing pile of To-Be-Read books. Still, this is one pile of stuff that I don’t mind growing forever.
The Book Hooligan 
I also recently got a copy of If on a winter’s night (at Booksale – Megamall). And yeah, I haven’t blogged about it. I want to write a couple of reviews but I am still distracted about some stuff.
Is it any good?:)