more books

as if i were subconsciously storing up food for the cold months; but the recent additions in the last two weeks (including a mega spree just now to my shelves were quite conscious choices:

john fante, ask the dust

don paterson, landing light: poems

vladimir nabokov, lectures on literature

helen vendler, coming of age as a poet: milton, keats, eliot, plath

paul auster, brooklyn follies

kazuo ishiguro, the remains of the day

philip larkin, required writing

philip larkin, further requirements: interviews, broadcasts, statements and book reviews

n.k. kleinbaum, dead poets society

t.s. eliot, the waste land and other poems (2nd copy, this with frank kermode intro)

nadine gordimer, get a life (because she nobel laureate and i thyroid cancer patient)

kingsley amis, lucky jim

william faulkner, light in august

martin amis, money

philip roth, the professor of desire

ted hughes, collected poems

david remnick, ed., wonderful town: new york stories from the new yorker

john gardner, the art of fiction

thomas hardy, the mayor of casterbridge

thomas hardy, under the greenwood tree

truman capote, answered prayers

mark batty, about pinter: the playwright and the work

john fletcher, about beckett: the playwright and the work

virginia woolf, mrs dalloway (i couldnt resist getting another copy, this time hardcover)

gertrude stein, three lives & Q.E.D.

sylvia plath, collected poems

mark strand and eavan boland, the making of a poem

david lodge, the art of fiction

jeanette winterson, tanglewreck (for my little cousin)

virginia woolf, the common reader vol. 2

shakespeare, the tempest

jeanette winterson, written on the body (for mrs chan whom i'm meeting on tues)

raymond carver, where i'm calling from

raymond carver, call if you need me: the uncollected fiction and other prose

omg.

i used to think i could control my book purchases. but while reading woolf i had an epiphany (she does have that kinda effect) - that for as long as i read books (i'm addicted i'm obsessed) i'll always find new things and names and directions in them that will lead me to further and more and even more literary touchstones, lighthouses, glittering pearls. at this moment if there's one reason for me to continue living it is quite just so i can continue to ravish these rapturous pages.