The Book Sale

Well, another year, and another Save the Children Book Sale has come and gone.

Messy desk

Total spent: $120.50, over 4 days. (Yes, we went back a few times. I went three times, and M dropped in during the week after class.) All the books are piled up in my study around me. It feels like I am surrounded by books at the moment.

Fiction/science fiction/fantasy
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Decameron by Boccaccio
Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh
The Guardians by John Christopher
Camp Concentration by Thomas Disch
Sprookjes van Moeder de Gans by Christine Doorman (Mother Goose Tales)
The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy
A Maggot by John Fowles
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
An Alien Light by Nancy Kress
Nekropolis by Maureen F. McHugh (just read this, v. good!)
Di Tepi Jeram Kehancuran by Mira W (“Beside the rapids of destruction”. Indonesian romance. I can put up with melodrama in Indonesian, but can’t bear it in English.)
The Windsingers by Megan Lindholm
Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt
A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt (M’s pleased, he’s been looking for this for ages!)
The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit
The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott
Collision Course by Robert Silverberg
Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg
The Longest Way Home by Robert Silverberg
Recalled to life by Robert Silverberg
The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki
For the Defence by Kate Wilhelm
Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones
Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny

Nonfiction
Cai gen tan: rensheng de ziwei, Cai Zhizhong manhua (Vegetable Roots: The Flavour of Life. Cartoons by Cai Zhizhong. This and the next two books are cartoon versions of these classics.)
Manhua Sunzi bingfa: bingxue de xianzhi; Cai Zhizhong manhua (Manga Sun Tzu Art of War: Great Military Strategist. Cartoons by Cai Zhizhong)
Mengzi shuo: luan shi de zhe zi; Cai Zhizhong manhua (Mencius speaks: Philosophy for troubled times. Cartoons by Cai Zhizhong)
The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World by Luciano Canfora
Shao nian kai ge by Chen Kaige (Triumphant songs of youth; author is the Chinese film maker who made Yellow Earth and Farewell My Concubine. The title of this memoir is  a play on his name: kai ge means “paean, song of triumph”.)
Buddhist Scriptures by Edward Conze
Ecology for Beginners by Stephen Croall and William Rankin
Far East English-English English-Chinese dictionary of idioms and phrases
My Dark Places by James Ellroy
Stop Procrastinating!: Master the Art of Doing It Now by Rita Emmett (hah!)
Penguin Book of English Verse edited by John Hayward
The Great Museum: The Re-presentation of History by Donald Horne
Kramers Pocketwoordenboeken Engels-Nederlands
Kramers Pocketwoordenboeken Nederlands-Engels
Harvest Cookbook by Mark Pearson (vego)
Oxford Book of English Prose chosen and edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
Oxford Book of English Verse 1250 – 1918 chosen and edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence by Carl Sagan
The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Van Loon (loved this book when I was a kid)
Chinese Poems selected and translated by Arthur Waley
A History of Malaya by R.O. Winstedt

Plus a series of flashcards: Wucai xin fangzi (New Multicoloured Flashcards) from Wenhua Tushu Gongsi, Taibei (no date).

Total 47 books, 26 fiction, 21 nonfiction (is poetry counted as fiction?).

I’m going to have to tidy my desk before I can work. I have tomorrow and Friday afternoons off – the idea is that I am going to get stuck into writing. I’ll be so relieved when the conference paper that’s due in a couple of weeks is at least drafted. Oh, and I have to do my Dutch homework, too.

Edit: Left one book out, the Zhongwen Baike Da Cidian (“Great Encyclopaedic Chinese Language Dictionary”). Thus, total 48 books, 26 fiction, 22 nonfiction.