Headed downtown (again) to check out the library’s book sale.
Notes for next time: steal a box or bring a bigger bag.
The first book I seized upon was Elementary Cantonese. Okay, so when I took it home I realized it was a bit too elementary. But they have the Chinese characters (some of which are specific to Cantonese), I’m quite glad I bought it.
Continuing to prowl through the stacks, I then snatched a copy of Teach Yourself German as well as The Penguin Russian Course. I’ll probably never read them, but that’s beyond the point. There was a Russian-English dictionary and a Greek-English dictionary as well, but the former was really ratty and the latter… well, as I can’t even read Greek I thought it’d be best to leave it alone.
I hopped over to the multilingual pile in hopes of finding a good French novel or some Asian comics. I picked up random French books, but sadly, none of them appealed to me (mais il y avait un roman intitulA~(c) Le petit prince cannibale… malheureusement, la personnage principale n’A~(c)tait pas le petit prince de Saint-Exupery mais un garA~on autiste. Je ne l’ai achetA~(c) pas car je pensais que ce roman serait un peu difficile A~ lire…) I did happen upon an ancient issue of Nakayoshi, which I bought because it had the Sailormoon all-character poster in it (I cannot tell you how long I have been trying to find one of those at the library’s book sale.)
Finally, I decided to have a go at the paperback novels. I found a copy of Fugitive Pieces: it was the same edition that we’d used for our IB English class and well….. for 25 cents it was a very, very good deal. I bet someone from our class decided to donate it to the book sale, since it wasn’t even part of the library’s collection. I also happened across a copy of July’s People (which had been part of the library’s collection). To cap off the round of random books from IB English I saw, I caught a glimpse of Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits (I borrowed it for my presentation on magic realism) and a National Geographic magazine with a picture of a bog person.
I saw a copy of Translated Accounts by James Kelman sitting around and after reading the synopsis (military state in the future, seemingly hastily translated first-hand accounts), I had to buy it. Playing with language and a dystopic future? Geez, that sounds kind of familiar. You’d think I’d be sick of it, wouldn’t you?
Had to put down a few things that I decided I could do without, though: a Pinter play and Hayakawa’s Language in Thought and Action. If I see those again, I’m definitely going to get them. You see, the girl at the checkout decided that the French textbook I wanted counted as a multilingual book, so I saved a dollar or so. :cheerful:
Wah, and keep reading for signs of lemming behaviour.
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