Last October I wrote about the merger of Troubadour Books with Grey Matter Books; today my wonderful wife drove me thither so I could enjoy the end of their spring sale (and reward myself for finishing the copyediting of a book on athletics in Ancient Greek history and poetry), and here is what I came back with:
Dictionary of Russian Literature Since 1917 by Wolfgang Kasack (1988)
Novel Epics: Gogol, Dostoevsky, and National Narrative by Frederick Griffiths and Stanley Rabinowitz (1990)
The History of Polish Literature, 2nd ed. by Czeslaw Milosz (1983)
Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia, 1830-1870 by Frederick S. Starr (1972)
Readings in Russian poetics: Formalist and structuralist views ed. by Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska (1978)
The Positive Hero in Russian Literature by Rufus W. Mathewson (1975)
The Literature of Roguery in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Russia by Marcia A. Morris (2000)
Through the Russian Prism by Joseph Frank (1989)
Fifty Years of Russian Prose: From Pasternak to Solzhenitsyn (2 vols) ed. by Krystyna Pomorska (1971)
Oh, and I got Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, because I’m more than halfway through Wolf Hall and I know I’m going to want to plunge right into the sequel.
I’m struggling with envy and disbelief that anyone could go to a second-hand bookshop and come away with such loot. Perhaps the expansion then contraction in Russian studies signposted by the end of WWII and the end of the USSR accounts for some of it – but still, that must be some bookshop.
By contrast, the best second-hand bookshop in my wider neighbourhood (ie, an hour’s walk away), where I’d found several treasures and had mentally reserved several more for myself, suddenly closed its doors a year ago and has been replaced by a gentrified coffee-shop cum “curated” craft store. The coffee is only middling. Apparently the bookshop’s contents are now available for inspection in a warehouse in a small town about 50 miles away. Hence my envy.
It is indeed some bookshop. I miss the old clutter, but there’s still a fair amount of clutter, and the selection is astounding.
I paid less than $30 for all that, by the way.
I paid less than $30 for all that, by the way.
Don’t rub it in.
That’s a truly amazing bargain. The lowest price available for the Milosz book on Amazon is $28.99.
Yup, that’s what kept me from ordering it after someone here recommended it strongly. The bookstore had initially marked it at $8.50, marked it down to $4, and thanks to the sale I got it for less than $3. Thank goodness for used bookstores.