I went to New York City to see A Streetcar Named Desire at BAM, spend time with my grandmother, and see as many bookstores as I could plausibly drag her to way back at the start of March. That meant doing way more book shopping than I should be months before an international move... I've discussed my impression of all the stores in a
previous post, but I thought I'd recap what I bought at each. I will say, since I'd only traveled there with an oversized backpack and also bought clothes and brought way too many pairs of shoes to start with, my guiding principle was "pick slim, light paperbacks that would be easy to pack". I only caved on one hardcover in the end, so I'm pretty impressed. Also, my grandmother bought the copy of
White Teeth I'd contemplated purchasing and promised she'd send it to me when she was done, so hopefully, I end up with one more book from this trip one of these days.
It turns out the unintentional theme was French translations, which wasn't a category I've been deep into previously but have now spent the last month reading French books.
My review for this one isn't out yet, but I have finished reading it. While I found it interesting, I should've been a little bit more patient and let the library hold come in. The book is entirely an email exchange, which I tend to love. I know it lends itself to a more rambling, thought-over-action heavy book, and I tend to like that. Here, it just got a bit dense at times for my taste with the tangents going too far afield for too long to give me any sense of urgency with the reading experience. It was worth reading, but it will go in the donate pile when I move. Also, why did I choose this book to be what I read on a plane and at various spots out of the house. The neon cover with "dickhead" printed on the front certainly got me a few sideways looks.
I haven't read this one yet (actually started it last night), but it fit my slim paperback rule for the trip, so I went for it. Luckily, since then it's been added to the International Booker list, and I've seen nothing but praise for the book, ranking towards the top of people's lists for the prize books in predictions. I just picked it up last night in the midst of a horrible reading mood. I expected to get in a page or two but ended up reading 32 of them, which is a solid 20% for how short this is. I didn't realize it was a series, though, so we'll have to see if I read the next books and indulge in my first series since childhood.
Continuing my attempt to read more poetry and buy small in size books, I picked up a collection of Frank O'Hara poems. Also, I was on this trip largely to see Paul Mescal in a play, and in the Normal People series, Connell gives Marianne a collection of Frank O'Hara poems for her birthday, so this felt like a fun souvenir in a very roundabout kind of way.
This was a fantastic find at Books Are Magic on a table display. I knew about The Scriptures, but I didn't know there was a little paperback that contained the script of the original one-woman show and a ton of information about how to original play that became the basis for the TV show came to life. I was working on a novel about a poet and an actor at the time, so this felt like a super valuable set of insights for book research too. Everyone loves Fleabag so much a random guy on the plane had to stop to talk to me about it. I read the whole book on the plane ride.
So far, I've really only read the French translations from the stack besides the Fleabag book. This one is another that I will not bat an eye at giving away. The first chapter would've made a fantastic short story. There wasn't enough to make anything more from this, and the book really dragged unfortunately.
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