The Friends of the Library had their sale last week. Here’s what I found:

Peter Lovesey, The Last Detective & The Detective Wore Silk Drawers

Robertson Davies, The Deptford Trilogy (Nice Penguin omnibus edition. Bad Canadian, never read them. Put off by all things Jungian, so might not be a success. But.)

The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome (Probably self-serving, because I gather he was a pretty lousy human being. But he gave me some of the happiest reading hours of my childhood, so I owe him a chance.)

Nahum N Glatzer, The Loves of Franz Kafka

Elizabeth Bowen, Eva Trout, or Changing Scenes (Lovely US First Edition)

Henry James, The Princess Casamassima

Laurie R. King, A Letter of Mary

E. F. Benson, Queen Lucia Part I: Make Way for Lucia (If I love this I will kick myself for leaving the other five volumes behind, but it seemed like a lot of pages to take a flutter on. Isn’t Sarah Waters’s new novel based on one of Benson’s?)

Alain de Botton, How Proust can Change your Life (Skeptical about the book, but not the idea—he changed mine.)

May Sarton, Journal of Solitude (My sabbatical has made me appreciate how much I need solitude.)

Dorothy Dunnett, Queen’s Play (Because I have the first in the series and am apparently convinced I will love them.)

Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim (Perfect. How about this one:

The rabbi of Lublin once asked the rabbi of Apt, who was a guest in his house: “Do you know the old rabbi of Neshkizh?” “I do not know him,” he replied. “But tell me: what is there so special about him that you asked me this?”
“The minute you make his acquaintance, you would know,” said the rabbi of Lublin. “With him everything: teaching and prayers, eating and sleeping, is all in one piece, and he can elevate his soul to its origin.”
Then the rabbi of Apt decided to go to Neshkizh. His carriage was at the door, when he heard that he had been denounced to the authorities and found it necessary to go to the official magistrate of the district. By the time he returned, it was two weeks before Passover and he again postponed his journey. After the holidays, he was told that the rabbi of Neshkizh had died in the week before Passover.

It’s a straight line to Kafka!)

Total: $5.50

Then I walked across the street to the Friends of the Library bookstore and found:

Connie Willis, Blackout

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (recently possessed by burning desire to read this book.)

Thomas Berger, Little Big Man (RIP)

Those 1800-odd pages brought my day’s total to $20.25. Take that, Amazon!