Hey gang, I’m sitting with Lisa Dempster and Caroline Hamilton (and right near lovely, cool zinesters panda and the fetus) at the zine fair on the final day of Adelaide’s rad Format Festival. I don’t even want to look up at all the tables as I spent far too much on second-hand books yesterday in between my festival sessions. O’Connell’s on Hindley Street is the perfect second-hand bookstore. The staff know exactly what they have, they stock the best stuff, and they have a collection of first editions and rares that are beautiful and expensive and way out of my range, but one day I’ll return for some… (They were, however, out out Foucault, and books on Bowie, though they normally have them!)
Here’s part of my haul (the others are presents so I can’t spoil the surprise):
Yes, that’s John Updike’s Rabbit, Run (which I looked for a year ago in the same shop and now finally have!); Patrick White’s The Vivisector (I’ve read Voss and this was recommended to me by @ErezGordon on Twitter); Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (which I have read and love); Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Two Worlds of Childhood (relevant to Uni – comparing the socialisation process of kids in the Soviet Union and the US); David Reisman’s The Lonely Crowd (also of study interest); Rodney Hall’s poetry; and a little falling-apart poetry book called The White Cliffs by Alice Duer Miller. I not only bought it because it had eight reprints in 1941, but because of this:
Antacids. I love the little bits of history that come with second-hand books. In the front of the Two Worlds of Childhood Book was this message:
Is that ‘love from Diddle et al’?
I’ll record more ideas about Adelaide, the festival (where Estelle Tang and I debuted ‘LiteraryFriction’, our literary trivia event – it went off!) and more, in the next few days.
Also coming up on the blog: a review of a YA transgender novel, and interview with Charlaine Harris (both of these by guest-blogger Andrew Wrathall), a review of Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists and some thoughts on my first Michael Chabon…
