April 20, 2005
Tonight's haul
Tonight I made my regular payday trip to a local bookstore—this time it was Biography, on Bleecker—and here is the result:
Michael Frayn, Headlong
Francine Prose, The Lives of the Muses
Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life
Leonid Tsypkin, Summer in Baden-Baden
Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
Cynthia Ozick, Heir to the Glimmering World
Saul Bellow, Ravelstein
And, for a friend (though she doesn't know it yet): Henry Mitchell, On Gardening.
I suspect I'll tackle the Miller and Ozick first, followed by the Tsypkin (which has an introduction by Susan Sontag). I've read two Ozick essay collections but never her fiction; I've read Wolff's stories but only praise for this memoir, not the book itself.
For those of you in New York, Biography is the perfect warm-weather bookstore, as it's directly across the street from Magnolia Bakery and is notorious for the quality of the remaindered books on its two outdoor tables. (And, I might add, its chocolate brown plastic bags are among the sturdiest offered by any bookstore in the city and lend themselves to constant reuse. Am I a nerd or what?) Buy a cupcake and a book, find a nearby stoop, and enjoy an outdoor hour or two.