Free Book Giveaway

I have some books I’d like to get rid of: books I tried reading but didn’t enjoy, or books I feel sure I won’t want to revisit. I’m disinclined to hawk them around the local second-hand stores, as they’d most likely not want them to begin with, or, if they took them off my hands, would have them languishing for years on their dusty shelves. Nor have I the patience to list them on one or other of the on-line swap sites. I was tempted to use the bookcrossing approach, where one leaves labelled copies of books in public places, hoping that they will be picked up by kindly strangers… but, in the end, I thought why not just try the directest method and list them here to be claimed by any interested passers-by on a first-come, first-served basis.

To claim one of the books listed below, leave a comment including an e-mail address that states which book you want. Then send me an e-mail which includes a mailing address. I’ll pay the postage, and will dispatch the item within a week. If there’s a good take-up, I’ll repeat the exercise in a month or two’s time. I’ll restrict the offer for now to one book per mailing address.

1. Impressions of Africa, by Raymond Roussel, published by John Calder. This is a recent paperback reprint of a 1960s edition. The translation is by Reyner Heppenstall and Lindy Foord. I bought the book in Edinburgh last November, and only managed to read it about halfway through. It’s a proto-surrealist classic, apparently. Roussel was an author much admired by the leading lights of the OuLiPo. ISBN: 0714502898, 318pp.

2. Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books, by Marcel Benabou. This slim paperback was published by the University of Nebraska Press. It’s a kind of brief literary autobiography by an Oulipian author. I ordered this from amazon maybe eighteen months ago. I liked the title, and found the book okay, but nothing I’m in any hurry to read again. David Kornacker did the translating from the French; there’s an introduction by Warren Motte. ISBN: 080326139X, 128pp.

3. The Royal Family by William T. Vollman. This is the hardcover first edition of the novel, intact dustjacket included. Vollman is an outrageously talented writer, but this novel is ugly and far too long: you might enjoy it though, who’s to say? This was another amazon purchase, from two-and-a-half years back. It was published by Viking. ISBN: 0670891673, 780pp.

4. Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy by Brian Richardson. This history, published by the Cambridge University Press, offers a good but occasionally dryish survey of all aspects of the book-trade during this well-mapped historical locale. This was yet another amazon purchase. Mine is the paperback edition. ISBN: 0521576938; 232pp.

5. Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic. Subtitled a Lexicon Novel in 100,000 words, of which my copy is an example of the ‘male’ edition. I thought this would be my ideal type of book, but, as it turned out, I didn’t take to it at all. I picked up this copy at the Anglo-American bookstore in Rome, last February. The publisher is Vintage Books - it’s a softcover. ISBN: 0679724613; 338pp.

6. The Visible and the Invisible (followed by Working Notes) by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. I’d read a few popular accounts of recent theories of embodied cognition, and thought I’d go back to one of the oft-mentioned sources of this kind of line of thought. Why I chose this particular book, Merleau-Ponty’s last, I don’t recall. In any case, it was a mistake, as I was quite unequal to the challenges of this philosophical text. It’s translated from the French by Alphonso Lingis, and is a publication of the Northwestern University Press. ISBN: 0810104571, ca. 200pp.

7. City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer. I think this was the first trade edition of the book. It’s a softcover, and was published by the Wildside Press. The four tales in this book, which all deal with the imaginary city of Ambergris, were generally well-reviewed, but I only really found one of them, ‘Dradin in Love’ much to my liking. The overall imaginary-city effect is much less intense than that achieved by M. John Harrison in his ‘Viriconium’ books, which I’m re-reading just at the moment. I forget where I ordered this copy from: amazon or WH Smith, most likely. ISBN: 1587154366; 224pp.

8. The Fencing Master, by Arturo Perez-Reverte. I enjoyed this historical tale, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa, but have no inclination to read it again. It’s the British edition, published by the Harvill Press. I think this one came from WH Smith on-line. ISBN: 1860466656; 212pp.

9. Lost Classics by various authors, edited by a bunch of people including Michael Ondaatje. This hardcover volume compiles essays by sundry literary types like Margaret Atwood, John Irving, Edmund White, etc., each describing a favourite book that the essayist feels has been unfairly neglected and undeservedly forgotten. The publisher is Bloomsbury. I bought it during a visit to the UK two years ago. It never had a dust-jacket. ISBN: 0747553920, 304pp.

10. Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata. Having breezed my way through several of Haruki Murakami’s novels, I aimed to widen my next-to-non-existent exposure to Japanese lit. by giving Kawabata a try. Alas, I can’t say these stories were to my taste. They are translated from the Japanese by Lane Dunlop and J. Martin Holman. The North Point Press was the publisher. ISBN: 0865473250; 238pp. Posted by misteraitch at May 23, 2003 12:37 PM | TrackBack