Saturday, 15 July 2006

The 2MBS book and record bazaar is on again this weekend, this time at Chatswood. At 8:00 a.m. I got into the car and drove up through Newtown, crossed the Harbour Bridge and turned left onto the Pacific Highway. I arrived at the Willoughby Civic Centre just before opening time, at 8:50 a.m. The doors opened at 9:00 and we all filed in. I attacked the fiction tables, collecting an armload, then veered off to see what was on offer at the poetry and drama table.

I got 13 books for $52.00:

The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250 - 1918 (1900, new ed. 1939)
An Anthology of Modern Verse, A. Methuen ed. (1921)
1914 and other Poems, Rupert Brooke (1927)
The Poems and Plays of Robert Browning, The Modern Library (1934)
Water Man, Roger McDonald (1993)
Heavy Water and Other Stories, Martin Amis (1998)
Granta 70: Australia, The New New World (2000)
The Story of the Night, Colm Tóibín (1996)
The Virgin in the Garden, A.S. Byatt (1978)
The Pilot's Wife, Anita Shreve (1998)
The True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey (2000)
(and so forth), Robert Dessaix (1998)
Night Letters, Robert Dessaix (1996)

On the way back to the car I picked up the broadsheets at the newsagents at the top of the mall near the station. I got back home at around 10:15 (the bridge toll is only $3). It's raining. Wonderful. We need it.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You got a pile of good buys there, Dean.

I picked up an almost new HC copy of Robert Dessaix's Corfu on ebay this week for just a few dollars.

I love these wet weekends - I can read and read and read and no guilt feelings about no getting stuck into yardwork. Tomorrow if it's still like this (I hope it is!), an open fire in the loungeroom will be the order of the day.

I just got back from shopping at Katoomba and we also have very, very foggy conditions as well as the rain.

Matthew da Silva said...

I've never read anything by Dessaix, but earlier this year I attended a talk he gave at the Art Gallery of NSW. I enjoyed it a lot, so I thought for a few dollars it's worth it to see for myself if he can really write.

The big problem, of course, is how to house all these new arrivals. I'll be getting a new bookcase in August, and I think it'll be half full as soon as it's installed.