Book buying: South Side edition

[muckefuck]

Like every good trip to Hyde Park, Saturday's expedition ended up at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. Bumiputeri had to buy some textbooks and all of us deeply needed to spend at least an hour browsing shiny, pretty books in a dungeon-like atmosphere. I picked up:

1. A box of Chinese flashcards. (I already have a set, but I thought Mozhu needed one. D'oh! She'd already bought them! Fortunately, Xiaofei was willing to take them off my hands for the price of dinner at Sun Wah. Nothing like being paid in intestines!)
2. Lu, Xun Wild Grass = 鲁迅《野草》(Bilingual ed. Finally, traditional characters!)
3. Mishima, Yukio Thirst for love (Trans. of Ai no kawaki by A.H. Marks)

Then my posse abandoned me. Apparently there was some basketball game on t.v. that Bumiputeri's husband wanted to watch and Lakshmi needed to pick up supplies for catering. I wandered over to the gorgeous new GSB building for a look at their stunning atrium in the golden light of dusk and was not disappointed. I considered stopping in on old friends, but the lure of O'Gara's and Powell's was simply too strong. There's wasn't much of interest at the first; still, I left feeling satisfied with nothing more than Judith M. Jacob's Introduction to Cambodian.

Powell's was more disappointing, but only because I had some specific titles in mind. Lakshmi was looking for Carneige's Lincoln the unknown, which I felt almost sure they'd have in stock. They didn't. I was hoping for the libretti to Wagner's Ring Cycle. No joy! I have one part of a two-part collection of Gogol's short stories in translation...and that's still all I have. But I didn't make out badly:

1. Faulkner, William. Sanctuary (The clerk said, "This is a wild novel!" "Wilder than The Reivers?" I asked. "About the same.")
2. Korean classical literature : an anthology (ed. by Chung Chong-wha--and that name hints at what's wrong with it. The romanisation is a disaster: Inconsistent [even within selections, as well as between them], misleading, and ugly. The selections are unusual--many have never before been translated--but I frankly expected a better job from Kegan Paul.)
3. German language and the real world (ed. by Patrick Stevenson. This, on the other hand, I love love love; you'll be hearing about it.)

Oh, and the Solokhov previously mentioned in comments. What is with me? I read one massive novel years ago (Middlemarch) and this gives me the lingering hubris to pick up 1000+ monsters by Murasaki Shikibu, Carlos Fuentes, and now some Russian dude.

Comments

[gopower.livejournal.com]

features a six-story glass atrium topped by curved steel beams that form Gothic arches, a signature of the university's architecture.

I haven't seen it yet in person. I'm amazed that they think putting some decorative "Gothic arches" in the steel and glass atrium somehow makes it blend in with the rest of campus.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

It would perhaps work a little better if the gothic cathedral bits weren't having to somehow "blend in" with the Prairie School bits put into the same damn building. (Rockefeller Chapel and Robie House in a blender. What's not to love?)

[bunj.livejournal.com]

Rockefeller Chapel and Robie House in a blender.

Is that why it ends up looking like a gigantic box? The height of gothic and the width of prairie school.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

Probably. It was actually looking kind of cool there for a while, when they'd only built about half-way up and not gotten to the "gothic" part yet. Alas, they kept going.