I love going to second-hand bookshops in places where the English language is a minor interest. Why? Because the bargain bins of such places offer up the most wonderfully idiosynratic finds. Today’s haul lists as follows (1 euro each):
Why Do We Write? Pourquoi Écrire? (Yugoslav Pen Community, 1971): a collection of essays/conference proceedings in English and French from the likes of Heinrich Böll, Jean-Charles Lombard, Hilde Spiel, Sidney Offit, Lars Gustaffson, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and many many more. The (very short but fascinating) essays cover topics like “Creative writing as subjective expression or as a means of moral and social action”, “Writing as negation of death and oblivion”, “Literature as a substitute for religion or a system of morals”, and “Creative writing as a means of achieving human contact across time and space”. Lovely stuff :) Very much looking forward to reading this (and brushing up on my French - which I will also need for the recommendation from friends that I read the work of Joel de Rosnay for my gentleness work. Apparently he has written a lot of the notion of the ‘Societé des relations’).
Arms and the Man - George Bernard Shaw. GBS blasts militarism.
Back to Methusalah - George Bernard Shaw. GBS tackles neo-Darwinism.
Under Pressure: The Writer in Society: Eastern Europe and the USA. A. Alvarez, 1965. This looks great. It’s the book from a BBC radio series (transcriptions, even), where writers and intellectuals from Eastern Europe and the USA were interviewed about the position of intellectuals and problems for artists. Norman Mailer, Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, Robert Lowell, etc. etc. This one is going to be a lot of fun, methinks :)
Contrary Imaginations: A Psychological Study of the English Schoolboy. Liam Hudson, 1966. I think I might already have this, but I think it’s an important book. It’s a study of creativity in schools, where Hudson makes a distinction between the psychological types of convergers and divergers among students. I’d also recommend his book ‘Frames of Mind’.
A Passion for Science. Lewis Wolpert and Alison Richards, 1988. “Renowned scientists offer vivid personal portraits of their lives in science.” Yay :)
Last, but not least, an obscure one, but possibly a very interesting one, A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis. Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., 1969. “A persuasive argument for a more effective use of sociological, anthropological, and philosophical concepts by historians. A new approach to studying the past and rethinking familiar controversies”. Mmmm. My inner anthro-sociologist is intrigued, as is my inner muppet.
Oh, and I got myself a Slovenian phrasebook. I can only go so far on Spanish (although it worked for this cafe - I spoke Spanish, they spoke Italian, it worked out okay :) ), and lots of people seem to be speaking to me in German, which I can only really count in, so it’s probably a good idea to learn some Slovenian.
