So, it was my birthday yesterday. It’s been a big eating week: I went to Barbagallo on Friday (excellent), Movida on Sunday (also excellent) and Cutler & Co last night (I guess that makes it three out of three for excellent). Movida Aqui on Friday. (Note to self: 3265000meals.blogspot.com?) But now I am poorer than usual.
Never mind, here’s some of my sweet birthday stash. In the middle, the slim orange tome whose title is obscured by my camera’s low megapixel count, is Nathan Curnow’s The Ghost Poetry Project (at last!) Under that, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o's Weep Not, Child. Clearly, someone’s been reading this blog, because I now own all of MJ Hyland’s books, too. Bright red, in the middle, featuring the least annoying instance of non-standard quotation mark usage I’ve ever seen: The Paris Review Interviews, Volume 3. I actually received two copies of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman — it’s a pretty well-targeted choice. Also received one of the gorgeous cloth-bound Penguins designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
I love delayed gratification as much as the next girl brought up in a Catholic household, and I’m waiting on some good ones. The top two people on this page got me a voucher for Better World Books, with which I have just now purchased some long-desired tomes: The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor, The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill and Roland Barthes’ Mythologies. In the fine tradition of ‘buying oneself a birthday present’, I also bought myself some books online. OMG I JUST LOVE BOOKS LOL.
It’s kind of good to be known as a book lover. People will buy you things they think you would like, or get too scared to buy you things and just ask you what you want. I’ve kept a list of books all year for that reason. And birthdays are good for things that are slightly pricier than your average paperback: wait until you see what my mother and I bought from my work as birthday/Christmas/just being a good kid in general benefactions. (Hint: Oxford University Press makes dictionaries.)
genevieve | 2nd Dec 09 | 1:11 pm |
Many happy returns! and happy reading and benefactions.
Sarah | 2nd Dec 09 | 4:36 pm |
Happy Birthday! I love getting books for my birthday and you've got some great ones, especially The Paris Review interviews.
estelle | 2nd Dec 09 | 9:39 pm |
Thanks Gen! It will be a bit over the top when it comes. It seems like cheating to know what I will be getting, but I am still wildly excited.
Sarah, thanks! It is, and it's probably the most exciting of all the available volumes for me: Jean Rhys, Ted Hughes, Raymond Carver, Chinua Achebe, and the Georges Simenon interview that started my love affair with the Paris Review interviews.
thuylinhnguyen | 3rd Dec 09 | 12:11 pm |
Hey happy birthday to the girl who is not on the Book of Faces. I'll have to buy you a drink (or a book) next time I see you.
estelle | 3rd Dec 09 | 8:40 pm |
Thanks TL! Either will be fine. Ha!
nico | 4th Dec 09 | 9:22 am |
Aha, happy birthday and happy reading!
estelle | 4th Dec 09 | 10:33 pm |
Thanks Nico!
Patrick Lenton | 8th Dec 09 | 5:55 pm |
Happy birthday! I can't wait for you to read 'Wizard of the Crow' because it is a book I am passionately divisive about. After I read it, I kept walking up to people in parties and kinda thrusting it at them, desperate for another opinion.
estelle | 8th Dec 09 | 10:01 pm |
Patrick, it looks kind of epic and it scares me a bit.
nathan curnow | 16th Dec 09 | 1:29 pm |
hey estelle
so glad you were able to find a copy of my book. wishing you a happy xmas and new year and extra good things all summer