Now that the holiday season is upon us, I'm curious what books are on everyone's wish list...

CLATU! VERATA!...

Lithic Analysis: The Study of Stone Tools and
Assemblages by Harold L. Dibble and Michael J.
Shott. Just out!

Chinese Playground : A Memoir by Bill Lee.

Confessions of a Yakuza: A Life in Japan's
Underworld Trans. by John Bester

And a couple I saw in Wired:

Stealing History by Roger Atwood

and

Shadow Cities by Robert Neuwirth.

[edit] Oh yeah. Mustn't forget Japanese
Spirit - The Works of Tenmyouya Hisashi

Just do it

quote:

---

e-flux is proud to announce a new book: Do It, edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, published jointly with Revolver, Frankfurt/Main.

With Do It in hand, you will be able to make a work of (someone else's) art yourself. Since 1993 Do It has provided its public with how-to pages of instructions written by 168 of the most important artists and writers working today. Some of the projects are historic classics brought forward especially for the occasion, but most of the contributions being imagined here are new. Do it has grown in stages, springing up around the world in 45 museums and art centers in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Australia. The time has come to summarize the results in a book that is part manual, part cookbook, part do-it-yourself kit. Here it is. It has only just begun!

---

Sounds like an anarchist cookbook for artists.

the top ten books i'd love to get are

1) empire of the senseless - kathy acker
2) dangerous visions (35th anniversary edition) - harlan ellison
2) beggars and choosers - nancy kress
3) ambient - jack womack
4) judgement of tears: anno dracula 1959 - kim newman
5) the gashlycrumb tinies - edward gorey
6) animal farm - george orwell
7) a wizard of earthsea - ursula k. leguin
8) dragons of a lost star - margaret weiss
9) the voice in the closet - raymond federman
10) england's dreaming - jon savage

FP : That book looks pretty hefty. How many pages is it and what is the paper quality?

The paper in the image looks similiar to the one used in most small Bibles.

Neutrino Drag - Paul Di Filippo
The Zenith Angle - Bruce "Noodles" Sterling
Wolves Eat Dogs - Martin Cruz Smith
There's also some political tracts I have my eye on, but I won't bore you with those.

Blinking with Fists - Billy Corgan's (ex-Smashing Pumpkins frontman) poetry book.

And that non-fiction Bruce Sterling book I saw in the overpriced Massive Change store in the Vancouver Art Gallery. I bought a poster instead.

My wish list is mostly a list of hard to find books, as I tend to be a compulsive buyer. So they are books I like, but not those I feel obsessed enough to hunt for.

- The Story of the Stone, Barry Hughart
- The Dragon Masters, definitive version, Jack Vance.
- A Fisherman of the Inland sea, Ursula K. LeGuin.
- Doorways in the Sand, Roger Zelazny.
- The Masks of Nyarlathothep (revised)

And then, two books I am waiting anxiously (one of them for a couple of years):

- Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami.
- A Feast for Crows (ordered in Amazon the 31st March 2003). George R.R. Martin.

José

Ditto MOM's post. So sad that Richard Avedon is no longer with us.

Oh, and I would like to see some Womack Books in my stocking...

And it would be really nice if George R.R. Martin would come out with A Feast For Crows before Christmas. Been waiting on that book for about 4 years or so now. They keep saying that it will be out soon, then it keeps not coming out. Pissed about that.

Oh! I know! I need a really comprehensive collection of Shakespeare. I don't have one of those.

I'm sure that I could come up with about 10000000000000000000000000 books that I would like to to own, so this thread is an excercise in futility for me

[re-de-lurking]

On my Amazon Wish List:

The Getaway Man by Andrew Vachss
Down Here by Andrew Vachss
Iron Council by China Mieville
Fear and Loathing in America by Hunter S. Thompson
Pattern Recogniton by You Know Who
Faithful by Stewart O'Nan and Steven King

from other folks lists i'd love:
the zenith angle - bruce sterling
kafka on the shore - haruki murakami

-but neither are available readily in the UK until next year!

but from my list distributed to family members as provision of overwhelming suggestions:

her name was lola - russell hoban
popco - scarlett thomas
mammoth new SF v17- (ed) gardner dozois
the ring - koji suzuki
a werewolf problem in central russia - victor pelevin
babylon - victor pelevin
jonathan strange - susanna clarke
peton amberg - tama janowitz
viriconium - m. john harrison
climbers - m. john harrison
cosmopolis - don delilo
haunter of the dark - h.p. lovecraft
politics - adam thirlwell
in watermelon sugar - richard brautigan
the three-button trick - nicola barker
aberystwth mon amour - malcolm pryce
written on the body - jeannette winterson
and...
the difference engine - you know who, which i've read, but strangely don't actually own!

Philip Roth - The Plot Against America

A critical, cross-referenced, footnoted edition of the King James Bible.

[shuffles off to Amazon to find a link]

quote:

---

Originally posted by anarchocyclist:
A critical, cross-referenced, footnoted edition of the King James Bible.

---

Ooh... that reminds me. I want to read that new
translation of the first five books of the bible.
It's supposedly a more accurate translation.

Yeah, heard about that 'new translation' of the Pentatuch. New translations are always suspect to me. I mean, strictly litteral translations have been done, and they are complete nonsense, at least to western eyes/ears. Some subjectification HAS to go into translation, otherwise it can't be understood really. Sooooo... what does that mean?

I think it means that, barring some real glaring errors and/or insidious designs, one translation is as good as the next... though, I will say that juxtaposing the King James, the NRSV and a litteral translation definitely makes you think about what the original books were really intended for.

Doh, religious debate happens NOT... I quit now.

All the volumes I haven't yet got (about 10) of Orwell's collected non-fiction writings. The best political journalism of the twentieth century: makes most modern pundits look extremely sick.

quote:

---

I think it means that, barring some real glaring errors and/or insidious designs, one translation is as good as the next... though, I will say that juxtaposing the King James, the NRSV and a litteral translation definitely makes you think about what the original books were really intended for.

---

[lit geek]The main reason I want the King James is that quite a bit of English and American literature refers to it. Great research tool. Plus there are apocryphal stories that Shakespeare and other contemporary poets may have been called on by James to help translate the Psalms. So I'd call it easily the most literary translation, in English at least.[/lit geek]