Reading Material for November

It’s been a while since I did a big book buy so on Friday afternoon I spent a very enjoyable fifteen minutes in Hodges Figgis adding to The Pile. I had wanted a Scrabble dictionary for ages (yes, I am that nerdy) and so it was first on the list. I played a game with a friend of mine recently in my house and as we didn’t have a Scrabble dictionary we couldn’t check allowable two letter words. That “problem” is now solved so any game in future will be played strictly by the rules!

I really enjoyed Kevin Barry’s short story collection Dark Lies The Island and so I picked up his novel City of Bohane which got great reviews on its publication in 2011. I’ll look forward to seeing how his facility for the short story translates into a novel.

Of course I have read The Great Gatsby before now, but the edition I have is a cheap old one which I’ve been meaning to replace for ages. When I saw this beautiful Penguin edition I knew I had to have it. Again this is proof of my utter nerdiness when it comes to books – buying different editions of books you already own is a sign that one is an irredeemable literary geek!

I have never read any Samuel Beckett (shame on me!) and when I saw The Complete Short Prose I thought it would be the perfect introduction to his work and ideas. Lastly I bought a biography of Marilyn Monroe by Lois Banner entitled The Passion and the Paradox. Banner has interviewed many friends of Monroe’s who haven’t spoken about her before and so I hope there will be some new information in this well reviewed biography.