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Sara

@ohia

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Portland, OR
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I cannot own every single New Directions book. I cannot. Right? I can’t. I think? Yes. No. I can’t.

So instead, I’d like to own the first 100 paperbacks. Here’s an update on my quest.

29 out of 100? But maybe really 90 because I *think* numbered paperbacks started at 11. Can anyone confirm this?

Here’s a few featured @ndpublishing books on the following slides.

The paperback Alvin Lustig covers I have so far in the first 100

(NDP51) Dylan Thomas- Portrait of an Artist as a Young Dog
(NDP52) Federico García Lorca- 3 Tragedies
(NDP57) Henry James- Stories of Writers & Artists

Two of my favorites from the first 100

(NDP70) Goethe/ Faust- An American Translation of Part I by C.F. MacIntyre
(NDP98) Djuna Barnes- Nightwood

Three of my most anticipated reads from the first 100

(NDP53) William Carlos Williams- In the American Grain
(NDP82) Jean-Paul Sartre- Nausea
(NDP99) Kenneth Patchen- The Journal of Albion Moonlight

Haha let’s be real I’ll never read these

(NDP79) Pound and Fenollosa- The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan
(NDP81) Ezra Pound- The Confucian Odes
(NDP87) Harry Levin- James Joyce

A few I see quite frequently in bookstores

(NDP66) Ezra Pound- Selected Poems
(NDP73) Dylan’s Thomas- Under Milk Wood
(NDP74) Lawrence Ferlinghetti- A Coney Island of the Mind

A few I’ve only seen once in bookstores

(NDP62) Kay Boyle- Thirty Stories
(NDP68) Cassill, Gold, Hall- Fifteen by Three
(NDP94) Henry Miller- The Wisdom of the Heart

Three popular ones for good measure

(NDP84) Celín- Journey to the End of the Night
(NDP95) John Hawkes- The Lime Twig
(NDP97) Rimbaud- A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat by @ohia

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2 months ago

The best gift I have ever received. Truly tops.

For the past year and a half I have been on a reading journey. Previously I regularly read 20-30 books a year and primarily queer romance, YA fantasy, and a few best sellers. I’m not sure what flipped the switch but I have since became engrossed in seeking out quality. I also became obsessed with hunting down books and building a personal library. In my search for quality and beauty I found @fitzcarraldoeditions and have been enamored with them since. They are tough to find in the US but every time I stumble on one, I have to buy it.

My wife @ride_out has been endlessly patient with my new obsessive hobby, waiting on many a bookstore bench while I combed through each title and made far too many purchases.

She really outdid herself with this Christmas gift and I’m incredibly delighted to own this set of books.

My literary 2024 has been great, and here’s to an even better year of reading in ‘25.

#fitzcarraldo #fitzcarraldoeditions #firstdecadecollection #literaryfiction #literarynonfiction #bookstack #personalibrary by @ohia

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2 years ago

Unpack some mass markets with me.

The Golden Apples by Eudora Welty (Harcourt/HBJ)
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (Ace)
Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained by Milton (Signet)
Nabokov’s Dozen: Thirteen Stories by Vladimir Nabokov (Avon Bard) by @ohia

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2 days ago

Fall priority list.

Here’s what I’m hoping to take on in the next two months.

If I leave this year still having not read Austerlitz, you can take my account away from me for I have failed. by @ohia

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4 days ago

Spinster September hinged—> unhinged.

(Hinged) Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. They’re proper, they’re reliable, they’re invisible. This one had a fantastic bite to the ending.

(Neutral) In a Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor. Spinster Aunt Ethel is a supporting character and a delight. Gossipy, pot-stirring, harmless. A favorite literary character of mine.

(Unhinged) Wish Her Safe at Home by Stephen Benatar. Rachel Waring is batshit crazy and we love her for it.

I’m thrilled to have finally read Barbara Pym this September! Thank you @pear.jelly for hosting #spinsterseptember! by @ohia

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8 days ago

Marilynne Robinson is just astounding. I think so often of this quote from her book Gilead:

“I am thinking about the word “just.” I almost wish I could have written that the sun just *shone* and the tree just *glistened*, and the water just *poured* out of it and the girl just *laughed*—when it’s used that way it does indicate a stress on the word that follows it, and also a particular pitch of the voice. People talk that way when they want to call attention to a thing existing in excess of itself, so to speak, a sort of purity or lavishness, at any rate something ordinary in kind but exceptional in degree.”

Usually I think about the first part of that quote. The simple pleasure of just *glistening* and the yearning that pitch of voice, that emphasis, evokes in me. It brings to mind my grandmother and the plainness of her speech, the beauty in the unadorned. But Housekeeping makes me focus on the second part of the quote because Robinson’s writing is a thing existing in excess of itself. Her settings and characters are a sort of purity or lavishness, people and places ordinary in kind but exceptional in degree.

No one does Americana like Robinson. Her words are routed nostalgia inlaid with reverence, planed and sanded by the fine grit of simplicity, yearning rubbed into the grain like oil. Her care is her craftsmanship and I am just *enthralled*. by @ohia

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19 days ago

It was a good couple of months of reading while I was off work but now work has returned, the rain has returned, and even though summer is not over yet, it feels like fall so let’s reflect. The stack on the right is what I said I was going to read in July and August. The stack on the left is what I actually read.

I didn’t get to my long awaited reread of my favorite book since childhood, The Power of One. I’m so curious how I’ll feel about it now that I’ve read so many powerhouse classics. It’s tough to prioritize rereads with so many new things crowding in. I also didn’t get to Buddenbrooks. After Effingers, I figured one German family epic was enough for the year.

Represented but not shown are Valeria Luisella’s Beginning Middle End, which was a beautiful audiobook read by the author including soundscapes and a really stellar final chapter and This is Not Miami by Fernanda Melchor—on loan to a friend.

Highs of the summer were Absalom, Absalom! which is now on my all-time favorites list; my most anticipated release of the year, ADA by the great Mark Haber; Giovanni’s Room; Beginning Middle End; Pitch Dark; La Batarde; The Duke; and Housekeeping.

So many killer books in this pile. I hope to bury the stress of the start of a new school year—my 15th year teaching— in another great pile of books.

Most anticipated: Pym’s Excellent Women and Fosse’s Vaim.

#nyrbsummer by @ohia

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22 days ago

#nyrbsummer wrap-up. Thanks for hosting, @thewrittenroute!

I finished 5 @nyrbooks this summer and am currently reading The Land Breakers. This is your yearly reminder that summer isn’t over yet! And while I followed the crowd and posted my wrap-up we still have 16 more days of my favorite season. Read on!

I have an easy favorite of the summer, which was Renata Adler’s Pitch Dark. Phenomenal and will likely be a favorite of the year. Thanks for hosting the group read, Katie!

A Handbook on Hanging was a delightful gift and buddy read with @hvbooknerd. It was a treat reading with you, Kevin!

I read Carrington, Ginzburg, and now Ehle with my NYRB themed Fable book club (come join us!).

And I suffered through Effingers because I planned the damn thing.

Here’s to NYRBs year round…. But also, make way because #newdirectionsnovember is coming! by @ohia

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23 days ago

Muriel really went out on a limb with this one. I gave her a little wave while she was out there and now I’m gently, lovingly coaxing her back in. The Mandelbaum Gate was written in 1965 and takes place in Israel and Jordan (now Palestine). I was worried down which forking path Spark’s 1960’s Catholicism would lead. Politically, this book was an interesting time capsule and possibly was a bit of an early career crisis for Dame Spark. It felt like she wanted to get into the meat AND gristle, I just found it to be a rather boring, laborious chew.

Spark really played with her structure and it was told less linearly than her previous work. The to-do of this book was fairly straightforward but the looping narrative made it needlessly complex and kept killing the momentum.

I would only recommend The Mandelbaum Gate for a Spark completist (which we will be @literary.woman @mookse 💁‍♀️). I’m very curious what @drjamesbailey has to say about this one in Like a Cat Loves a Bird…

I’ve passed through the gate and now onto September’s Spark, The Public Image #22monthswithmuriel by @ohia

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a month ago

@ndpublishing back to school sale!

I’m working on my ND Poetry Pamphlet collection (of which I had one) and added Guilar and Davis/Weinberger.

And I grabbed this cool William Carlos Williams facsimile manuscript.

I haven’t heard much about this Stevie Smith book, Novel on Yellow Paper. Have you read it? This book was previously published in ND’s Revived Modern Classics series, so naturally, I’ll need that too. I’ll try to read this one first though. Maybe.

The sale wraps up today and while most of their popular items are sold out, you can still get all four of these lesser-known titles.

Let me see your New Directions sale hauls! by @ohia

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a month ago

Effingers is Gabriele Tergit’s 800 page German epic following a Jewish family over three generations and across two wars.

It was extremely fast paced and a fast read for its bulk. I struggled with its breadth over depth, its stilted tell-don’t-show dialogue, and its disjointed scenes. If I hadn’t been leading the group read I would have bailed 300 pages in from lack of interest.

This book is an Instagram darling and every time I dislike something so many people I respect loved, I’m left a little disoriented and out of step. But, in the end I’m glad I read it because if nothing else, it contextualized a lot of history for me. What I learned in school about the world wars feels like little islands, floating and disjointed. Effingers built some bridges of context between those islands. I understand some of the cause and effect that I had never examined before.

If the politics and economics of this time period interest you, this book will be a slam dunk. If you’re interested in depth of character, nuanced relationships, or well, nuance of any sort, you’ll probably find it better done elsewhere. This thing is a fly swatter, whereas I might be more interested in a scalpel.

Thanks to my friends who read alongside me for offering your insights each week! I wouldn’t have done it without you!

#nyrbsummer with @thewrittenroute and #womenintranslationmonth by @ohia

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a month ago

A little @ndpublishing Bibelots clean up and check-in. Looks like I’m about half way there if slide three is a complete list.

Bibelots are the late 90’s novella collection from New Directions that predates the Pearls collection. Everything and Nothing, In Search of Duende, and Patriotism are published under both collections.

@philosopherordog how are you coming along on your collection? Do you have them all yet?

#ndcollector #newdirectionsbibelots by @ohia

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a month ago