I try to cadge books from publishing houses rather than buy them new. I have the perfectly genuine excuse that I want to review them. But that doesn't mean that I don't
buy books as well; usually, though not always, second-hand. I was in Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland recently, then a day in Stockholm. Here's what I bought:
- Doktor Glas, Hjalmar S?derberg (novel)
- Gotlands historia i fickformat, Carl Johan Gardell (history / tourism)
- Dikter p? gutam?l, Gertmar Arvidsson (dialect poetry)
- Azalea, Walter Ljungquist (novel)
- V?gsk?l, Walter Ljungquist (novel)
- Vandring med m?nen, Walter Ljungquist (novel)
- K?llan, Walter Ljungquist (novel)
And I was given by the authors:
- Det liknar ingenting, Einar Askestad (short-stories)
- Fr?n en grop i sommaren, Bror R?nnholm (prose poetry)
Bought in Stockholm:
- Efter 30 000 sidor, Thomas Warburton (memoirs of a translator)
You will understand that my wheely bag was rather heavy, those few times I had to actually carry it, as opposed to wheel it along.
The frequent mention of Walter Ljungquist is because he's a neglected author I've wanted to read for about twenty years. The translator Thomas Warburton is ninety years old this year and has translated, among other things, Joyce's
Ulysses, Sterne's
Tristram Shandy, and books by Orwell, Wells, Masters, Conan Doyle, Faulkner, Styron, Djuna Barnes, Henry Green, a play or two by Shakespeare, plus several important Finnish authors into his native Swedish. The name Thomas Warburton is indeed English by origin. Until his 33rd year Warburton was a British citizen, although he has lived all of his life in Finland, apart from a couple of years in Sweden during WWII.