Books Acquired Recently: Wedding Edition

My partner and I got married on Friday, and did some shopping at local bookstores with some money we received as a gift to celebrate. Clerc’s, Mandel’s, and Nelson’s books were bought at Little City Books in Hoboken, New Jersey, and the others were bought at the Strand in Manhattan.

Baker, Nicholson. Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act. 2020. New York: Penguin Books, 2021.

Baker is one of my favorite writers, but I haven’t had a chance to get to his latest book yet. I decided that now is the time despite its depressing-sounding subject matter.

Clerc, Benoît. David Bowie: All the Songs; The Story Behind Every Track. Trans. Simon Burrows, Caroline Higgitt, Paul Ratcliffe. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2021.

This is the book my partner chose as my wedding gift. Bowie is an important queer role model for me, so I look forward to reading it!

Kern, Leslie. Feminist City. 2019. London: Verso, 2021.

As a city person, I enjoy reading about cities, and I’m interested in reading about how to make them more just.

Mandel, Emily St. John. Sea of Tranquility. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022.

I love Mandel’s earlier novel Station Eleven, and decided to buy Sea of Tranquility after reading about its relationship to the earlier book. There is an intriguing sticker on the dust jacket of Sea of Tranquility that reads “Signed first edition with exclusive content.” It is, indeed, autographed, but the copyright page simply calls it the “First Edition” without any other noting of the “exclusive content.” However, at the back of the book there is a note from Mandel that says that she believes in supporting independent presses and independent bookstores, so this edition, which has an extra chapter of the novel Marienbad (a fictional novel within Sea of Tranquility) in it following Mandel’s note, is being sold exclusively at independent bookstores. How cool!

Nelson, Maggie. Bluets. Seattle: Wave Books, 2009.

I enjoy all of Nelson’s work that I’ve read and have been wanting to read this collection for a while. I finally saw it on a bookstore shelf and decided that now is the time.

Strachey, Dorothy. Olivia. 1949. New York: Penguin Books, 2020.

Carley Moore’s fantastic new novel Panpocalypse mentions Strachey’s book, which I hadn’t heard of before. I decided to buy it based on this reference.