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arbieroo

Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog

It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.

Currently reading

Station Zero
Philip Reeve
Progress: 220/282 pages
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition
Ursula K. Le Guin, Charles Vess
Progress: 749/997 pages
The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry
Robert Chandler
The Uncertain Land and Other Poems
Patrick O'Brian
Progress: 8/160 pages
The Heptameron (Penguin Classics)
Marguerite de Navarre
Progress: 152/544 pages
The Poems and Plays of John Masefield
John Masefield
Progress: 78/534 pages
Poems Selected
Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes
Progress: 4/50 pages
Selected Poems
U A Fanthorpe
Progress: 18/160 pages
The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse
Mick Imlah, Robert Crawford
Hainish Novels & Stories, Vol. 2
Ursula K. Le Guin
Progress: 133/789 pages

Ted Hughes and the OCD of Complete Reading

Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being - Ted Hughes

I occasionally get OCD about completing lists. The worst case was when I was hiking all the 2,000ft summits of Wales and was leaving for the USA with half a dozen or so to go...I would have gone completely nuts having to wait three years to finish...but I also get like this about writers sometimes, when I've read most of their stuff - I need to track down that obscure book that no-one reads just to be able to say I've read everything.

 

Well, I'm at that stage with Ted Hughes - there's hardy anything he wrote for adults that I haven't read - but this monster of a book about Shakespeare's plays is one book still needing to be ticked off. I spotted it in a 2nd Hand store that focuses mainly on 1st Eds. and old eds. months ago but was repulsed by the price tag...

 

Recently I checked whether I could get a new copy: Fifty pounds for a print-on-demand. Back I went to the 2nd Hand store where I picked up this 1st Edition  with slightly damaged dust cover for 45 quid...