I purged a bunch of stuff off the shelves. Of course, not everything I got rid of is something I didn’t like — I just figure it can remain part of my virtual library without having to take up real space. And of course, some of the stuff I got rid of I’ve already forgotten and hope to never think about again. Here are a few that stay in the virtual library.

*** Walter Gropius – The New Architecture and the Bauhaus. I took a modern architecture class in college, for which this was one of the textbooks. I love modern architecture, both the good and the bad, both the successes and the magnificent failures, and I love the Bauhaus. I kept this so long mostly as a reminder of that.
*** Julian Barnes – Talking it Over. This was the book that taught me terms like “crepuscular” and “rebarbatively quotidian”. It’s also one of the first “unreliable narrator” books I remember really noticing and appreciating. Its Rashomon-like structure makes for some very funny bits. I may even want to reread this one again someday (though I somehow never connected that much with other of his books), but had gotten kind of tired of it.
** Milorad Pavic – Dictionary of the Khazars. One of the few books that survived the wax and wane of my interest in experimental fiction. I read a lot of gimmicky books for a while there, and this was one of the few in which I thought the gimmick (story told in a series of encyclopedia entries in multiple conflicting encyclopedias, and the user must do his own cross-referencing) had something to it. Though as often happens, the decent gimmick was somewhat wasted on a story that wasn’t itself that compelling (see e.g. Timecode).
*** Roald Dahl – My Uncle Oswald. I love Roald Dahl, but Uncle Oswald isn’t really one of his better inventions.
*** Dorris Dorrie – Love, Pain, and the Whole Damn Thing. I really liked this book sometime in the 90s (and the lovely Edward Gorey cover on my edition), but I just didn’t think I’d want to read it again.
Leo Marks – Between Silk and Cyanide. Already reviewed.
Charles Yu – Third Class Superhero. Already reviewed.
Patrick Neate – City of Tiny Lights. Already reviewed.
Patrick Suskind – Perfume
Jeffrey Steingarten – The Man Who Ate Everything
Georges Perec – Life A User’s Manual. I mostly enjoyed this. It was left behind by an ex-girlfriend.