Last week, I said no more new books, at least for a while. What a dismal failure. The continued death spiral of four nearby Borders is simply too tempting to a bargain-loving book jockey like myself. Below is this week’s intake.

Antwerp, Roberto Bolañ0 (translated by Natasha Wimmer). New York: New Directions, 2010. Picked up at a Borders that looked like a cyclone had blown through.

I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader, Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 1976. This volume is probably on every third undergraduate shelf, but there are many shameful gaps in my library. Remedy courtesy of the plundered Borders.

Mafia: Inside the Dark Heart: The Rise and Fall of the Sicilian Mafia, A.G.D. Maran. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2008. There must be a lot going on in this book, because it has two subtitles. Borders.

Crime: A Pictorial History of Crime, 1840 to the Present, Julian Symons. New York: Bonanza Books, 1966. Indie record/book shop two towns over. I was actually buying records, but they had some inexpensive volumes I didn’t want to pass up.

The Magical Arts: A Short History, C.A. Burland. New York: Horizon Press, 1966. Indie record/book shop two towns over.

Death Commits Bigamy, James M. Fox. New York: Dell Books, no publication date (probably late 1950s). I love the early, pulpy paperbacks with the lurid covers. This one’s by the author of “The Iron Virgin”! Indie record/book shop two towns over.

(V. Charm)