Books Purchased 22 December 2006

The local Borders was offering a 40% off promotion for every 4 full-priced books bought. It's mind-boggling, the kind of promotion they have. From the business angle I think they are nuts to cut the profit margin like that - but as someone who buys too many books, I loved it.

My 4 titles purchased - and recorded at the sidebar are:

1. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects Vol 1 & 2 Giorgio Vasari
2. The Story of Art E. H. Gombrich
3. Finding Time Again Marcel Proust
4. Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. Jeremy Mercer

I was hoping to pick up the remaining 2 volumes of In Search of Lost Time that I need to complete the collection. Alas, Borders was out of the specific edition of The Prisoner & The Fugitive. Meanwhile, since reading Jonathan Harr's The Lost Painting, I've picked up a renewed interest in learning about Caravaggio and other old masters. So I've picked up the authoritative The Story of Art as well as Vasari's Lives of Painters, Sculptors and Architects. Michael Dirda recommends the latter as one of the "must-reads" for a lifetime of learning about arts.

Then there is Jeremy Mercer's account of his stay at the famous Shakespeare & Co. bookstore in Paris (not THE Sylvia Beach bookstore, but an old bookstore of the same name.) They filmed bits of the Ethan Hawke/Julie Delpy movie, Before Sunset at old Shakespeare & Co.