BOOKS | Bought Rabelais and Rasmussen

I went back down to Borders to take a look, hoping something may turn up that will allow me to use my 35% off coupon. I finally settled on the new Penguin Classics translation of Gargantua and Pantagruel. I am interested in Rabelais partly because of Mikhail Bahktin. And recently, The Rebel Angels with its ribald spirit further aroused in me the desire to read Gargantua and Pantagruel. Rabelais was also called the "Laughing Philosopher." I like that idea.

Also picked up the hardcover version of Knud Rasmussen's Across Arctic America: Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition from another bookstore. Last month I watched a pretty good film, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen. It planted a seed of interest in Rasmussen's Arctic expeditions, and it made me look further to This Cold Heaven, that I had planned to read for the Non-Fiction Five Challenge. I need to post on This Cold Heaven soon. I'm on a juicy bit, where Gretel Ehrlich is telling the tale of Rasmussen's trials and tribulations and the many tales of the Inuits that he has collected. It is a book to be enjoyed from afar, preferably somewhere cozy and warm.

I'm looking at the list of books I've bought this year alone, from January 2007 onwards. We're not even halfway through the year and I already own 40 new books. No wonder I have not enough shelf space.