Search Results: Books from Lightholder Books

Confessions of Love by Uno Chiyo. 1990 Peter Owen, first UK edition (c/r 1935),157 pages. Chiyo was a Japanese author, magazine founder, and kimono designer who shocked Japanese society with her public love affairs and short bobbed haircut. Later in life she was recognized as a legend and her novels recognized as masterpieces. Confessions was her debut novel and depicts her first major love affair and Japan in the roaring twenties. This edition was the first translated into English.
Condition: VG
"I became so furious I wanted to spit."

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. 2008 Random House, first edition, 270 pages. Strout's third novel of interwoven stories that take place in rustic Maine won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into one of my personal favorite mini-series.
Condition: VG, remainder mark, bump to board
"Autumn now, November, and so many years later that when Henry runs a comb through his hair on this Sunday morning, he has to pluck some strands of gray from the black plastic teeth before slipping the comb back into his pocket."

A Cadre School Life: Six Chapters by Yang Jiang. Translation by Geremie Barme with the assistance of Bennett Lee. 1984 Joint Publishing, first U.S. edition, 91 pages. Jiang was a scholar and translator, most notably of the definitive translation of Don Quixote in China, which at the time landed her in Henan to be "reformed through labor" during the Cultural Revolution. A Cadre School Life was her acclaimed memoir of those years. According to the New York Times: "Avoiding the melodramatic tone of many other memoirs of the turbulent Cultural Revolution, she relied on understated, sometimes wry prose to recount everyday life at the "cadre school" for purged officials and scholars: digging a well, tending to her vegetable plot, befriending a puppy. Her tone turned stoic, however, in recalling the suicide of her son-in-law, who had been subjected to constant criticism from his peers for showing reactionary tendencies." Jiang was 70 when her memoir was published.
Condition: VG. Some creasing to pages
"All… Read More

The Nine Guardians by Rosario Castellanos. Translated by Irene Nicholson. 1992 Readers International reprint (c/r 1957), 272 pages. Castellanos was a feminist poet, essayist, and novelist who wrote confessional fiction and criticized male literary figures of the time. According to an essay in the Paris Review: "As a child, Castellanos was cared for by a Mayan woman, Rufina, in whose Tzotzil prayers and legends the future author discovered the joy of language. Their relationship is fictionalized in Castellanos's 1957 autobiographical debut novel, Balún-Canán (translated by Irene Nicholson as The Nine Guardians). The novel was written, Castellanos said, simply by "letting myself be carried along by the flow of my memories." It is partly narrated by a naive seven-year-old girl, who bears witness to an indigenous Mexican rebellion against the brutal feudalism practiced by her father."
Condition: VG
"Now I know that this is the voice I've been hearing ever since I was born."

Gigi / Chance Acquaintances / Julie de Carneilhan by Colette. 1952 Farrar Straus Young, 315 pages. Colette was a prolific French author, former mime and actress, and "the only great woman writer in France" according to De Beauvoir. This edition includes her most famous work Gigi, a tale of an unwitting courtesan-to-be. Julie De Carneilhan was written in the same time period. Chance Acquaintances is a novella in Colette's usual style using her name as narrator and protagonist.
Condition: Jacket is good-, spine sunned and internal foxing, book in good condition with tanning to the boards and owner name on first page.
"It is only since I first encountered human barnacles that molluscs equipped with contractile nerve-cords have filled me with horror."

The Pure and the Impure by Colette. 1967 Farrar, Straus & Giroux, first thus, 175 pages. From the New York Review of Books: "Colette herself considered The Pure and the Impure her best book, 'the nearest I shall ever come to writing an autobiography.' This guided tour of the erotic netherworld with which Colette was so intimately acquainted begins in the darkness and languor of a fashionable opium den..."
Condition: Jacket and book are very good, some wear and brown marks to the jacket, owner name on end paper and fading to boards.
"Quite expecting to be bored, I settled down on the mat allotted to me and watched the opium smoke wastefully and sluggishly streaming upward to collide, as if regretfully, with the glass panes of the skylight."

Luck O'Lady Joan: A Fairy Tale for Women by Josephine Daskam Bacon. 1913 F.G. Browne Co, 58 pages, unstated printing. Illustrated by Clara Elsene Williams. A children's Christmas story about an orphan girl melting a Scrooge's heart. Bacon wrote books for children and adults often with a female protagonist. She was also instrumental in the Girl Scout movement and wrote the guidebook.
Condition: Jacket VG with tanning and chips, book in VG condition with tanned endpapers.
"Of all the misers that ever laid one farthing on another and went hungry for a third to warm the two with, old Dudleigh Hartover of Hartover Chine was surely the stingiest and the meanest."

When the Whippoorwill by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. 1975 Mockingbird Books, second printing (c/r 1940), 248 pages. Although born elsewhere, Rawlings lived in and wrote about Florida and the people who lived there, at one point leading to a lawsuit for invasion of privacy from her neighbor. Rawlings won the Pultizer and was a good friend of Zora Neale Hurston. When the Whippoorwill is a collection of eleven stories.
Condition: VG, some creasing to the cover.
"The sky had emptied itself for him of living things."

The Crazy Ladies by Joyce Elbert. 1969 New American Library, first edition, 438 pages. Elbert, who died in 2009, had a slight resurgence recently with the release of a book of eight essays. In an article for the Star Tribune, Kathleen Rooney starts her review of A Tale of Five Cities : "A contemporary of Jacqueline Susann, credited by Cosmopolitan magazine with writing "the first really great dirty book," Joyce Elbert made a splash in 1969 with her novel "The Crazy Ladies," a slinky, metropolitan, woman-centric romp that sold more than 4 million copies worldwide."
Condition: Jacket VG with some wear, book VG with some bumps
"There was nothing she would not do in bed if it struck her as amusing at the moment."

Blue Pastures by Mary Oliver. 1995 Harcourt Brace/ Harvest Original, first paperback edition, 122 pages. Mary Oliver was a Pulitzer and National Book Award winning prolific poet who was greatly inspired by nature. Her career in poetry was unusual in that her books actually sold well. In her New York Times obituary: "For her abiding communion with nature, Ms. Oliver was often compared to Walt Whitman and Robert Frost. For her quiet, measured observations, and for her fiercely private personal mien (she gave many >readings but few interviews, saying she wanted her work to speak for itself), she was likened to Emily Dickinson." Blue Pastures consists of fifteen short prose pieces.
Condition: VG. Inscription on end paper.
"I never met any of my friends, of course, in a usual way---they were strangers, and lived only in their writings."

Necessities of Life by Adrienne Rich. 1966 Knopf, first paperback printing, 79 pages. According to Rich's obituary in the New York Times: "Adrienne Rich, a poet of towering reputation and towering rage, whose work — distinguished by an unswerving progressive vision and a dazzling, empathic ferocity — brought the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse and kept it there for nearly a half-century...While some critics called her poetry polemical, she remained celebrated for the unflagging intensity of her vision, and for the constant formal reinvention that kept her verse — often jagged and colloquial, sometimes purposefully shocking, always controlled in tone, diction and pacing — sounding like that of few other poets." Necessities was her fourth book.
Condition: VG
"You are falling asleep and I sit looking at you
old tree of life
old man whose death I wanted
I can't stir you up now."

Seven Winters and Afterthoughts: Memories of a Dublin Childhood and Pieces on Writing by Elizabeth Bowen. 1962 Knopf, first thus, 273 pages. Bowen was an acclaimed Irish British novelist most known for Last September, and Death of the Heart. She was interested stifled lives, and expertly portrayed wartime London in Heat of the Day. Seven Winters details Bowen's first seven years in Ireland, and Afterthoughts takes on Eudora Welty, Virginia Woolf, and more.
Condition: Jacket in VG condition with chips to the spine, book in VG condition, some wearing to boards, tanning to endpapers.
"I was content, however, not to intrude on angels by seeing one."

Green Song by Edith Sitwell. 1946 View Editions, first U.S. edition, 49 pages. Sitwell was a British critic and poet, known for her lavish costumes, which became the butt of many jokes, and for her wit and support of other writers. The Green Song was published in the middle of her career.
Condition: Jacket acceptable with chips and tears, book in good condition, owner bookplate on front pastedown
"Then, Sun of my life, she went to warm the Dead,
And I must now go sunless in their stead."

An Academic Question by Barbara Pym. 1986 Dutton, first American edition, 182 pages. Pym was an English novelist, forever forgotten and rediscovered. In a retrospective in the New York Times: "However remote her themes may seem — a churn of parish politics and petty romances — beneath the gentle surfaces of her novels is a slow-building comedy, salt wit in a saline drip. " Pym wrote thirteen novels, Academic was published posthumously.
Condition: Jacket in good condition with some wear, price clipped, book in good condition with owner name on end paper
"What jewels will you be wearing tonight, Mother?"

The Soldier from Virginia by Marjorie Bowen. 1912 D. Appleton Company, first U.S. edition, 357 pages. Bowen was a prolific British author with many pseudonyms who published historical and gothic romances, this one about George Washington. According to christopherfowler.co.uk "Bowen's first novel, 'The Viper Of Milan', set in fourteenth century Italy, was published to acclaim when she was just twenty one, but had first been rejected by eleven publishers who felt it was not the sort of thing a young Edwardian woman should write." Under financial duress, she wrote more than a 150 works.
Condition: Good-. Wear and staining to boards, first illustration shaken, rear hinge cracked
"He turned instantly and shut the door; a wave of cowardice shook Martha, but the thought of the lifetime of regret to be lived through if she let him go like this and he never came back nerved her."

The Prime of Life by Simone de Beauvoir. 1962 World Publishing Company, first U.S. edition, 479 pages. The second installment of de Beauvoir's lifelong autobiography project, this volume covers her move to Paris, meeting Sartre, and developing as a writer.

Condition: VG/G. Some wear to jacket, boards bowed a bit, pages clean.

"To have a door I could shut was still the height of bliss for me."

Cast a Cold Eye by Mary McCarthy. 1950 Harcourt Brace, first edition, 212 pages. Collection of seven short stories, some having appeared in the New Yorker and Mademoiselle, including "The Old Men" and "The Blackguard."

Condition: Good/VG. Jacket has many chips and and tear on front cover, see photos. Boards shelf worn, pages clean.

"She would leave him, she thought, as soon as the petunias bloomed."

To the North by Elizabeth Bowen. 1945 first Penguin edition (c/r 1932) 286 pages. Bowen was an Irish-British novelist and To the North, about a love affair with tragic consequences, was one of her most acclaimed novels.

Condition: Foxing on the cover, chip to tail of spine, bent corner in bottom right of cover and pages, some rubbing on side of spine, exposed staples with some paper tearing around them on first couple pages, owner on half title page, in acceptable+ condition. Please see photos.

"Uncertain thoughts of home filled the station restaurant where the English sat lunching uneasily, facing the clock."

I Will Maintain by Marjorie Bowen. 1943 first Penguin edition (c/r 1910). Penguin books published during WWII were subject to paper rations. The paper quality of the pages are thinner than a normal Penguin book and the print runs were smaller. Features ads for Kolynos dental cream, Peek Frean's biscuits, and Cravena cigarettes. Marjorie Bowen was one of the pseudonyms of Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long and she wrote in a variety of genres. I Will Maintain is the first of a trilogy of historical fiction based on William III, who fought France three times.

Condition: 1/2 inch worn from both head and tail of cover spine, bent cover corners, foxing to matte cover, owner name on title page, exposed staples, pages tanned but clean. Please see photos for extent of condition, acceptable.

"Not that his trust in himself was diminished; but he had already begun to doubt if he had taken his services to the best market or pledged himself to the most profitable of masters."

Creatures in an Alphabet by Djuna Barnes. 1982 Dial Press, first printing. Barnes was an author and illustrator. She is best known for her modernist novel Nightwood, a 1936 lesbian classic, though she published little afterward due to alcoholism. Creatures was her last work, and was initially conceived as a bestiary for children, although an adult may appreciate it more.
Condition: Jacket in good+ condition, some browning, book in VG condition with inscription on end paper.
"When hovering, the Hummingbird
Is always going home (it's said).
By flying in a single spot
It's striving fast to think it's not."