Welcome to Purse Book, a weekly newsletter about reading hot little books & being a gal on the go. If you haven’t already, you absolutely may subscribe now:
Starting with the first, because I like the photo best: M. F. K. Fisher's Consider the Oyster is 5.0 x 7.8 x 0.3 inches & a delicious 96 pages.
I snatched this copy from *an interior design tableau* at this oyster bar. I had a time limit because I was meeting friends, and I didn’t really want to steal the book, so that was fun! You can see two other books that I’d brought for the day, to the side, abandoned (including Bea Setton’s Berlin, which is not a Purse Book in dimension, but is a Purse Book in spirit because the protagonist is loafing a lot, reading grumpily, and constantly trying to navigate public transportation).
Alison Mills Newman’s Francisco, from 1974, is 5 x 8 x 0.5 inches & 128 pages.
talking, walking, sneezing, shaking your hand, entering a room, leaving a party, picking up a glass
I read it on the trolley.
McKenzie Wark’s Raving is 7 x 4.96 x 0.47 inches & a transcendent 136 pages.
Can’t remember where I read this... feels fitting for the content! Loved carrying it around, such a good shock of pink.
Muriel Spark's The Public Image from 1968 is 5 x 8 x 0.4 inches & 144 calculated pages.
Trolley also.
Love by Hanne Ørstavik, translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken, is 5.88 x 7.01 x 0.35 inches & 125 pages.
Went to my calendar for the week before in February; I had a handful of dinner plans, so vague memories of reading this waiting for friends, getting into a very sullen mood.
Sophia Giovannitti's Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex is 5.8 x 8.5 x 0.69 inches & 192 pages.
Amtrak!
Madeline Cash's Earth Angel is 5 x 7.75 x 0.5 inches & 152 pages.
Bought this at Unnameable, read it in Prospect Park (I know) on a super bright Friday evening waiting for the appropriate time to walk to Hart. I was looking over the boathouse where there was a wedding, which meant I probably only read like 20 pages in the hour I was loitering, and read the rest… where? The train?
Cookie Mueller's Walking Through Clear Water in Pool Painted Black is 4.5 x 7 x 0.31 inches & 160 pages.
Don’t remember sitting still for this at all, which is in keeping with this book’s extremely mobile spirit.
Margo Jefferson's Constructing a Nervous System is 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches & 191 pages.
Amtrak!