Confession time:
I just (well, they came today) re-bought two books to replace one book I already owned. I got volumes 1 and 2 of Nevins' Ordeal of the Union in a 1990ish omnibus. Retired library book, paperback, ok condition for $25. It's one hell of a lazy omnibus, though. They didn't even combine the indices. Also I've been using the crap out of it and the library tape holding the spine together is starting to show the wear.
I go online, mostly thinking about getting the next volume or two, and land on the original volumes for a penny each. Hardcover. Snapped those up and got the next one in the series too. The first arrived a week ago and the thing's beautiful. First printing, original dust jacket, not even a library stamp on it. The the other two appear to also be first printings, but are withdrawn library stock. The Fruits of Manifest Destiny came sans dust jacket and so will not look cool on the shelf next to the other, but it's this great maroon cover with faded fake bronze writing on the spine. It looks like an old book should look. Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos has the jacket, plus that plastic coating libraries put on the things. So it'll look swanky next to A House Dividing.
And I can keep using the crap out of Nevins without feeling like every page turned is a day taken from the book's lifespan.
Also: I'm still inching my way through Freehling's Road to Disunion: Seccessionists Triumphant. I really don't know what it is about his prose. It's not bad and the information is very good but the second I put the book down I usually forget it exists for a week. I'm even up to early 1860 now!
I've been "reading" it alongside "reading" How the States Got their Shapes which is not anything like the book I hoped it would be. I wanted something more like a history and it's more like a coffee table book without the glossy production values.
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The only books by Delany that my library has access to are Dhalgren, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue and About Writing.
In my never-ending hunt through used bookstores, the only Delany I've ever seen is The Jewels of Aptor.
Now, it is, alas, true that New Hampshire isn't exactly a cultural center, but I go to Boston, too. Delany's one obscure dude, Dicey.
One obscure dude who has just won the Grand Master award.
Confessions: I have an excerpt of Atlantis: Model 1924 in my Anthology of African American Literature (Henry Louis Gates. Jr., ed.) and I have never been able to get through it...I've decided Delany is not "bedtime" reading.
His short story "The Star Pit" is in my copy of Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction (Gardner Dozios, ed.)
So, maybe you'll be able to find him in the library in someone else's anthology. The problem as I see it is that oftentimes a poor front-end LPAC doesn't capture all the info provided in a catalog entry. Good luck.
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Welcome to the inaugural meeting of PiPu - Paizo Inebriated Perverts United! (Slightly unfortunate acronymn... Wait! What am I thinking? It's perfect! Huzzah for PiPu!)
1. Apologies
2. Minutes of last meeting
3. HitDice's reviews of Quedeshots
4. Quedeshots' reviews of HitDice
5. Malt Whisky Enema Hour
6. Duelling with marital aids to determine who has to clean up after the Marquis De Sade
7. Prayers
8. The Loyal Toast.
I've just finished The Serpent. Didn't like it much at the beginning, but I got into it as it went on. First adventure novel I've ever read presented in the form of a 17 year old girl's diary. Now looking forward to The Dragon!
Hee hee! You guys do "apologies" too?
(We never did it in the Sparts. In the Sparts attending meetings wasn't optional.)
Yay on the Gaskell!
One obscure dude who has just won the Grand Master award.
Dicey was into Delany before Delany was cool.
Dicey might wear Raybans.
Tried to talk about I, Robot with my drunken anarcho-syndicalist hetero life partner and he told me that he was militantly anti-robot.
Vive le Ludd!!
Re: linked article: I wish more people would read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
And the first thing I see when I watch the Will Smith I, Robot flick is a FedEx delivery robot?
Vive le Ludd!
Zeugma, yes, there were an additional dozen entries of anthologies with Delany.
I have finished China Mieville's King Rat and Dan Abnett's Embedded. The first one is modern and a bit weird fantasy, the other one is military SF with hints of alternate history (Cold War continuing in Space).
Now reading Iain M. Banks Culture novel Player Of Games. Waiting for their turn are Pratchett's Snuff and non-fiction Wojtek The Bear: Polish War Hero.
I have finished China Mieville's Rat King
For a second that looked like King Rat -- maybe I'm dyslexic, too?
Finished White Jazz and read Vance's The View from Chickweed's Window in the airport, then read Lee Child's The Affair, set in rural Mississippi, while I was in rural Mississippi.
Thinking about re-reading Barker's Imajica now, but that's a fairly large undertaking.
Duh. Yeah, the title of China Mievile's book is King Rat, the same as Clavell's King Rat but otherwise having little in common.
Clavell's King Rat I have already read. I have to read Noble House in the future.
Tai-Pan was great reading. So was Shogun.
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Finished Cloud Atlas. I thoroughly enjoyed it, although I feel like I might not have made all the connections I ought to have between the various plots. David Mitchell's gift for prose was the real highlight of the book.
Now I am taking a bit of a hiatus with some poetry and some stories by David Sedaris.
I'm having to take some pretty drastic steps to get PS out of my head, so I went and hunted up This Is Your Brain On Music, which my best friend says is terrific. It was either that or MASH.
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Duh. Yeah, the title of China Mievile's book is King Rat, the same as Clavell's King Rat but otherwise having little in common.
Clavell's King Rat I have already read. I have to read Noble House in the future.
I've read all of Mieville's stuff except The Tain and random short fiction and graphic novels. I've read most of Clavell's stuff, but couldn't get through Whirlwind. Read Shogun twice, so I'm practically fluent in Japanese! ;-)
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I've read all of Mieville's stuff except The Tain and random short fiction and graphic novels.
I haven't read as much - all three Bas-Lag books, with Scar being my favorite, Two Cities, Kraken and now King Rat.
I've read most of Clavell's stuff, but couldn't get through Whirlwind.
Shogun, Tai-Pan, King Rat. I intend to read more in the future when I get my claws on the right books.
Read Shogun twice, so I'm practically fluent in Japanese! ;-)
Yeah, me too! Or maybe it was three times already? I am not sure.
And I have seen the TV series multiple times, first time when I was a child... It might have contributed to my interest in Japan and East in general.
Finished Asimov, on to Ballard.
I have finished Player of Games and Wojtek and started something called Colder War by Ian Tregillis - British warlocks and Russian psychics created by Nazi science fighting secret war during the Cold War. Or something like that, I just started.
Got sidetracked re-reading Charles deLint's Moonheart. I liked it a lot as a teenager, but in retrospect I'm finding it more than a bit nauseatingly cliche and borderline racist, especially the parts that read like "Handful of Peter" lyrics from Family Guy ("Those Indians were so awesome -- in oh, so many ways! How!")
Just finished Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence. The ending was kind of blah, and again used deus ex machina magic powers.
Gonna start The Girl That Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Steig Larsen.
I'd like to get and read The Girl With Dragon Tattoo. I saw only the second book in the local library...
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Currently reading The Godborn by Paul S. Kemp. I may not like what WoTC has done to their Roleplaying game, but I still love the lore and major characters in the Forgotten Realms. I will continue to follow The Sundering books to find out how all the Gods are coming back and magic is being fixed on Faerun.
I'd like to get and read The Girl With Dragon Tattoo. I saw only the second book in the local library...
Inter-Library Loan for it?
Decided I needed fiction and got The Name of the Wind. If anybody has ever wondered, RL Samnell resembles Pat Rothfuss.
Do you often pose like that, Sam?
[Crosses fingers]
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Do you often pose like that, Sam?
[Crosses fingers]
I don't normally wear that much clothing when I pose.
Rothfuss and I are of similar girth (and also given name, as it happens). His hair is a little bit lighter, quite a bit curlier, and more resident on the head. Given what is on display, I suspect that the hair he has on his head is simply distributed in other locations on me. Perhaps if he can be induced to shave, it will transpire that we share a single supply of hair and mine would redistribute.
But black boxer-briefs? No. Ok, maybe in spandex but that's a for special occasions kind of thing and I drape my glorious corpulence over things far too often to call it special.
*kissyface*
One of my all-time favorite books is "The Anubis Gates" by Tim Powers. I've mentioned it on these boards time and time again.
Now I'm almost finished reading it for the sixth time.
And a beautiful novel it is.
Got through The Dragon in record time - getting into the story now and I can only hope Fate smiles upon me and I can find the next two volumes somewhere...
Xmas reading consists of The Court of the Red Tsar, since what could be more seasonal than an in-depth account of the Great Terror, Black Amazon of Mars, vol. 3 of The Wheel of Time and various sabre fencing manuals. Ho ho bloody ho.
So after The Dragon you're going to read The Dragon Reborn - and it's not even a sequel.
I find this somewhat amusing.
Re-read the first volume of The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity. Fun stuff. Hopefully, this time I'll read further along in the series.
Finished The Coldest War. SF/Horrorish/Urban Fantasy/Alternate History story of spies, warlocks and psychics. Interesting ideas, the action becomes faster and faster. A small bit dissapointed with ending, though, but I am not fond of <redacted> unless done right.
Started and finished The Coldest Fear by Rick Reed. A crime drama/thriller. When I started to read it I was worried because the main character is detective named Jack, which is similar to an idea I have for a future short story, but thankfully, the secret twist I had in mind wasn't there.
Got a new knitting project on the needles, so I'm neck-deep in a couple of lace books.
I'm finding J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World to be a hell of a lot denser than it's meager 170ish pages would suggest. Probably comes from all of those big words he uses.
Anyway, London, covered in water, temperature up to 120 degrees, all the main characters are succumbing to some kind of Jungian collective unconsciousness psychological reversion to the Triassic era. Pretty neat, but, so far, rather lacking in action. Although that might change soon now that some piratical-looking salvagers have just shown up.
Started sir Terry Pratchett's Snuff.
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I'm reading Maryrose Wood's The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series, which is like a funnier Jane Eyre meets "The Wolfman" for 12-year-olds. I've seen the series compared to Lemony Snickett's "A Series of Unfortunate Events," but I actually think Wood's series is better written, with more literary allusions. I'm on book 3, "The Unseen Guest," so far.
Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch, and the latest issue of Swedish football-magazine Offside.
Dragonflight - yup that one. Never read it before in my life and figure I better correct that oversight (besides all of my regular series are months away from a new release)
Decided I needed fiction and got The Name of the Wind. If anybody has ever wondered, RL Samnell resembles Pat Rothfuss.
Finished today. Surprised how understated the plot was for such a compelling read. I got to the last hundred pages and wondered where the climax was. But I suppose that makes sense for something trying to be an autobiography. Lives don't really have plots.
Wait till you finish The Wise Man's Fear...
Finally finished The Drowned World.
Pretty interesting shiznit. Have been dipping into a light-hearted tome by one Roman Rosdolsky entitled Engels and the "Nonhistoric" Peoples: The National Question in the Revolution of 1848 which I found an essay about by a fellow ultraleft sectarian here.
Starting tomorrow, I swear, is The Jewels of Aptor.
It being holiday time, lots of reading has been done. Finished The Court of the Red Tsar, and The Dragon Reborn. My Mum also lent me Music and Silence by Rose Tremain - not my usual sort of thing, but well written and pretty depressing, even if the lute-player got his girl at the end. I also got through The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, which I loved to bits, and the Infantry Sabre Manual for 1845. I'm out of Conan books, though, so I'm getting the shakes a bit...
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Been rereading a bunch of older stuff in my collection.
Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams (who can occasionally be as close as one can get to a Zelazny fix without actually reading Zelazny). I first read a snippet of this book in an awesome magazine called Omni, long, long since gone, called 'Sarah runs the weasel.'
The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton, by Larry Niven. Not as involved as his Ringworld books, but interesting, nonetheless. I forgot how political he could get, although I like that sort of thing, exploring not just technology, but also culture and society and governance has changed / adapted in a futurist setting. (Probably why I'm such a fan of Peter Hamilton, whose politics I'm probably vociferously opposed to, but who writes a darn good book, nonetheless.)
Creatures of Light & Darkness, by Roger Zelazny. Not as good as Lord of Light or Isle of the Dead, but kinda fun.
Spellstone of Shaltus and Master of Hawks, by Linda Bushyager. Fantasy from the '70's, when stuff got weird. Gets a little Andre Norton-y with a dash of Fred Saberhagen, I guess.
Blind Justice, by S.N. Lewitt. Sometimes I find a book in my collection and have forgotten what it's about. Sometimes there was a reason for that... That book's going away now, so I don't make that mistake again. Weird not-very-good cyberpunk-ish stuff.
Next on the list, a re-read of the Elric books, by Moorcock, although I've just noticed I'm missing book 4, aptly named The Vanishing Tower. I better go pick that up to complete the set.
I should reread Creatures Of Light & Darkness. It was too weird for me when I read it the first time ages ago...
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I should reread Creatures Of Light & Darkness. It was too weird for me when I read it the first time ages ago...
It's still kind of weird. I love Horus' power to increase the velocity of things with his mind.
"The last time I was here, I proved who I was by shooting an arrow into a solid block of marble. This time, I'll remove it."
"But that's much easier..."
Horus puts his hand an inch above the block of marble and accelerates it down with thousands of times it's normal force, shattering the marble into rubble and withdrawing the arrow.
"You are indeed Horus, my lord..."
The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton, by Larry Niven. Not as involved as his Ringworld books, but interesting, nonetheless.
I LOVE these stories, but I can sympathize with Niven as to why he wrote so few of them: "When you write mystery scifi stories, you've got two sets of rules you have to follow, and it's hard to get the story to come out interestingly without inadvertently violating one or the other." (Probably misquoted, but that's the gist of it.)
Just finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Steig Larsson. Thought it was gonna end on a cliffhanger, but it got resolved in the end. No need for a 4th ghostwritten book.
Gonna start Daemon by Daniel Suarez.