Archive for Books Etc
September 4, 2008 at 2:39 pm · Filed under Books Etc
Last year, Picador published new, trade paperback editions of the first four books of the Mary Russell series. These are some of my all-time favourite books. My paperback editions of the early novels have seen better days–I’ve re-read The Beekeeper’s Apprentice so many times in the last few years that it’s dog-eared, its spine creased, its cover and pages worn (and I’m the kind of reader who, after reading a book two or three times, could probably still return it to the bookstore without raising any eyebrows.)
I have managed to acquire all but the first two books in hardcover, but those are the two that are most in need of replacement. Luckily, the Picador editions are absolutely gorgeous, inside and out, with vibrant covers and elegant, readable type on the inside. Even more luckily, these books, which retail for $16.25 in Canada, became available at BookCloseouts.com, an online bargain book site, for $4.99 apiece. Best deal ever, because I couldn’t justify to myself spending $65+tax on four books I already own in other editions. And believe me–I tried.
I wish Picador would release the later books in the series in the same edition, but I think I read somewhere that they don’t own the rights to publish them which, if true, is a pity. Anyway, enjoy the beautiful cover art and a couple of (slighly blurry) shots of the inside. I’ll be over here, cackling over my loot.
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Tags: Laurie R. King, Mary Russell
August 29, 2008 at 11:13 pm · Filed under Books Etc
This is my first time participating in the R.I.P. challenge, but I enjoyed the Once Upon a Time challenge so much this spring that I’ve been looking forward to it ever since. The challenge doesn’t officially start until September 1, but I’ve already read two books that fit the bill, so I guess I’ll be doing Peril the First:
Read four books of any length, from any subgenre of scary stories that you choose: mystery, suspense, thriller, dark fantasy, gothic, horror, supernatural.
Here’s my list of completed and possibly reads:
- Pride and Prescience by Carrie Bebris (Gothic mystery/Austen pastiche)
- Mind Fuck by Manna Francis (Near-future dystopia/police procedural)
- Quid Pro Quo by Manna Francis (ditto)
- Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve
- Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
- The Sandman by Neil Gaiman
There is a review site for this challenge.
Tags: Book Lists, R.I.P. III
May 27, 2008 at 3:54 pm · Filed under Books Etc
As you can probably tell by the list in my far right sidebar, I like to keep up with my favourite authors, reading their new books as soon as they’re released (although my dedication to buying only used books makes that a somewhat hit-or-miss affair.) I’m pretty excited about some, though not all, of those upcoming releases.
I really wish I liked Lois McMaster Bujold’s Wide Green World series. Since Bujold is one of my favourite authors, and I usually love her books as much as I hated her last one, Legacy (i.e. with the fire of a thousand suns), I’m giving her another chance to make me care about Dag, Faun, and their world. Although I will not be buying Passage until I’ve read and liked it.
Even though I feel like the series is slowing down, getting a bit too bogged down with Sookie’s new love interests and old boyfriends, I still like it enough that I’ll be keeping my eyes open for a copy of From Dead to Worse, which was released earlier this month.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that I have a love/hate relationship going on with Laurell K. Hamilton. I love many of her characters and ideas, but I hate the embarrassingly bad grammar, long and tedious sex scenes, overabundance of male sex partners, and general dearth of plot development in everything she’s written since 2000’s Obsidian Butterfly. Sadly, I’m still hooked on both her books, even though I don’t enjoy them very much, so I’ll be looking for Blood Noir when it comes out next week, and Swallowing Darkness in October. Amazon claims that both books are over 350 pages, which is nice after some disappointingly slim volumes in the past, especially in the Meredith Gentry series.
Amazon.ca also tells me that Kenneth Oppel’s Starclimber will be released in Canada on August 22, though it isn’t due out in the States until January ‘09. They even have the cover up already, though I’m not sure if I like it. It does match the style of the others in the series, which is a point in its favour.
2009 is looking good, too—I’m dying to read The Language of Bees and Corambis. Now those I will probably be buying new!
What new books are you waiting for?
April 26, 2008 at 10:22 pm · Filed under Books Etc
It seems like the past few days have been a series of annoyances.
First, jury duty, Canada’s dullest civic obligation. Then, last night, food poisoning. I didn’t think I even knew how to throw up, but as it turned out it happened without any effort on my part. Anyway, now I can cross food poisoning off my list of New Experiences I Never Want to Try.
This morning, I woke up half an hour before I had to leave for work, to be greeted by the news that the TTC (Toronto’s public transit) had gone on strike at midnight, leaving me stranded. The TTC kindly gave its riders one hour’s notice before walking off the job. Luckily, I was able to get a ride to work, but I chose to walk home. It took me exactly an hour and a half, walking downhill.
I could have got a ride home, but I chose instead to visit some bookstores, and picked up a few books. Nine, in fact. And also stopped at the grocery store for a roast chicken. I reached home more dead than alive, but now that I’ve had a chance to revive, I’m excited about my purchases. Mostly Orson Scott Card novels (although not the ones I most wanted, namely Children of the Mind and Ender’s Shadow), but I also found Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov, which I’ve looked for in every other used bookstore I frequent, with no luck until now. So I’ve got plenty of books to fill a relaxing Sunday, which is what I intend to have tomorrow.
I hope the past few days have been more fun for you than they have for me!
April 25, 2008 at 4:20 pm · Filed under Books Etc
As I mentioned, I’m in need of some new challenges, so since I enjoyed my personal Sci-fi Classics Challenge so much, I decided to renew it in a slightly different format.
My goal remains the same: to enjoy some classic works of science fiction. This time, I’m going to read by subgenre, to get an idea of the range of stories that come under the heading “science fiction”!
I picked subgenres more-or-less at random from Wikipedia:
- Hard science fiction: Red Mars » Kim Stanley Robinson
- Social science fiction: Foundation and Empire » Isaac Asimov
- Space opera: Hyperion » Dan Simmons
- Military science fiction: The Forever War » Joe Haldeman
- Planetary romance: Dune Messiah » Frank Herbert
- Alternate history: The Man in the High Castle » Philip K. Dick
- Post-apocalyptic: A Canticle for Leibowitz » Walter M. Miller, Jr.
- Mundane science fiction: Air » Geoff Ryman
- Time travel: To Say Nothing of the Dog » Connie Willis
- Dying Earth: The City and the Stars » Arthur C. Clarke
The list is still tentative, so some of my choices may change, but I will read one book from each of ten different sci-fi subgenres during 2008.
If you have any suggestions for alternate titles, I’d love to hear them!
Tags: Book Lists, SF Subgenre Challenge
April 25, 2008 at 3:10 pm · Filed under Books Etc
I am in desperate need of more challenges, and this one sounded interesting: read a book from each of (at least) 8 consecutive decades (prior to the 21st century) by the end of 2008.
Since I only want to inspire myself without being terribly ambitious, I’m choosing to read ten 20th-century books (although I haven’t got them all picked out yet):
- 1900s: The Man Who Was Thursday » G.K. Chesterton (1908)
- 1910s:
- 1920s:
- 1930s:
- 1940s: And Be a Villain » Rex Stout (1948)
- 1950s: Palace of Desire » Naguib Mahfouz (1957)
- 1960s: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress » Robert A. Heinlein (1966)
- 1970s: Gateway » Frank Pohl (1976)
- 1980s: Hyperion » Dan Simmons (1989)
- 1990s: The Beekeeper’s Apprentice » Laurie R. King (1994)
Tags: Book Lists, Decades Challenge 2008
April 24, 2008 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Books Etc
The Sci-fi Classics Challenge was a personal challenge I started July 1, 2007, to broaden my knowledge of the best-known (and best-loved) works of science fiction. I’d just realized that, although I love the genre, I didn’t know much about its roots, or have more than sketchy knowledge of its most influential writers.
A year later, I feel like I have a much richer understanding of the genre. Of course, the ten books I read are only a fraction of all the complex, rewarding, challenging works of science fiction out there, but they are some of the best.
I now know that I love Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game more than any sci-fi novel I’ve ever read, and that it and its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, fully deserved to win both the Hugo and Nebula awards in consecutive years. I’ve discovered that although I don’t agree that Dune, by Frank Herbert, is the best SF novel around, it is definitely among the best of the genre, as are Ursula K. Le Guin’s [review: The Left Hand of Darkness] and Foundation by Isaac Asimov.
I’ve read and enjoyed The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester, who I’d never even heard of before I started the challenge. I finally got around to Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and realized that although it’s an interesting and inventive novel, Dick’s novels will probably never be among my favourites. I’ve sampled The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I didn’t enjoy, but at least now I can recognize the myriad references to it that pop up in so many other books!
I even went back to the 19th century, and read some of the earliest works of science fiction. I wasn’t thrilled with either The Time Machine or Frankenstein, but they were worth reading just to experience the roots of the genre.
All in all, I read ten books, some great and some not so great, and had a wonderful time doing it!
Tags: Sci-Fi Classics Challenge
April 24, 2008 at 9:44 pm · Filed under Books Etc
I loved the Cardathon Challenge, but I’ve already finished the six books I committed to, and the year isn’t even one-third over, so I’m re-committing to 12 more books: the 6 Enderverse books I have yet to read, and 6 non-Ender books, to sample some of Orson Scott Card’s other writing. Here are my lists:
Enderverse
- Ender’s Shadow (Bean #1)
- Shadow of the Hegemon (Bean #2)
- Shadow Puppets (Bean #3)
- Shadow of the Giant (Bean #4)
- Children of the Mind (Ender #4)
- First Meetings (Ender, short story collection)
Non-Ender
- The Memory of Earth (Homecoming: volume 1)
- The Call of Earth (Homecoming: volume 2)
- The Ships of Earth (Homecoming: volume 3)
- Seventh Son (The Tales of Alvin Maker, volume 1)
- Red Prophet (The Tales of Alvin Maker, volume 2)
- Lovelock (The Mayflower Trilogy #1, written with Kathryn H. Kidd)
Tags: Book Lists, Cardathon Challenge Redux
April 24, 2008 at 9:29 pm · Filed under Books Etc
The Cardathon Challenge was an absolute blast! It’s running for the rest of the year, so I urge anyone who isn’t familiar with Orson Scott Card’s books to at least try Ender’s Game, which is the best science fiction novel I’ve ever read.
Of the books I read for the challenge, Ender’s Game was my favourite, closely followed by Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide.
I filled my other three choices with books/series recommended by Card in his weekly column, and all of them are now favourites of mine as well. Widdershins by Charles de Lint was a wonderful book. The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner are some of the best juvenile/young adult works I’ve read, as are Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy, The Goose Girl, and Enna Burning.
Since the challenge lasts at least through 2008, and its not even the end of April, I’m going to start two other Cardathon challenges, reading the six books in the Enderverse that I have yet to read, and six non-Ender books by Card. I’m looking forward to some great reads during the rest of the year!
Tags: Cardathon Challenge
April 17, 2008 at 11:56 am · Filed under Books Etc
I really wasn’t expecting to finish this challenge so soon. It just happened that several appropriate myth/folklore/fairy tale reads fell into my lap. It worked out really well, because all the books were very different from each other, while still fitting the theme.
Widdershins by Charles de Lint was a perfect book to start with. Written by the man who is apparently the pioneer of the urban fantasy genre, and set in a North American city of his own creation, it includes a lot of Native American/Canadian myth that was almost entirely new to me. (Interestingly, to me Newford seemed like an American city, although it’s never stated—and when I checked on Wikipedia, I found that apparently Canadians tend to see it as American, while Americans assume it’s Canadian! It makes me wonder what cues we’re each picking up that say “American” or “Canadian” to us.)
Agatha Christie’s The Complete Quin & Satterthwaite wasn’t an obvious choice for inclusion into the challenge, but the folklore surrounding the Harlequin has always fascinated me. This book was a re-read, but the character of Mr. Quin was no less magical for that!
Robin McKinley’s re-telling of Beauty and the Beast in Beauty was interesting, bringing the characters to life. It’s not my favourite fairy tale re-telling, but for that matter, the original story isn’t exactly one of my favourite fairy tales. Beauty is a kids’ book and basically fluff, but fun, romantic fluff, so I enjoyed reading it.
Ironside is pretty much as far as you can get from Beauty and still be a romantic fairy tale. Holly Black’s Modern Faerie Tales are much darker in ambiance than most young adult fantasy, but that’s part of what makes them so original. Plus, unlike, say, Laurell K. Hamilton, she knows that takes more than long hair, rampant violence, and looser sexual mores to make faerie society feel truly alien.
Sorcery & Cecelia is a more traditional fantasy novel, except that it’s also an epistolary mystery set in Regency England. There was also the touch of the gothic about it, which I liked a great deal.
I enjoyed all five books I read for this challenge, and I’d recommend them all, although Widdershins, Ironside, and Sorcery & Cecelia were without question the best. I read A Midsummer Night’s Dream too recently to re-read it in June, but maybe I’ll watch the movie on Midsummer’s Eve!
Thanks, Carl, for hosting this challenge—I had a blast!
Oh, and I fulfilled my requirement for the Chunkster Challenge, but it runs all year, so I’m upping my goal from 4 chunksters to 12.
Tags: Once Upon a Time II
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