I have to store them somewhere

On Friday we're getting new bookshelves in to the living room, I'll be inheriting the living room bookshelves and passing off the bigger bookshelf pictured here to my flatmate.

There's a lot of carrying books in my immediate future but I should net about twice as much shelf space, so the end result should be a lot nicer than this mess.

Books Bought Dec 8th

36) Wilde Stories 2010 - Steve Berman (editor) (epub)

Where? Wizards Tower

Why?

I just wanted some short stories to read while I loafed around. No other reason. Wilde 2011 was good, so I gave 2010 a bash.

Wizards Tower seems to have fixed whatever problem I was having with it's search function, which is nice.

The Damage: €5.41

Total Spend: €366.24

Books Bought Dec 4th 2011

33) The Ghost Brigade - John Scalzi (used pb)

Where? Chapters

Why?

Back in Dublin I endured a 45 minute wait in Carphone Warehouse to buy a phone charger to replace the one I'd left in my hotel room*

That overwith I was in desperate need of retail therapy.

I surprised myself some by how much I loved Old Man's War, so it's sequel time.

The Damage: €3.99

34) Under the Poppy - Kathy Koja (new hb)

Where? Chapters

Why?

Under the Poppy recently won the 2011 Gaylactic Spectrum Award.

The awards honor outstanding works of science fiction, fantasy and horror which include significant positive explorations of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered characters, themes, or issues. The last 5 years or so of winners are some of my favourite books so clearly I'm on the same wavelength as some of the jurists.

Also the cover is really pretty, it's a small press publication and there are creepy puppets. This all screams 'You must own me.'

John from Chapters said he could get it in for me for €19.99

My finances being a little dire I hemmed and hawed for a bit, and asked, only partly rhetorically, if I should really be blowing all my money on this.

'You're not blowing your money, your spending it on things you need,' said John. Oh John from Chapters, you are a calculating pusher man but you know exactly what to say.

These are things that I need.

I signed the order form.

The Damage: €19.99

35) Somewhere Beneath Those Waves - Sarah Monette (new pb)

Where? Chapters

Why?

Since my self control is out the window at this stage, I also need Sarah Monette's new short story collection.

This also needs to be ordered in*** but it's out in paperback so is slightly more affordable.

I love, love, love Sarah Monette.

She has blogged recently about how you can help an authors career by buying her books.

Duly noted Monette.

The Damage: €13.99

Total Spend €360.83

*Also left in the hotel room: AC adapter and a loofah. Not terrible.

**Which is a little more that €2 more than Amazon it charging before shipping.

***Chapters price is once again about €2 more than Amazon. Since these two items would have come to the £25 required for free delivery I've still made a saving shopping at Chapters. Also, I fee righteous.****

****I'm sorry that these footnotes aren't hyper linked. I cant make the anchors work :(

Books Bought December 2nd 2011

32) Bable-17 - Samuel R. Delany (new pb)

Where? Off the Road Books

Why?

I probably should have done something fun on my last evening in Las Vegas, but I'd already road the roller coaster and walked across the freeway (several times) to eat at In 'n' Out Burger* so I was all funned out and took a cab to the liklist looking bookstore google maps could find me.

Off the Road Books was a sad, dusty, quiet little shop. I'm not a terribly good judge of this but they did seem to have an excellent stock of pulp and vintage sci-fi.

Someday I intend to give Dhalgren a shot, but for now dipping my toe in with a sub-300 pager seems sensible.

The cover is suitably cringe inducing for an ironic buy.

The Damage: €1.89

33) Snow White, Blood Red - Ellen Dalton & Terri Windling (used pb)

Where? Off the Road Books

Why?

I have no idea why I bought this. I may never read it. There are some good writers here, the cover is pretty enough, in theory I am interested in fairy tales but I just don't see myself getting to it.

I read the introduction in the airport, with a terrible hangover. It was fine but looking at the book in front of me now everything about it screams, you're never going to read me.

Oh well, it was cheap.

The Damage: €1.89

Total Spend €322.86

*Delicious? Yes. Worth getting run over for? Prehaps not.

Books Bought Nov 28th

29) Old Man's War - John Scalzi (new pb)

Where? Barnes & Nobel

Why?

So, here I am in Las Vegas, home of gambling, neon, strippers, and hazzardous drinking, but because I am actually alergic to having any fun* I took a cab to Barnes & Nobel this afternoon (this was on the advice of my concierge who looked horrified when I suggested I could walk the distance. I did walk back though. This was mostly fine, I got mildly hassled by a vagrent and on East Tropicana a comercial jet flew so close over my head it felt like I could have reached out and touched it.)

Despite still hating the cover art I'm up for reading more Scalzi and Old Man's War seems to get the most mentiones.

The Damage: €5.29

30) All the Windwracked Stars - Elizabeth Bear (new pb)

Where? Barnes & Nobel

Why?

What I really wanted to read next from Bear was Dust** but they didn't have Dust, they had All the Windwracked Stars and Chill, which is the sequel to Dust. Oh bookshops stocking sequels to books they are not stocking, you are architects of your own doom. It's like an advertisement for shopping somewhere else.

So I bought Windwracked because in so much as I plan on reading every word bear has ever written I am going to read it eventually.

The Damage: €6.01

31) The Magicians - Lev Grossman (new pb)

Where? Barnes & Nobel

Why?

Geeks Guide the the Galaxy interviewed Grossman recently. He seemed cool (if, somewhat satisfyed with himself) and his book sounded interesting. I've heard some people critisize this book for its irritating narrator, but I love me some unsympathetic narrator, so I'm hoping I can dig it.

The Damage: €12.04

Plus Sales tax on the above 3: €1.89

Total Spend €319.08

*Oh that's not true, bookshops are fun. Besides which, I don't really feel like I've been to a city until I've been to a bookshop there.

**Actually what I really want to read next is One-Eyed Jack and the Suicide King, but since it doesn't even have a publisher yet...

Books Bought Nov 20th

28) The God Engines - John Scalzi (used hb)

Where? Chapters

Why?

It was the cover that caught my eye. A man in chains guarded by hooded priests. The expresion of malign amusment on the chanied man's face put me in mind of Loki (everyone's favourite god, right?).

I've been looking for a 'way in' to Scalzi for a while (keeping with a theme here, you cannot find any of his books on the shevles here, save second hand) and since this book literally had me cooing over it and stroking the spine (shout out to Subterranian Press who took some (very deserved) criticism recently for publishing OSC's Halmet's Ghost, but can be relied on put together damn beautiful books) it seemed as good an entry point as I was ever likely to find.

(just to prove that sometimes you can judge a book by its cover this has more than lived up to my hopes.)

Sealing my decision I flipped to the first page and the opening line that almost every review has quoted

It was time to whip the god.

Yes, I thought, this is indeed calculated to my interests.

The Damage: €4.99

Total Spend €293.87

Books Bought Nov 19th

26) The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack - Mark Hodder (used pb)

Where? Oxfam Books

Why?

All I know about this book is that Goodreads' recommendation engine tells me that I will like it because I liked Ian Tregillis' Bitter Seeds and Elizabeth Bear's New Amseterdam. I don't put much trust in these algorithms but I am a little interest in the legend of Spring-heeled Jack, who may or may not have stalked the streets of London in the 1830s and thereafter.

for €2.50 I'm willing to give it a whirl.

The Damage €2.50

27) Feed - Mira Grant (used pb)

Where? Oxfam Books

Why?

I really couldn't be less interested in this book but Oxfam had a two for €5 deal.

I now have three of this years Hugo nominees for best novel on my shelf, and y'know eventually I may even read some of them

The Damage €2.50

Total spend €288.88

Books Bought Nov 14th

24) Realms: The First Year of Clarkesworld Magazine - Sean Wallace, Nick Mamatas (editors) (used pb)

Where? Chapters

Why?

There was zero reason to buy this book, all the stories are available online and since it's a used copy I'm doing nothing to support Clarkesworld by paying for it.

I was bored so I bought a book that looked good.

So there.

The Damage €5.99

25) Songs for the Devil and Death - Hal Duncan (epub)

Where? Circle Six

Why?

I love Hal Duncan, I really do but I was cagey about buying his poetry collection because prose writer's forays into poetry are often terrible.

But for £0.99 I'm was willing to take a gamble (and the collection ended up being so good I felt like I'd robbed Duncan by paying so little)

The Damage €1.19

Total spend €283.88

Books Bought Nov 13th

23) Horn - Peter Ball (epub)

Where? Smashwords

Why?

This was recommended by Ian Mond on the Outer Alliance podcast (which is a great podcast by the way). I was short and cheap, which I was in the mood for. I don't think I've read any Australian sff so it's nice to be able to tick that off the list. Also I got to try out Smashwords for the first time, which was a perfectly pleasant experience.

The Damage €2.98

Total spend €276.70

Books Bought Nov 12th

22) A + E 4ever by ilike merey (pdf)

Where? Lethe Press

Why?

Brit Mandelo has a brief positive review this graphic novel on her lj. I have more faith in Mandelo's reviews than I do in most.

I like Lethe Press but their website is appalling (this may not be entirely their fault, I've heard that Amazon have patented so much of their website that building a good book selling website without infringing is very difficult).

The digital version was only available in pdf, which is a terrible format, but it's much of a muchness given that graphic novels are a bit terrible digitally.

Lethe also uses amazon checkout, I'm not sure it this breaks my policy of boycotting Amazon. I don't think Amazon's fees are any higher than paypal, so the publisher's still getting the same cut as they would have otherwise, and anywhere it's their site and this is what they've gone with so maybe I don't want to over think this.

The price is in Dollars and unlike paypal Amazon payments doesn't tell me how much I'm being charged in euro, either at time of purchase or on my receipt, which is a little annoying.

The Damage €6.46

Total spend €273.81

Books Bought Nov 9th

20) A Dead Man in Deptford - Anthony Burgess (pb)

Where? Hodges Figgis

Why?

This first crossed my radar about a month ago after reading Elizabeth Bear's Stratford Man duology about Christopher Marlow and William Shakespeare. I was trawling through Bear's lj for her posts about the books as part of my prefectly normal post-awesome book comedown.

Bear has a great post comparing literary sex scenes involving Chistopher Marolow (there are more than you migh think) that sort of forms a little lesson on how to (and how not to) write sex. I say 'sort of' because the take away is that you cannot write as well as Burgess and you just have to live with that fact.

Anyway I picked up a copy of Deptford in the library and read it in October while I was sick. I spend three glorious, if also exhausted, sneezing and slightly befuddled, days revelling in Burgess' delightful prose. Here's another snippet

The entrant mooed like a calf but in insolence looked about him. Hew saw Kit. Kit saw him. Nay, it was more than pure seeing. It was Jove's bolt. It was, to borrow from the papists, the bell of the consecration. It was the revelation of the possibility nay the certainty of the probability or somewhat of the kind of the. It was the sharp knife of a sort of truth in the disguise of danger. Both went out together, and it was as if they were entering, rather than leaving, the corridor outside with its sour and burly servant languidly asweep with his broom, the major-domo in livery hovering, transformed to a sweet bower of assignation, though neither knew the other save in a covenant familiar through experience unrecorded and unrecordable whose terms were not of time and to which space was a child's puzzle.

Ah what I wouldn't sell to the devil to write like that.

Anyway all of this is by way of saying that I needed to own a copy of this. Also the Vintage cover is pretty sweet

The Damage €10.05 (What the hell kind of price is that)

21) Nothing like the Sun - Anthony Burgess (pb)

Where? Hodges Figgis

Why?

This is a companion novel to A Dead Man in Deptford. I have high hopes for it.

The Damage €11.30

Total spend €267.17

Books Bought Nov 7th

17) Hark! A Vagrant - Kate Beaton (pb)

Where? Chapters

Why?

There's very little in this that's not available on Beaton's site, and to be quite honest I think the comics look better on the site than in the book. But it's nice to give some moeny back to an artist who has provided me with years of free entertainment.

The Damage €16.50

18) The Poison Master - Liz Williams (pb used)

Where? Chapters

Why?

Next years Octocon GOH, time to get reading

The Damage €5.99

19) Nine Princes in Amber - Robert Zelzany (pb used)

Where? Chapters

Why?

I was unreasonably delighted by how short fantasy novels were aparently allowed to be in the 70s. And I think Elizabeth Bear once mentioned him as being good. Also I really dig old paperbacks that have colouered edges. These ones are red. (If anyone can tell me the technical term for this I would be gratful)

The Damage €2.99

Total Spend:€245.82

Books Bought Nov 6th

16) Wilde Stories 2011 - Steve Berman (editor) (epub)

Where? Wizards Tower Bookstore

Why?

These days lots of people ask me why I don't have an ereader. Or rather, they ask me why I don't have a kindle. I do of course have an ereader, my laptop, which I spend more waking hours hunched over than I care to admit and I don't experience any problems reading long form prose on it.

I have several problems with Amazon kindle that range from the perfectly reasonable, DRM restrictions and monopolistic practices, to the fairly irrational, I an enraged by the fact that as an Irish customer I do my dead tree shopping at the .co.uk site, but have to go to .com to but ebooks.

Generally if I'm buying an ebook from a small publisher I prefer to but from them directly. It seems like a sensible way for them to operate and so I want to support them. Also it's usually cheaper. Unfortunately Lethe Press have an horrifically badly designed website and once I found the book they only offered it as pdf, which is a pretty bad format for ebooks. Nil desperandum, a lovely epub version was available at Wizards Tower for slightly more than Lethe was offering it, but mless that I would have paid to get it as a yucky azw file from Amazon.

I'd been meaning to get this for a while on the back of Brit Mandelo's glowing review on Tor and the inclusion on a Hal Duncan story.

The Damage €6.57

Review

Total Spend €220.34

Books Bought Oct 28th

13) Seven for a Secret - Elizabeth Bear (hb, used)
Where? Better World Books
Why? I made it to pay day without maxing out my credit card so as a reward I allowed myself to go looking for the second and third of Bear's (limited and hard to come by for reasonable prices) New Amsterdam series (it has a vampire solving crimes, c'mon).

The Damage: €17.78 (inc shipping). This was the cheapest I could find it

Review

14) The White City - Elizabeth Bear (hb, new)
Where? The Book Depository
Why? ibid

The Damage €13.89 (free shipping, enjoy it while it lasts kids, Book Depository's takeover by Amazon has been approved).

Review

15) ad eternum - Elizabeth Bear (Limited Edition)
Where? Subrerranean Press
Why? And while I'm ay it why not preorder the 4th book in the series. I can't even pretend I considered going for the $20 cheaper trade edition.
Limited ed comes with a chapbook with an extra story. Chapbook. Extra story.
The Damage €44.76 (A lot of that is shipping)


Total Spend €213.77

Books Bought Oct 20th

11) The Mists of Avalon - Marrion Zimmer Bradley (pb, used)
Where? Chapters, Parnell St
Why? I like Authurian legends. I am a feminist. So why haven't I read Mists of Avalon. It's ridiculous.

The Damage: €3.59. was €3.99 but I got a 10% discount because I was waiting so long for the floor staff to find me a copy of...

Review

12) Blood Rites - Barbara Ehrenreich (pb, new)
Where? Chapters, Parnell St
Why? Peadar Ó Guilín mentioned this at an Octocon panel and I thought Ehrenreich's ideas might be a useful theoretical beckground to have in a novel I might write some day, or if not them make good conversation down the pub. Anyway after it took the staff about 20 minutes to find it it would have been embarassing not to buy it.

The Damage €10.80

Total Spend €137.34

Books Bought Oct 13th

10) The Cold Commands - Richard (K?)* Morgan (hb)

Where? Chapters, Parnell St

Why? Had this on pre-order, which I don't usually do, but yer man in Chapters told be they'd be getting the large format paperbacks on the release date instead of the hardbacks. Large format paperbacks are rubbish, all the portability problems of a hardback but without the sturdiness. It was only sensible to get them to order in the hardback for me.

Review


The Damage: €18.75

*I really can't get a handle on when he uses the initial and when he doesn't.

Books Bought Oct 11th

8) Elizabeth and Essex - Giles Lytton Strachey (hb)

Where? Oxfam Books

Why? Flu continues. I attempted to go to work on Tuesday but left at lunch to see a doctor. After blowing an outrageous amount of cash on getting said doctor to write me a sick note and a prescription I rewarded myself with this book which had caught my eye over the weekend.

I generally try to avoid buying old battered books just because they are pleasingly old and battered. But I am quite interested in Elizabethan politics so there're even odds I'll actually read this.

Also, it's Oxfam books. Charitable donation, not a real purchase

The Damage? €4.00

Review

9) Snuff - Terry Pratchett (hb)

Where? Redacted

Why? Still sick mind you and now at home in my pjs I got a tip on twitter about a local bookshop selling Snuff two days ahead of its release date.

New Discworld book don't really need justification for purchase

The Damage? €19.99

Review


Total Spend: €104.20

This is already fairly illuminating. I spent over €100 on books in less than two weeks. No wonder I never have any freaking money.

Books Bought Oct 10th

7) Dark Market: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and you - Misha Glenny (tpb)

Where? Oxfam Books

Why? I'm still sick. And still dropping into bookshops on my way to replenish my sick room supplies.

This book caught my eye because I recognized the name of the author. I recognized the author's name because I'd stared at in puzzlement for sometime before deleting it from my phone's memo folder because I could no longer remember what or why I was supposed to remember about it. Seeing the book on the shelf it all came back to me. Glenny was recently on the RSA podcast and the Guardian Books podcast speaking about this book, and after the second my interest had been piqued so I noted down his name.

It seemed senseless not to buy after all this.

The fact that I do remember all this now shows that my memo system is working, albeit in a round about way.

For a used book it's not very cheap, but the condition is excellent. A sheet of promotional material inside would suggest that it's an advance review copy. Looks like it's never been read.

Anyway, it's Oxfam, so this is more of a charitable donation than a purchase.

Right?

The Damage? €7.00

Total spend: €80.21

Books Bought Oct 7th

6) The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - N.K. Jemisin

Where? Chapters

Why?

Friday I went home early due to a terrible sounding chesty couch and that inability to think that I term 'fuzzy head syndrome'. All I wanted to do was go straight to bed, but as those of us who live alone, or with housemates who cannot be drafted into being caregivers, know that there's a little ground work to be done before one can take to the sickbed.

There was no food in the fridge for one thing.

So I headed to the other side of town to hit up Tesco, and was genuinely unable to not drop in to Chapters on the way. Despite the fact that my soon to be sick rooms already had a huge pile of books by the bed.

I've been thinking about picking uo The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms for a while, though not just because I'm taken with the premise... can I say this without being offensie?

I've read almost nothing by writers of colour this year. This has been needling away at the back of my head as I try to drown it out with the excuse that I read the next book on the tbr pile that naturally occurs to me as it occurs and there's no call to be putting any political correctness into the mix, and besides. And surely reading a book just because the writer is black is as problematic as just leaving them about because no black writers have happened across my radar.

But all this excuse making is given lie by the fact that about three months ago I noticed that fewer than 10% of the books I'd read this year were by female writers*. As a female person who considers herself appreciative of the works of women I was quite horrified by this statistic and had no problem redressing the balance by intentionally upping my intake of women writers and was thoroughly rewarded with great books that I would otherwise have missed.

That in mind, it seems clear that I stand only to benefit by widening the diversity of my reading choices even if that widening is utterly self conscious.

Anyway, it was a heavily discounted Hugo nominee. I'd be stupid not to buy it.

The Damage? €4.99

Review

Total spend: €73.21

* there is more or less a consensus that the collective term for ladies who write is "woman writers" I find this an abhorrently clunky compound noun and avoid it for this reason and no other

Books Bought Oct 6th

5) RazorJack (Collected Edition) - John Higgins (tpb)

Where? Forbidden Planet

Why? I've read hardly any comics this year, and haven't experimented with anything new since January. Higgins is GoH at this years Octocon, it seems foolish to go without reading any of his stuff (okay, he was the colourist for Watchmen, and I'm sure colourist is an important job, but I just can't get excited about it. Sorry).

The Damage? €12.99

Total spend: €68.22

Books Bought Oct 5st

4) The Bone and Jewel Creatures - Elizabeth Bear (thb)

Where? Hodges Figgis, Dawson St

Why? Can I justify spending €32 on a novella? I am rapidly becoming an Elizabeth Bear completist, which given that she's an obscure enough genre writer to not be regularly stocked in Irish bookshops (not that you have to be all that obscure to be denied shelf space in Ireland, stupid country) is expensive in itself. So I'd like to reward Hodges for not only stocking her books, but stocking this limited edition small press novella that is now out of print. Yes, out of print, and if you factor in shipping and condition I've made a saving on what I would have spend getting it used from Abe.

Also the cover art is really pretty.

The Damage? €32.00

Review

Total Spend €55.23

Books Bought Oct 1st

For the past few years my book buying habit has been getting slightly out of control. The shelves in my bedroom are stacked two deep, there are books on the floor, under the bed, in the bed, in my office, in my parents house, in handbags, still in the bag I got them in, everywhere. Lots of these books don't end up getting read.

I'm trying to get a handle on exactly how many books I buy, how much I spend on them, what proportion of them get read, etc. So I'm going to blog every purchase for a year. Why not?

1) The Demon's Lexicon - Sarah Rees Brennan (mpb) (signed by author)

Where? Eason's, O'Connell St (new)

Why? I saw Sarah Rees Brennan at Octocon last year, she seemed cool. I have little interest in the sort of YA urban fantasy but I'd like to read something of hers before this year's Octocon, which gives me two weeks.

The Damage? €9.25

Review

2)The Chains that You Refuse - Elizabeth Bear (tpb) (signed by author)

Where? Chapters, Parnell St (used)

Why? I'm on an Elizabeth Bear kick right now. This is signed and inscribed to another author I like but won't name for fear of embarrassing him/her (not that anyone is likely to read this). I found this really cool but when I explained it to my sister she looked at me blankly.

The Damage? €5.99

Review

3)Urban Shamen - C.E. Murphy (mpb) (signed by author)

Where? Chapters, Parnell St (new)

Why? Similar reason's to 1, replace YA urban fantasy which just urban fantasy... or possible paranormal romance.

The Damage? €7.99

Total spend €23.23