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