Book Hauls!

[littlemissattitude]

Actually got to a bookstore today. Got Looking for Jake, by China Mieville.

[kaneda]

Originally Posted by Rane Longfox

*Has 60 unread* Yes, 60. You've seen the picture

I tried to not buy anymore, but its like obsessive compulsive for me

I have about 9 to read books! You're taking the addicition to spending to a whole different level my friend!

[Rosemary]

Well, I have just found out that it pays to not buy a publication as soon as it is in the Bookshop.

Today I bought Eldest by Paolini, Knife of Dreams/Robert Jordan and a new copy of Polgara The Sorceress. All had a 35% reduction in their price..

[littlemissattitude]

Okay, hold the presses...lma bought a hardback book. New, even.

See, I've been reading The Historian out of the library, only it was just a rental book, so only a 1-week check-out, with no renewal. That got me about half way through the book...I've had other things to do, so the reading isn't going as quickly as I'd like. But it's good enough that I want to finish it and will probably read it again, so I went out and bought it.

[knivesout]

Robert A Heinlein - Rocket Ship Galileo - The 1947 first edition of RAH's first published juvenile novel! Wowser! A former library copy, so subject to the usual defacements, but still...

Frederik Pohl: Heechee Rendezvous - Another handsome hardback edition, though not a 1st edition. Both acquired ultra-cheap 2ndhand.

Batman in the Sixties. The most varied of the Batman Decades collections. Early stories have the joyous, loopy verve of the best 50s fare, then suddenly everything becomes campy and silly like the TV series, and then the last few stories point to the darker, more realistic Batman of the 70s. Great snapshot of an icon in transition.

[Jay]

In the last couple of days -

The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull - a very detailed almost annotated style of the trilogy, scheduled to be released at the end of December. Looks very informative thus far.
Dragon Champion by E.E. Knight
Deryni Checkmate (December) by Katherine Kurtz
The Rosetta Codex by Richard Paul Russo
Coyote Frontier by Allen Steele
Wicked Or What? by Sean Wright
Dark Tales of Time and Space by Sean Wright
Dusk by Tim Lebbon

[knivesout]

Hey, Jay! D'you have any plans of acquiring Jess Nevins' Encyclopaedia of Fantastic Victoriana? It's a bit pricey, but I've been to his site, as well as his Alan Moore annotations, and it seems terribly tempting!

[Jay]

Hey, Jay! D'you have any plans of acquiring Jess Nevins' Encyclopaedia of Fantastic Victoriana? It's a bit pricey, but I've been to his site, as well as his Alan Moore annotations, and it seems terribly tempting!

I saw the review by Kleffel, and I'm sold.. I have enjoyed all the Monkeybrain products I have read, and actually about to start their Myths for the Modern Age: Philip Jsoe Farmer's Wold Newton Universe. I tend to try to get my hands on all publications like this (ala GFant's and Clute's Encyclopedias etc).

I was hoping to get sent one by Monkeybrain, but after I saw the price I guess it''s unlikley, but in any case it looks like $50 well spent.

[Thadlerian]

Originally Posted by littlemissattitude

Actually got to a bookstore today. Got Looking for Jake, by China Mieville.

Great! Make sure to join the discussion in the Miéville forum when you're done.

As for myself, I bought The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett today. Granny Aching's gotta be the most underrated Discworld Character!

[Culhwch]

Have recently picked up Newton's Cannon by Greg Keyes and The Etched City by KJ Bishop on the cheap....

[Marky Lazer]

I recently bought:
Chris Buckley's Wry Martinis. A book full of short essays.
Jason Heim's Remember To Blink. About a war for control that is fought in the mind, between memory and truth, between the last thing remembered and the lost track of time.
Katherine Dunn's Truck. About... well, I don't know, but I enjoyed Geek Love a lot.
H.G. Well's The Invisible Man. About... well, I don't need to tell, I guess.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Now I'm ordinarily the type of person who doesn't really have a TBR pile. The only time I'll have more than one book waiting is when I've just been to the library or the bookstore (or both) and I'll read through what I've brought home generally within a few days and before I go out to get any more.

However, I have just made the book haul to end all book hauls, and obtained for myself a mind-boggling TBR "pile."

A while ago I received some junk mail advertising something called "The Ultimate Library" 10,000 books on CD-ROM. It sounded too good to be be true, but I did some research around the internet and it looked legitimate: tons and tons of old books that have lapsed into the public domain and someone has made into e-books. Also, I was able to get it for about $25 on ebay, so the husband and I decided to take a chance.

It finally arrived. We had a lot of trouble opening the files on our old PC (it only works on Windows 98). Once opened, it's sort of hellish to navigate -- in a way that leaves one with the frustrating feeling that there are many, many little gems one is never going to be able to find unless one thinks to ask specifically (not listed with the others, but if you search for them they're there). Some of what they list as "books" are actually quite short. And this might have been a quirk with our operating system and not a problem for others, but when you bring up a text it comes out in a heavy old English Black Letter font. We have to export a file and open it through a word processor in order to get it into a readable font.

But aside from all that, it's the real deal.

I'm finding all sort of things I read years ago and could never get my hands on again. (Books I don't remember which library I borrowed them from or where I was living at the time. Old books that used to belong to my mother when she was a girl, and probably got disposed of after my grandmother died. Short stories that I don't even remember what anthology they were in when I read them). I'm also finding books that I've known about and looked for and could never find in used book-stores or online, or if I did they were sold as rare collectable at exorbitant prices.

Since I hate reading books on the computer I'm having to print everything out, which is going to get expensive. But since many of these are books that I'd have a hard time finding at any price (and have to pay shipping on if I did), I'm going to have to resign myself to that. And many of the books are classics by Dickens or Austen or H.G. Wells that I could get from the library for free or buy cheaply in paperback in any large bookstore, so I'll have to control myself if I have a sudden urge to read them, and wait to get them some other way.

But still, I'm having a great time poking around and uncovering some really fascinating things. Little known works by well-known Victorian authors. Memoirs from just about every era of history. Obscure translations of medieval Alchemy books. Heaven alone knows what I will uncover next.

I foresee few trips to the bookstore or the library in my near future, but lots of expeditions to buy paper and printer ink. And, of course, a TBR list with 10,000 books!

[littlemissattitude]

That sounds like more fun than is strictly good for anyone, Kelpie.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Originally Posted by littlemissattitude

That sounds like more fun than is strictly good for anyone

The difficulties involved in using the program prevent an experience of unmitigated delight ... but, yes, I am having way too much fun.

[knivesout]

Kelpie: I know you're intersted in myths and legends - why dn't you visit the sacred-texts.com site? They have an awesome selection of public domain texts from all over the world (everything from Cherokke myths thrugh the Mahabharatha and Iliad to modern-day UFO legends! The chap who runs the site also offers a handy Cd-ROM version of everything.