Book Hauls!

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by elvet

Dance with Dragons just arrived, along with:
Warriors anthology
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
The first 3 books of the Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham

Daniel Abrahams..sweet. The Warriors anthology albeit I've only dipped into it periodically is excellent and Dance With Dragons I got today as well. Sanderson's efforts in continuing Jordan's epic WOT is impressive but heard varying opinions on the earlier Mistborn series so not tried him per se. Very good haul...

[elvet]

Daniel Abrahams..sweet.

I had just finished Dragon's Path by Abraham, and then read Leviathan Wakes by Corey (another Abraham pen name). I enjoyed both enough to seek out his earlier works.

[antiloquax]

Originally Posted by GOLLUM

We'll have you floating in a river of books and thoroughly penniless but with a permanent grin on your dial in no time...

Thanks Gollum! I am taking notes!
Just put some Matheson on my Kindle: "Somewhere in Time", "Now You See it...", "Hell House", "Shock!" (13 Matheson stories), "Nightmare at 20,000 ft" (20 stories with intro by Steven King).

As I think I mentioned on another thread - a colleague of mine gave me some DVDs full of free ebooks. The only problem is having time to read them all!

[GOLLUM]

Today...

Titus Awakes - Maeve Gilmore *Based on a fragment left by her husband Mervyn Peake, author of the brilliant Gormenghast 'trilogy' Gilmore had written this book some decades ago in the form of notebooks, discovered by relatives last year in an attic. Bit ambivalent about this because this is not Mervyn Peake writing but I'm interested to see what direction his late wife took the series in. Blurb: Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy is widely acknowledged to be, as Robertson Davies pronounced, “a classic of our age.” In these extraordinary novels, Peake created a world where all is like a dream--lush, fantastical, and vivid. Yet it was incomplete. Parkinson’s disease took Peake’s life in 1968, depriving his fans of the fourth and final volume of the series, Titus Awakes except for a few tantalizing pages, after which his writing became indecipherable. Maeve Gilmore, Peake’s wife, finished the novel, and now at last the fabled Titus Awakes is published in its entirety. Fans of Peake will delight in this new, wonderful tale, published one hundred years after Peake’s birth, every bit as thrilling and masterfully written as his famed trilogy.

[GOLLUM]

Double post...

[pyan]

Originally Posted by GOLLUM

Bit ambivalent about this because this is not Mervyn Peake writing but I'm interested to see what direction his late wife took the series in.

I hope you'll come back with what you think, Goll, because I was wondering the same thing.

Fans of Peake will delight in this new, wonderful tale, published one hundred years after Peake’s birth, every bit as thrilling and masterfully written as his famed trilogy.

Hmm... A bit of the Blurb Overblown, maybe.


Bought Bill Bryson's At Home, from Tesco. I don't like buying books there, particularly, because they discount so much that I'm sure that it has a deleterious effect on specialised bookshops, but as it was down from £8.99 to £3.99, I really had to take advantage. At least I've still got £5.00 to put toward something from Waterstones or somewhere...

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by pyan

I hope you'll come back with what you think, Goll, because I was wondering the same thing.

Hmm... A bit of the Blurb Overblown, maybe.

Yeh I thought the same thing as soon as I read it. Stinks a bit of the Ad people almost anticipating an inevitable backlash. I am going to have to complete my reading of Peake's Progress, which collects most of Peake's other writings first and possibly do a reread of Gormenghast (not read it for years) before reading this book in order to provide a more complete response, the argument that Maeve Gilmore should be judged in her own right as an author rather than being measured against her husband's considerable literary legacy notwithstanding.

[No One]

Have had myself a SF Masterworks spree on my travels, adding to my still-young collection:

James Blish Cities in Flight
Olaf stapledon Last and First Men
Alfred Bester The Demolished Man
Ursula Le Guin The Dispossessed

All of which just goes to show that my local branch of Waterstones is severely lacking

[pyan]

Originally Posted by GOLLUM

Maeve Gilmore should be judged in her own right as an author rather than being measured against her husband's considerable literary legacy notwithstanding.

Agreed, but I'm not hopeful, though. Continuation of another author's world rarely works, even with notes or whatever from the original writer. Todd McCaffrey or Brian Herbert, anyone?...

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by pyan

Agreed, but I'm not hopeful, though. Continuation of another author's world rarely works, even with notes or whatever from the original writer. Todd McCaffrey or Brian Herbert, anyone?...

Brandon Sanderson (Jordan's WOT) perhaps is a recent exception to this? but yes I suspect you may be right. Time will tell...

Now....earlier this evening had a visit to one of my favourite bookstores that had advertised importing a bunch of 500 plus books at discounted prices...so I took a gander and got some nice stuff...

Undine - Baron Firedrich de la Motte Fouque *For those not aware Fouque was an early German pioneer it may be said of Gothic fiction and High Fantasy and apparently a direct influence on authors including William Morris, George MacDonald and by implication CS Lewis, Tolkien etc. along with admirers in the field of Gothic fiction that included Poe and Lovecraft...and Undine is in many ways seen as his greatest masterpiece and to MacDonald one of the greatest fairytales ever penned. I was lucky a few years back to stumble across a copy of his classic The Magic Ring produced by the excellent Gothic publication house Valencourt. Blurb: (quote from Lovecraft) - Most artistic of all the continental weird tales is the German classic Undine (1814), by Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Baron de la Motte Fouqué. In this story of a water-spirit who married a mortal and gained a human soul there is a delicate fineness of craftsmanship which makes it notable in any department of literature, and an easy naturalness which places it close to the genuine folk-myth.

When I Was Mortal - Javier Marias *From one of the Spanish writers of his generation comes this collection of short stories. In fact despite the wide acclaim lauded his novels he appears to be even more highly regarded in some circles at least in the shorter form...hence my interest in purchasing this item. Blurb: Like Borges, who felt that every story benefited from a good mystery, Marias packs murder, intrigue, even ghosts into nearly every one of the dozen short narratives in this collection. Mar!as, one of Spain's most prominent contemporary writers, shows his macabre playfulness right from the start. In "The Night Doctor," a dinner party leads to a nighttime walk through Paris, In "Broken Binoculars," a seemingly innocuous conversation at the racetrack develops into a frank discussion of assassination. "Flesh Sunday" features a man looking out from the balcony of his honeymoon hotel room. While his wife lies on the bed behind him, he watches a woman who may--or may not--be waiting for him. These tales, like others in the collection, are enigmatic, almost elliptical, and are related by a narrator distinguished by his urbane wit and unflappability.

The Journals - James Cook *Penguin Black Classic edn. Being a European Australian I have a natural interest in Cook and this looks like it could be prove to be a fascinating read. Blurb: Captain Cook's Journals provide his vivid first-hand account of three extraordinary expeditions. These charted the entire coast of New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, and brought back detailed descriptions of Tahiti, Tonga and a host of until then unknown islands in the Pacific. The journals amply reveal the determination, courage and skill which enabled Cook to wrestle with the continuous dangers of uncharted seas and the problems of achieving a relationship with the peoples whose unannounced guest he became. This edition, abridged from the definitive four-volume collection published by the Hakluyt Society, makes Cook's inimitable personal account of his nine years of voyaging widely accessible for the first time. The selection preserves the spirit and rhythm of the full narrative, as well as Cook's idiosyncratic spelling. Philip Edwards gives an introduction to each voyage together with maps, a glossary of unusual words and indexes of people and places. A postscript offers a full assessment of the controversies surrounding Cook's death.

The Egyptian Book Of The Dead - E. A. Wallis Budge *Penguin Black Classic edn. Given the influence this book has had on the occult movement and literary circles alike, I've always been on the lookout for a copy and was pleased to discover this very nice and affordable edition. Blurb: The Book of the Dead is a unique collection of funerary texts from a wide variety of sources, dating from the fifteenth to the fourth century BC. Consisting of spells, prayers and incantations, each section contains the words of power to overcome obstacles in the afterlife. The papyruses were often left in sarcophagi for the dead to use as passports on their journey from burial, and were full of advice about the ferrymen, gods and kings they would meet on the way. Offering valuable insights into ancient Egypt, The Book of the Dead has long inspired fascination with the occult and the afterlife.

[Connavar]

Torpedo Volume 1 by Jordi Bernet(Spanish GN) - £63! for a second hand volume feels tough to take but Jordi Bernet is my fav comic artist.
Why Me? by Donald E. Westlake

[antiloquax]

Spent some time looking through the free e-books a friend gave me. Put lots of fantasy titles onto my Kindle based on some suggestions on another thread: Cecilia Dart-Thornton, Madeline Howard, Guy Gavriel Kay, Charles de Lint, Lois McMaster Bujold, Alison Croggon and Roger Zelazny. Also "Lest Darkness Fall" by L. Sprague De Camp - I'm fascinated by the premise of that book.
May wander over to the "recommendations for the unenlightened" thread.
a

[D_Davis]

Not sure where to post this....but I just picked this up from the Lovecraft Historical Society.

Even if the audio sucks, it was still worth the $25.

[Allegra]

Originally Posted by pyan

Bought Bill Bryson's At Home, from Tesco. I don't like buying books there, particularly, because they discount so much that I'm sure that it has a deleterious effect on specialised bookshops, but as it was down from £8.99 to £3.99, I really had to take advantage. At least I've still got £5.00 to put toward something from Waterstones or somewhere...

Hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did, pyan. May not be as hilarious as Neither Here Nor There (the funniest book I've ever read) or The Lost Continent etc., but it's Bill Bryson we are talking about. This guy has an extraordinary talent to make every ordinary thing on earth/in life extraordinary.

[Clansman]

Quite a few this past week:

Haul No. 1 (new)
The Bonehunters (Malazan BotF) Erikson
The Return of the Crimson Guard (Malazan Empire) Esselmont
The Watcher of the Dead (Sword of Shadows) JV Jones
A Dance With Dragons (ASoIaF) Martin (oboyoboyoboy!!!!) 50% discount (yessss!)

Haul No. 2 (second hand)
Best Served Cold Abercrombie
Cycle of Fire (omnibus) Wurts
Night of Knives (Malazan Empire) Esselmont (already finished it. Good, quick story).
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel Clarke

Looks like I'm set up for a while, as I already had a good TBR pile!