Book Hauls!

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by D_Davis

That's a good one, too. Very creative.

I found it especially interesting, as I read it shortly after reading Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, to which it has a fair number of connections thematically, symbolically, and even in relation to certain characters....

[Extollager]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

And, thanks to Extollager, I just received The Year of the Warrior, by Lars Walker....

I've thought of starting a thread on Lars Walker, but I am struggling to keep up with reading I have to do and am afraid I wouldn't be able to serve as discussion moderator. I think some Chronsfolk would find Walker's books to be a pleasing discovery. A good one to start with might be Blood and Judgment. The title is from Hamlet (unusually appropriately so) and does not mean that your gore-o-meter will be flailing wildly at its utmost extreme.

[antiloquax]

Originally Posted by D_Davis

Cabal is great, but my favorite is Weaveworld, which is among the finest urban-fantasies I've read.

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

If you've not yet read Barker, I would strongly suggest one of the early Books of Blood, as a collection of short stories would present more variety in shorter compass than do several of his novels, which can be rather lengthy (to put it mildly). Of his novels -- at least those I've read -- I think The Damnation Game should be considered high on the list....

Thanks for these replies! Very helpful.

[dask]

Saw but did not buy an 1850 edition of Washington Irving's KNICKERBOCKERS for $20 today. Plenty of brown splotched pages but still can't get it out of my mind --- "A pretty girl is like an old moldy book that haunts you night and day" or something like that. I'll start saving a buck or two each week and if it's still there in a couple months think I'll snag it.

[Allegra]

Just bought PKD's Five Great Novels, contains DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP, MARTIAN TIME SLIP, UBIK, THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH and A SCANNER DARKLY. Heavy as a brick, definitely not suitable to carry around.

[dask]

Originally Posted by Allegra

Just bought PKD's Five Great Novels, contains DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP, MARTIAN TIME SLIP, UBIK, THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH and A SCANNER DARKLY. Heavy as a brick, definitely not suitable to carry around.

Wish my house was built out of bricks like that.

[dask]

Stopped by the Salvation Army today:

MAN AND SPIRIT: THE SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHERS edited by Saxe Commins and Robert N. Linscott. Nice little Washington Square Press paperback, great shape for fifty cents.

FIFTY GREAT AMERICAN SHORT STORIES edited by Milton Crane. Bantam paperback, slightly bent cover corner, otherwise really good condition, fifty cents.

THE BLUE GROTTO TERROR by Carl H. Claudy. Appears to be part of a series called "Adventures in the Unknown". Never heard of Claudy but some of his other titles, THE MYSTERY MEN OF MARS; THE LAND OF NO SHADOW; A THOUSAND YEARS A MINUTE sure sound like good old fashioned sf and the kind of thing Hugo Gernsback would publish in Amazing or Wonder Stories. This 1934 Grosset & Dunlap hardback is pretty beat up but looks complete, with illustrations by someone named A.C. Valentine on the inside covers and opposite the title page. Cost $1.99 but got a gut feeling it's gonna be worth every penny. If only I'd stopped by yesterday I could have gotten it for a buck.

[Hypnos164]

Arrived while I was away, picked up from the parcel place today:

Backflash (Parker #18) - Richard Stark
Butcher's Moon: A Parker Novel - Richard Stark
Firebreak: A Parker Novel - Richard Stark
Flashfire: A Parker Novel - Richard Stark
Comeback: A Parker Novel - Richard Stark

Manhattan in Reverse - Peter F. Hamilton

A Confederation of Valor (Confederation, #1-2) - Tanya Huff
The Heart of Valor (Confederation, #3) - Tanya Huff
Valor's Trial (Confederation, #4) - Tanya Huff

Some of those later Parker novels are big (for Parker books).

[thatollie]

The Neutronium Alchemist - Peter F. Hamilton
The Dark is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Corum: The Prince in The Sarclet Robe - Michael Moorcock
Summer of Night - Dan Simmons
The Truth - Terry Pratchett
Nation - Terry Pratchett

[antiloquax]

I haven't reported any haulage for a while, but my book hoarding has not ceased completely!
Clive Barker: "The Damnation Game" and "Weaveworld".
Dean Koontz: "Phantoms", "Dragon Tears", "The Bad Place".
Some Crime books:
Elmore Leonard "Rum Punch"
Jeffrey Deaver "The Bone Collector"
Michael Connolly "The Concrete Blonde"
Some True Crime
Harold Schechter "Deranged"
Jon Krakauer "Under the Banner of Heaven"
Eric Larson "The Devil in the White City"
And the controversial novel about a Nazi mass-murderer:
Jonathan Littell "The Kindly Ones"

[Diggler]

The Divine Invasion and Counter-Clock World by Philip K. Dick.

Plus Bryan Talbot's Alice in Sunderland for the wife.

[j. d. worthington]

Once again, courtesy of Extollager (who kindly had the author inscribe it before it was sent to me), I have received a book by Lars Walker: Blood and Judgment. Both of the novels I have by this writer (who is completely new to me) look to be fantasy of a high order, with a core worldview he is exploring through his writing. Not, from the reviews I've seen, in a heavy-handed, didactic style, but where it informs the novels nonetheless and gives them an added life and depth beyond mere entertainment. I may not be able to get around to these until later in the month, but I must admit to becoming increasingly curious and hopeful about them....

[Extollager]

Originally Posted by antiloquax

Jon Krakauer "Under the Banner of Heaven"

That's the only one from your list that I can speak for. It was very interesting.

[GOLLUM]

Today...

Readme - Neal Stephenson *Latest from the incomparable one. This is a huge book, weighing in at just over 1,000 pages. Sounds good from the blurb! Blurb: In 1972, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa farming clan, fled to the mountains of British Columbia to avoid the draft. A skilled hunting guide, he eventually amassed a fortune by smuggling marijuana across the border between Canada and Idaho. As the years passed, Richard went straight and returned to the States after the U.S. government granted amnesty to draft dodgers. He parlayed his wealth into an empire and developed a remote resort in which he lives. He also created T’Rain, a multibillion-dollar, massively multiplayer online role-playing game with millions of fans around the world.But T’Rain’s success has also made it a target. Hackers have struck gold by unleashing REAMDE, a virus that encrypts all of a player’s electronic files and holds them for ransom. They have also unwittingly triggered a deadly war beyond the boundaries of the game’s virtual universe—and Richard is at ground zero.Racing around the globe from the Pacific Northwest to China to the wilds of northern Idaho and points in between, Reamde is a swift-paced thriller that traverses worlds virtual and real. Filled with unexpected twists and turns in which unforgettable villains and unlikely heroes face off in a battle for survival, it is a brilliant refraction of the twenty-first century, from the global war on terror to social media, computer hackers to mobsters, entrepreneurs to religious fundamentalists. Above all, Reamde is an enthralling human story and epic page-turner from the extraordinary Neal Stephenson.


Ragnarok - A.S. Byatt *From one of the leading lights in world literature (another whose oeuvre I've happily collected) comes this slim but I'm sure no doubt thought provoking novella. Blurb: Recently evacuated to the British countryside and with World War Two raging around her, one young girl is struggling to make sense of her life. Then she is given a book of ancient Norse legends and her inner and outer worlds are transformed. Intensely autobigraphical and linguistically stunning, this book is a landmark work of fiction from one of Britain's truly great writers. Intensely timely it is a book about how stories can give us the courage to face our own demise. The Ragnarok myth, otherwise known as the Twilight of the Gods, plays out the endgame of Norse mythology. It is the myth in which the gods Odin, Freya and Thor die, the sun and moon are swallowed by the wolf Fenrir, the serpent Midgard eats his own tale as he crushes the world and the seas boil with poison. It is only after such monstrous death and destruction that the world can begin anew. This epic struggle provided the fitting climax to Wagner's Ring Cycle and just as Wagner was inspired by Norse myth so Byatt has taken this remarkable finale and used it as the underpinning of this highly personal and politically charged retelling.

[thatollie]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stories-Blue...088781&sr=8-26