Book Hauls!

[Fried Egg]

In the post today turned up two more of Ian Whates' anthologies: "Celebration" and "Subterfuge". That should keep me happy for a while...

[GOLLUM]

Today...

RUR & War With The Newts - Karel Capek *Latest in the SF Masterwork series and one I've been hanging out for. Capek is one of Czechoslovakia 's best known novelists from the last century and RUR or Rossum's Universal Robots, is the legendary play where Capek first coined the term "Robot". I have some of Capek's other works including War With The Newts but never owned a copy of RUR until now. Blurb: Written against the background of the rise of Nazism, War With the Newts concerns the discovery in the South Pacific of a sea-dwelling race, which is enslaved and exploited by mankind. In time they rebel, laying siege to the strongholds of their former masters in a global war for supremacy. R.U.R., or Rossum's Universal Robots, seen by many as a modern interpretation of the 'golem' myth, is regarded as the most important play in the history of SF. It introduced the word 'robot' and gave the genre one of its most enduring tropes.

[j. d. worthington]

And when I got back from work I found the mailman had left another for me:

H. P. Lovecraft and the Modernist Grotesque, by Sean Elliot Martin, Ph.D. This is actually his doctoral dissertation (Doctor of Philosophy), and that makes it, in some ways, even more interesting to me. The cover blurb says, in part:

Various authors are mentioned with reference to both modernist and grotesque literary tendencies, and Lovecraft's "modernist grotesque" characteristics are analyzed in their connection to the three concepts that are prominent in both modernism and the grotesque: alienation, subjectivity, and absurdity. Biographical information about Lovecraft is used minimally in this study, which focuses on textual analysis of many elements of Lovecraft's writing that seem to have been previously overlooked, including religious satire, scrutiny of scientific practices, and the modernist concep of "literary difficulty." This dissertation serves to establish a new place for Lovecraft in the larger context of English literature, and to establish a new way of thinking about modernism with reference to its possible roots in the experimental and "diagnostic" impulses of the literary grotesque.

Surprisingly, this is given quite a high rating on Amazon (5 stars), and though there are only a handful of reviews, they are all intelligent and insightful, and all recommend the book quite highly....

[MontyCircus]

Picked up some Sci-Fi Classics for my birthday:

Ender's Game
Fahrenheit 451
2001: A Space Odyssey
I, Robot
Neuromancer

Looking forward to them!

[GOLLUM]

Just arrived....Christmas has come early for me...

The Art of the Hobbit - W.G. Hammond *Special 75th Anniversary Slipcase edn. I've already had a brief look over this and it's quite magnificent! Very strong production values with over 100 colour & B&W fold-out plates featuring Tolkien's drawing for The Hobbit in addition to some excellent notes that help place the drawings into context with Tolkien's development of the Hobbit. Lengthy Blurb:When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, he was already an accomplished amateur artist, and drew illustrations for his book while it was still in manuscript. The Hobbit as first printed had ten black and white pictures, two maps, and binding and dust-jacket designs by its author. Later, Tolkien also painted five scenes for colour plates which are some of his best work. His illustrations for The Hobbit add an extra dimension to that remarkable book, and have long influenced how readers imagine Bilbo Baggins and his world. To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit, the complete artwork created by the author for his story has been collected in The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Including related pictures, more than one hundred sketches, drawings, paintings, maps, and plans are presented here, preliminary and alternate versions and experimental designs as well as finished art. Some of these images are now published for the first time, and others for the first time in colour. Fresh digital scans from the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford and Marquette University in Wisconsin allow Tolkien’s Hobbit pictures to be seen more vividly than ever before.

[dask]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

And when I got back from work I found the mailman had left another for me:

H. P. Lovecraft and the Modernist Grotesque, by Sean Elliot Martin, Ph.D. This is actually his doctoral dissertation (Doctor of Philosophy), and that makes it, in some ways, even more interesting to me. The cover blurb says, in part:



Surprisingly, this is given quite a high rating on Amazon (5 stars), and though there are only a handful of reviews, they are all intelligent and insightful, and all recommend the book quite highly....

One can now earn a Ph.D. writing about HPL? This IS cool! Perhaps civilization really is progressing.

[Diggler]

I picked up a big hard cover anthology og Kurt Vonnegut novels. These include

Slaughterhouse-five
The Sirens of Titan
Player Piano
Cat's Cradle
Breakfast of Champions
Mother Night

I also picked up Diaspora by Greg Egan.

On the Kindle I bought a pile of Permuted Press zombie books that are currently on special. While these books are far from literary master works, they are still good fun.

[Diggler]

Originally Posted by MontyCircus

Picked up some Sci-Fi Classics for my birthday:

Ender's Game
Fahrenheit 451
2001: A Space Odyssey
I, Robot
Neuromancer

Looking forward to them!

Loved Ender's Game and Fahrenheit 451. I was amazed at how much of what was allayed in Fahrenheit 451 is actually becoming a reality, and not in a good way either.

[dask]

THE LAST MUSTANG edited by Bill Pronzini. Third in a series of short story collections by prolific western author Frank Bonham from Five Star Books. Near perfect condition hardback originally selling for $26. Got it for a buck at a local thrift shop. Merry Christmas!

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by dask

One can now earn a Ph.D. writing about HPL? This IS cool! Perhaps civilization really is progressing.

That one got a chuckle out of me.... To be pedantic, this wasn't for his Ph.D., but his Masters', on the way to the former. Still, nice point.

In fact, Joshi's recent revised bibliography of Lovecraft and Lovecraftian criticism lists six pages' worth of academic papers on HPL (pp. 562-67, should you wish to look them up); a total of 58 papers, from Arthur James Anderson's "Out of the Shadows: A Structuralist Approach to Understanding the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rhode Island, 1992), to David Zittelli's "L'esperienza onirica nell'opera lovecraftiana" (M.A. thesis, University of Catania, 2000). I do own a copy of one other: Barton L. St. Armand's "H. P. Lovecraft: The Outsider in Legend and Myth" (M.A., Brown, 1966); a very interesting and enjoyable read, though not on the same level as his New England Decadent or The Roots of Horror in the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft....

[Hilarious Joke]

I recently picked up Ice Station by Matthew Reilly for myself.

For my birthday I also got:
- My Life Brett Lee by James Knight
- This is a Call: the life and times of Dave Grohl by Paul Brannigan
- The Lincoln Lawyer Novels by Michael Connelly

And for Christmas I got:
- Standing My Ground by Matthew Hayden
- Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

Yay!

[CyBeR]

Originally Posted by Hilarious Joke

I recently picked up Ice Station by Matthew Reilly for myself.

For my birthday I also got:
- My Life Brett Lee by James Knight
- This is a Call: the life and times of Dave Grohl by Paul Brannigan
- The Lincoln Lawyer Novels by Michael Connelly

And for Christmas I got:
- Standing My Ground by Matthew Hayden
- Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

Yay!

Looking forward to opinions on that one.

I'm a sad sad camper. Did not manage to get myself any books this Christmas, and I'm still looking for that Godforsaken copy of Chapterhouse Dune by Frank Herbert. Yes, I can get it in English, EASILY, but I want it in Romanian, from Nemira's Nautilus Collection. Simply because I have the previous 5 from that collection and this would complete the set and it would look nice on the shelf.

But prior to this, got me some Strugatski brothers novel, Sign of the Unicorn from the Amber series and some other cute sci-fi novels, including something new by Orson Scott Card (new for me). I wonder if this novel will manage to wash away the filth that represented the last two Ender Wiggins books.

[nomadman]

For Christmas I picked up Robertson Davies's wonderful works The Deptford Trilogy, The Salterton trilogy, The Cornish Trilogy and his standalone and final work The Cunning Man.

Also got The Etymologicon, Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as various presents for relatives.

Am reading The Cunning Man now, and thus far it's a deep and wondrous as Davies's masterpiece, Fifth Business.

[FireDragon-16]

For Christmas, my brother bought me Inheritance. I also recieved about $45 in Barnes and Noble gift cards so far, but we have dinner with some more family this weekend, so there will be more books to come !

[Fried Egg]

A nice christmas haul, two authors I've not read before and two favourite authors:

"Dark Entries" by Robert Aickman
"The Rediscovery of Man" by Cordwainer Smith
"Malpertuis" by Jean Ray
"The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson