Thanksgiving at the American Book Center: the spoils
Cross-posting between the message board and the weblog, so a short intro for non-messageboard people: English science fiction and fantasy books are somewhat scarce in regular bookstores in the Netherlands. Yet there is one place to go to, one place which makes up for it all. The American Book Center imports directly from both the US and the UK, and as such has a collection that many people from both the US and the UK have mentioned to be larger and more diverse than anything they know. It's right up there with the Forbidden Planet in London, the SF-bokhandeln in Stockholm and the Galaxy in Sydney. Members of the ABC and students get a 10% discount. And every year at Thanksgiving, they add another 10% discount on top of this. (20% discount is a big deal in the Netherlands, especially with the lack of choice.) And so there's a yearly pilgrimage to stock up on all those books that everyone's been meaning to buy for a long time now...So, another year, another thanksgiving. And this time I think I've more than made up for my absence during the last two years. :)
Without further ado, I give you the spoils:
* Tony Daniel - Metaplanetary and Superluminal. (He has a quote by Zelazny:
Remember his name, and keep watching for whatever he does., and another one by Bear. Despite the slightly tacky (albeit shiny) covers, and the very space-opera-ish coverblurb, I have high hopes.)
* Charles de Lint - Waifs and Strays. (Trade paperback; Been on the list since I first learned of its existence: I just absolutely love his short story collections; if only they weren't so hard to find here.)
* Peter F. Hamilton - Pandora's Star. (Been on the list since it was published; this is the Del Rey edition, which looks a whole lot thinner, even though it still has 988 pages; one wonder how the spine will hold up.)
* William Gibson - Pattern Recognition. (One of those books that slipped through the cracks due to the travelling.)
* Robert A. Heinlein - Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. (I must shamefacedly admit that I've never managed to read this yet.)
* Ian Irvine - The Way Between the Worlds. (I'd bought the first three long ago; never read them yet, and they're at the bottom of the pile based on anti-recommendations, but thought that if perchance I'd like them, I'd better have the entire series, hence now buying the fourth volume.)
* Paul Kearney - The Mark of Ran. (Sounds like a standard fantasy trilogy coverblurb, but unless I'm terribly mistaken, Erikson recommended him, and I'm willing to put some trust in that.)
* C.S. Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia. (Trade paperback; Given the upcoming movie, I really couldn't put off buying and reading this far too long-ignored classic any longer.)
* Ken MacLeod - The Cassini Division and The Sky Road. (With the same style new Orbit covers as the first two books in this fall revolution series - finally!)
* Ken MacLeod - Newton's Wake. (More of him is always good; fun and easy reads.)
* Patricia A. McKillip - The Tower at Stony Wood, In the Forests of Serre and Ombria in Shadow. (Don't like these weirdly sized editions, and they have black marker on the pages, but they were dirt cheap and it is McKillip after all...)
* Chris Moriarty - Spin State. (Has recommendations from Baxter and Brin; the coverblurb made it sound like an interesting universe.)
* Robert Reed - Down the Bright Way. (Marrow impressed me sufficiently that I want to read more form him)
* Kim Stanley Robinson - Fifty Degrees Below. (Hardcover; continues where Forty Signs of Rain left off, with a now shockingly believable premise. Robinson is buy on sight for me, and luckily I finally spotted him now, after having been looking for this for the entire month.)
* Robert Silverberg - Roma Eterna. (First learned about these stories in Silverberg's Far Horizons anthology - I just love a well crafted alternate history like this.)
* Dan Simmons - Ilium. (Comes very highly recommended, and I'm a fan of his Hyperion cantos.)
* Charles Stross - Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise. (I've picked up these books dozens of times and never bought them, but read an interview with him in last August's Orbit eZine, and he described his universe in such a way that I *knew* I had to have these. (Fortunately I've forgotten any and all details from the interview already, so I can go into the books unencumbered.))
* John C. Wright - The Last Guardian of Everness. (Fantasy, and with a coverblurb that doesn't appeal - but his Golden Age was sublime, so I'm going to give it a try.)
So, the total tally comes to 23 books. That should keep me reading for a while. ^_^
I also picked up (with thanks to Marion for alerting me of its existence) the new Enya at Fame (after querying them on if this was a
real CDand not
infected with DRMfor a while, I felt guilty about it and decided to just cough up the premium of buying there; I really do like that store, if only they weren't so darned expensive!) and a really old Sally Oldfield album at the Plaatboef. Definitely a productive trip. :)