quidscribis
Crazy Writer
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- Sep 4, 2006
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Except when it says "candy" or "chocolate" or other things on the outside of the package that a postal worker might want to "confiscate" before you ever arrive at the post office...
Book Hauls!
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AHA so you did end up with a copy after all, let us know how they compare to other Mythos stories. I haven't read as widely as you wrt that particular sub genre. HMMM..put me in a place that is not so lunatic hey?...There's a bunch of books I ought to post but am just going to post the one which I am most excited about.
Courtesy of Julie & Pat who went to the world con in Japan before heading my way were among others:
Lairs of the Hidden Gods - Japanese stories from the Cthulhu Mythos Vols I - IV
GOLLUM ... glad you and the books are home and safe. Yes do come visit again and hopefully things will not all be happening at the same time. And maybe we can put you in a hotel that is not in a lunatic part of town.
Next time maybe we can head up North, that would be pretty cool... Don't forget Melbourne in 2010 either...
Addy
Win awards!
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That's more or less what happens here with everything EXCEPT books. Thank God they're tax free. We have to pay 60% over everything we import directly, and that is calculated over shipping too, surprisingly enough. I've had the most miserable times trying to import musical equipment I couldn't find locally in the past. Things have improved, but I still have to import a lot of stuff that I use on a regular basis, like oil paint and books.
gully_foyle
Here kitty kitty kitty!
Finally got some more in...
Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Look to Windward by Iain M Banks
Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Look to Windward by Iain M Banks
Two new books with short reviews...
Book 1: The Camel BookMobile - Masha Hamilton
Hamilton's captivating third novel (after 2004's The Distance Between Us) follows Fiona Sweeney, a 36-year-old librarian, from New York to Garissa, Kenya, on her sincere but naïve quest to make a difference in the world. Fi enlists to run the titular mobile library overseen by Mr. Abasi, and in her travels through the bush, the small village of Mididima becomes her favorite stop. There, Matani, the village teacher; Kanika, an independent, vivacious young woman; and Kanika's grandmother Neema are the most avid proponents of the library and the knowledge it brings to the community. Not everyone shares such esteem for the project, however. Taban, known as Scar Boy; Jwahir, Matani's wife; and most of the town elders think these books threaten the tradition and security of Mididima. When two books go missing, tensions arise between those who welcome all that the books represent and those who prefer the time-honored oral traditions of the tribe. Kanika, Taban and Matani become more vibrant than Fi, who never outgrows the cookie-cutter mold of a woman needing excitement and fulfillment, but Hamilton weaves memorable characters and elemental emotions in artful prose with the lofty theme of Western-imposed "education" versus a village's perceived perils of exposure to the developed world
Book 2: Starbook- Ben Okri
From Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Salman Rushdie, there has been a form of literature where the fiercely political has been fused with the radiantly imaginative, the prosaic yoked to the poetic. Some called it magic realism, although the phrase has the stale sound of academic compartmentalisation. These authors were following in the footsteps of William Blake, among others, reinventing the symbols of the sacred, putting inverted commas around the 'real' world and threading the particular tragedies and tyrannies of history through transformative narratives.
Booker prize-winning Ben Okri's first novel in five years stands in the grand tradition of myth-making exemplified in One Hundred Years of Solitude and Midnight's Children, although the book has a vision and voice uniquely its own. 'This is a story my mother began to tell me when I was a child. The rest I gleaned from the book of life among the stars, in which all things are known.' The opening sentences are typical of the overall style, the apparent simplicity of fable, the unselfconscious mysticism.
Like many fables, there is a king whose son, the prince, will be tested through trials and tribulations, who must suffer on his path to greater insight and maturity. During this journey, he'll meet a maiden, who comes from a secretive tribe of master artists, and fall in love. On this level of love story, the novel tells a tale that is archetypal, the desire and pursuit of the whole, but it is a book that consistently operates on many levels of meaning, its apparent simplicity, in fact, part of a rich fabric of symbol, echo and allusion.
It is also a novel about art and its capacity to creatively reconfigure the cruelties of the world. The maiden's tribe, we are told, 'did not favour such simple things in its art as order, balance, harmony. These were easy, and had been fully explored for generations. The tribe had advanced to the higher harmony of broken cadences, discord as beauty'. Okri loves paradox, one of the striking affinities he has with Blake, and uses words to point at the hidden, the space where the sacred lives and breathes. 'To understand too quickly was a failure. It was a blinding. Understanding stopped them from seeing and looking.'
For a book of indirections and paradoxes, it is a surprise when the land of the novel is directly named as Africa; into this Africa comes 'a strange plague ... a cold white wind and wherever it blew it created vacant spaces ... the white wind began to erase hills and valleys, it erased the memories of people, it erased villages and towns'. The intrusion of humanity's inhumanity anchors the metaphysical lyricism of the book, creatively chills its enchanted air, reminds us that all the best fairy tales hold a mirror up to the darkness and terror of the world. This is a vision of a paradise both found and lost.
Okri's vision pervades every page and a vision so spiritualised, so peculiarly optimistic, will not be to everyone's taste. There is not a shadow of cynicism or knowingness here; the ironic, the distanced, are remarkable by their absence. But it is the imaginative generosity and peculiar purity of the writing that continually touch the heart. Here is a prose with a tender tread, alive to human frailty. 'The king loved to watch over sleeping beings. Often he wandered the kingdom at night, watching over his sleeping subjects ... the good and the bad all slept in the same way, under the mercy of immense forces, under the mercy of the ultimate mysteries.'
Starbook is a novel at 'the mercy of ultimate mysteries'. Okri does not wish to solve or reduce these mysteries, he reveres them too much for that, and instead seduces the reader with a rapt recounting of the infinite within the particular.
Book 1: The Camel BookMobile - Masha Hamilton
Hamilton's captivating third novel (after 2004's The Distance Between Us) follows Fiona Sweeney, a 36-year-old librarian, from New York to Garissa, Kenya, on her sincere but naïve quest to make a difference in the world. Fi enlists to run the titular mobile library overseen by Mr. Abasi, and in her travels through the bush, the small village of Mididima becomes her favorite stop. There, Matani, the village teacher; Kanika, an independent, vivacious young woman; and Kanika's grandmother Neema are the most avid proponents of the library and the knowledge it brings to the community. Not everyone shares such esteem for the project, however. Taban, known as Scar Boy; Jwahir, Matani's wife; and most of the town elders think these books threaten the tradition and security of Mididima. When two books go missing, tensions arise between those who welcome all that the books represent and those who prefer the time-honored oral traditions of the tribe. Kanika, Taban and Matani become more vibrant than Fi, who never outgrows the cookie-cutter mold of a woman needing excitement and fulfillment, but Hamilton weaves memorable characters and elemental emotions in artful prose with the lofty theme of Western-imposed "education" versus a village's perceived perils of exposure to the developed world
Book 2: Starbook- Ben Okri
From Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Salman Rushdie, there has been a form of literature where the fiercely political has been fused with the radiantly imaginative, the prosaic yoked to the poetic. Some called it magic realism, although the phrase has the stale sound of academic compartmentalisation. These authors were following in the footsteps of William Blake, among others, reinventing the symbols of the sacred, putting inverted commas around the 'real' world and threading the particular tragedies and tyrannies of history through transformative narratives.
Booker prize-winning Ben Okri's first novel in five years stands in the grand tradition of myth-making exemplified in One Hundred Years of Solitude and Midnight's Children, although the book has a vision and voice uniquely its own. 'This is a story my mother began to tell me when I was a child. The rest I gleaned from the book of life among the stars, in which all things are known.' The opening sentences are typical of the overall style, the apparent simplicity of fable, the unselfconscious mysticism.
Like many fables, there is a king whose son, the prince, will be tested through trials and tribulations, who must suffer on his path to greater insight and maturity. During this journey, he'll meet a maiden, who comes from a secretive tribe of master artists, and fall in love. On this level of love story, the novel tells a tale that is archetypal, the desire and pursuit of the whole, but it is a book that consistently operates on many levels of meaning, its apparent simplicity, in fact, part of a rich fabric of symbol, echo and allusion.
It is also a novel about art and its capacity to creatively reconfigure the cruelties of the world. The maiden's tribe, we are told, 'did not favour such simple things in its art as order, balance, harmony. These were easy, and had been fully explored for generations. The tribe had advanced to the higher harmony of broken cadences, discord as beauty'. Okri loves paradox, one of the striking affinities he has with Blake, and uses words to point at the hidden, the space where the sacred lives and breathes. 'To understand too quickly was a failure. It was a blinding. Understanding stopped them from seeing and looking.'
For a book of indirections and paradoxes, it is a surprise when the land of the novel is directly named as Africa; into this Africa comes 'a strange plague ... a cold white wind and wherever it blew it created vacant spaces ... the white wind began to erase hills and valleys, it erased the memories of people, it erased villages and towns'. The intrusion of humanity's inhumanity anchors the metaphysical lyricism of the book, creatively chills its enchanted air, reminds us that all the best fairy tales hold a mirror up to the darkness and terror of the world. This is a vision of a paradise both found and lost.
Okri's vision pervades every page and a vision so spiritualised, so peculiarly optimistic, will not be to everyone's taste. There is not a shadow of cynicism or knowingness here; the ironic, the distanced, are remarkable by their absence. But it is the imaginative generosity and peculiar purity of the writing that continually touch the heart. Here is a prose with a tender tread, alive to human frailty. 'The king loved to watch over sleeping beings. Often he wandered the kingdom at night, watching over his sleeping subjects ... the good and the bad all slept in the same way, under the mercy of immense forces, under the mercy of the ultimate mysteries.'
Starbook is a novel at 'the mercy of ultimate mysteries'. Okri does not wish to solve or reduce these mysteries, he reveres them too much for that, and instead seduces the reader with a rapt recounting of the infinite within the particular.
Addy
Win awards!
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2007
- Messages
- 352
and finally, in the mail (I had nearly given up on them, writing them off as a bad Ebay seller)
came in a slipcase
Ooh, those look fine. I just ordered the trilogy too, but in an omnibus.
Nesacat
The Cat
Now that things have finally settled down and I've managed to organise some of the new books, here is the haul for the past several weeks and they come to me thanks to several people including GOLLUM and Morpheus:
Science Fiction & Fantasy:
The Coyote Road Trickster Tales edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
Time And The Gods by Lord Dunsany
Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson
The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson
Three Hearts And Three Lions by Poul Anderson
The Emperor Of Dreams by Clark Ashton Smith
The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
Chocky by John Wyndham
Adventures In Unhistory by Avram Davidson
Heaven's Net Is Wide by Lian Hearn
M Is For Magic by Neil Gaiman
Dark Alchemy: Magical Tales From Masters Of Modern Fantasy edited by Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois
Fiction:
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
The Photograph by Penelope Lively
After Dark by Haruki Murakami
Walking On Glass by Iain Banks
Slight Confessions by Alice Hoffman
The Water Room by Christopher Fowler
The Interpretation Of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld
Graphic Novels:
The Arrival by Darren Shan
The Complete Moomin Comic Strips by Tove Jansson
Murder Mysteries by Neil Gaiman & R. Craig Russell
Elric: The Making Of A Sorceror by Michael Moorcock & Walter Simonson
Non-Fiction:
The Lore Of The Land: A Guide To England's Legends by Westwood & Simpson
The four Cthulhu Mythos books that have been translated into English from Japanese are as follows:
Laws Of The Hidden Gods edited by Asamatsu Ken
Vol I - Night Voices, Night Journeys
Vol II - Inverted Kingdom
Vol III - Straight To Darkness
Vol IV - The Dreaming God
Science Fiction & Fantasy:
The Coyote Road Trickster Tales edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
Time And The Gods by Lord Dunsany
Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson
The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson
Three Hearts And Three Lions by Poul Anderson
The Emperor Of Dreams by Clark Ashton Smith
The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
Chocky by John Wyndham
Adventures In Unhistory by Avram Davidson
Heaven's Net Is Wide by Lian Hearn
M Is For Magic by Neil Gaiman
Dark Alchemy: Magical Tales From Masters Of Modern Fantasy edited by Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois
Fiction:
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
The Photograph by Penelope Lively
After Dark by Haruki Murakami
Walking On Glass by Iain Banks
Slight Confessions by Alice Hoffman
The Water Room by Christopher Fowler
The Interpretation Of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld
Graphic Novels:
The Arrival by Darren Shan
The Complete Moomin Comic Strips by Tove Jansson
Murder Mysteries by Neil Gaiman & R. Craig Russell
Elric: The Making Of A Sorceror by Michael Moorcock & Walter Simonson
Non-Fiction:
The Lore Of The Land: A Guide To England's Legends by Westwood & Simpson
The four Cthulhu Mythos books that have been translated into English from Japanese are as follows:
Laws Of The Hidden Gods edited by Asamatsu Ken
Vol I - Night Voices, Night Journeys
Vol II - Inverted Kingdom
Vol III - Straight To Darkness
Vol IV - The Dreaming God
CatBar
Active Member
Would this be some exclusive scifi book club's edition 'Robots and Murder' by any chance - and with a good jacket-cover by Matt (some Polish surname like Stawicki?)?
Seems like, annoyingly, I can't get this in England and would have to try for it by Amazon from the US?
Last edited:
Urien
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2006
- Messages
- 1,144
Just bought:
Fight club by Palanihuk
Lisey's story by King
Reaper's Gale by Erikson
The Voyage of Sable Keech by Asher
Polity Agent by Asher
The Mammoth Book of Golden Age Science Fiction (ten novellas) edited by Asimov, Waugh and Greenberg.
Should keep me going for a few weeks.
Fight club by Palanihuk
Lisey's story by King
Reaper's Gale by Erikson
The Voyage of Sable Keech by Asher
Polity Agent by Asher
The Mammoth Book of Golden Age Science Fiction (ten novellas) edited by Asimov, Waugh and Greenberg.
Should keep me going for a few weeks.
gully_foyle
Here kitty kitty kitty!
Wasting time this morning waiting for a toy store to open I found a rarely visited 2nd hand bookshop was open and made a great score.
Neuromancer William Gibson
Nightwings Robert Silverberg
Revelation Space Alastair Reynolds
Starburst Short story collection by Alfred Bester, including Fondly Fahrenheit, which is highly regarded, so I'm looking forward to that one.
Neuromancer William Gibson
Nightwings Robert Silverberg
Revelation Space Alastair Reynolds
Starburst Short story collection by Alfred Bester, including Fondly Fahrenheit, which is highly regarded, so I'm looking forward to that one.
Not exactly a book haul, because I just ordered the books today, but Dover is in the middle of a 60% off sale for selected books and I've ordered some fine old classics by Onions, Dunsany, LeFanu, and Meyrink. (Awaiting their arrival with much anticipation.)
For those who might be interested:
Science Fiction and Fantasy
For those who might be interested:
Science Fiction and Fantasy
bruno-1012
I ate all the turkey....
Very sad but I've just received a boxed set of 10 Doctor Who stories based on the new doctors.
Wouldn't normally have bought these but couldn't resist at £10 for the set.
Wouldn't normally have bought these but couldn't resist at £10 for the set.
Another bargain for me! A new copy of 'Lady of Hay' by Barbara Erskine for just $AU 5
Jennifer Fallon's 2nd volume of the Tide Lords series, just released, cost me only $AU 15
Looking forward to reading Jennifer's new book and re-reading Lady of Hay.
Jennifer Fallon's 2nd volume of the Tide Lords series, just released, cost me only $AU 15
Looking forward to reading Jennifer's new book and re-reading Lady of Hay.
j d worthington
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 9, 2006
- Messages
- 13,889
Congratulations, Teresa! Yes, they've been running this off and on for a bit and, had I the money, I've seen several things I'd love to invest in. Sadly, for the foreseeable future at any rate, book-buying is not going to be on my list of things I'm able to do....
John and I are somehow on different Dover mailing lists, so I didn't know about this particular sale until he brought it to my attention.
We also get their catalogues (frequently) by US mail, but when those arrive it's a little easier to be wise, because ordering the books requires a little more effort and the question of whether or not we can actually afford them has more time to creep into our brains.
In this case, John showed me the page ... and within minutes all was lost (or gained, depending on how you look at it).
We also get their catalogues (frequently) by US mail, but when those arrive it's a little easier to be wise, because ordering the books requires a little more effort and the question of whether or not we can actually afford them has more time to creep into our brains.
In this case, John showed me the page ... and within minutes all was lost (or gained, depending on how you look at it).
Reiver
Book junkie
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2006
- Messages
- 33
The Dreamers series by David & Leigh Eddings
Hood by Stephen R Lawhead
Renegade's Magic by Robin Hobb
Spirit Gate by Kate Elliott
Reading the Elliott one just now and it's starting off well although I can't help thinking of McCaffrey except with eagles and not dragons! But I've only just started so I'll wait a bit longer before forming an opinion and she is an author whose work I like anyway!
Hood by Stephen R Lawhead
Renegade's Magic by Robin Hobb
Spirit Gate by Kate Elliott
Reading the Elliott one just now and it's starting off well although I can't help thinking of McCaffrey except with eagles and not dragons! But I've only just started so I'll wait a bit longer before forming an opinion and she is an author whose work I like anyway!
Recently read and thoroughly enjoyed Scott Lynch's Red Seas ..., also loved Philip Reeve, children's author but I don't care if it's good, Starcross, sequel to Larklight. these are really worth a read if you like good old Jules Verne type adventures, they're set in an alternate Victorian England with space travel. Also quite enjoyed Robin Hobb's Forest mage, I'm a bit behind on these and find this series quite hard to get into. Loving Fiona McIntosh, so does my hubby, just finished the Trinity trilogy excellent page-turners. I'm one of those underpaid booksellers, but I do get advance copies sometimes and have two huge tomes to get through at some point, David Bilsborough's The Wanderer's Tale, which is out so has anyone out there read it yet and is it worth a read? Also Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind, Gollancz are pushing it as the next big thing...
Also if you haven't read Alan Campbell's Scar Night do so now! Quite different, but very Gormenghast-esque.
Also if you haven't read Alan Campbell's Scar Night do so now! Quite different, but very Gormenghast-esque.
Also if you haven't read Alan Campbell's Scar Night do so now! Quite different, but very Gormenghast-esque.
Yes, we discussed it during the late Book Club. I thought it was wonderful, too.
A trip to amazon informs me that Larklight has just come out in paperback over here. Since I like Reeve, I'll have to look for it, the next time I'm allowed near a bookstore.
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