Not the best of pictures, but good enough to show off the books I bought yesterday. And yes, I know I have too many books already, not to mention a fair few library books that need to go back soon. But I can’t help it; every now and then I get the urge and need to get more. What’s nice is when that urge is satisfied, like it was this time. Sometimes you have to let a bookstore lie fallow for a while, not visit for a couple of weeks or months to give it time to surprise you. The secondhand English bookstore near Nieuwmarkt I got all this from certainly did.
From the bottom up: The Kaiser Battle, about the first day of the last German offensive in World War I by Martin Middlebrook, Justina Robson’s Keeping it Real, the William Tuning sequel to H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy novels, a pre stroke Keith Laumer novel I haven’t read yet (Galactic Oddyssey), Karl Schroeder’s debut novel Ventus, Cordwainer Smith’s The Planet Buyers, Tatja Grimm’s World, an early Vernor Vinge novel, a Zelazny novel I didn’t know yet (The Dream Master), Robert Holdstock’s The Bone Forest…
Moving on to the female writers: there’s Ann McCaffrey’s The White Dragon which I foolishly had gotten rid off a few years ago, the first three Eluki Bes Shahar Hellflower space adventure stories and Justina Robson’s debut novel, Natural History which had been on my wishlist for ages.
But the books I’m most happy to have found are at the very top: three Joanna Russ novels: We Who Are About to, And Chaos Died, and The Two of Them. Reading The Female Man last year was a revelation; I hadn’t realised how good Russ was as a writer, rather than as “just” a feminist science fiction writer. Annoyingly, that reputation of being a firebreathing feminist had kept me far too long from trying her novels and then when I did want to read them, I couldn’t find them anywhere. Not anymore.
Alex
January 22, 2012 at 9:27 pmYour shelves look like mine. At last count I had somewhere around 1500 books in 400 sq. foot apartment.
I’m trying desperately to switch over to ebooks. I can’t keep moving these every time I move. But oh man, I love the smell, the feel of real paper, and there’s nothing in the electronic form to simulate the browsing, or lying in bed and gazing at my shelves. Le sigh.
Sam Dodsworth
January 24, 2012 at 4:48 amIn case you didn’t already know… “The Planet Buyer” is actually the first half of Cordwainer Smith’s only novel – “Norstrilia”, published as “The Planet Buyer” and “The Underpeople” in the first edition. It’s as good an introduction as any if you’re not already into Cordwainer Smith, but don’t be surprised if it seems to end abruptly.
Martin Wisse
January 24, 2012 at 6:18 amThanks; I did know that, but wanted it for completist sake.
Martin Wisse
January 24, 2012 at 6:19 amor lying in bed and gazing at my shelves
Yes, heaven.