Dipping into the Electronic Waters

I have to admit I'm a bit wary when it comes to the Internet.

Oh, I know I'm an avid surfer thanks to the 24-hour all-cable Internet/all the time at the office. Why do you think I'm always posting stuff on this blog thrice a week at the most?

Still, there are some things I wouldn't touch and one of them is buying stuff online. Granted I don't have my credit card anymore, I'm still averse to putting my credit information on the Internet. Actually, I'm more of averse to putting any information about myself online. Why do you think I still go around with the monicker 'banzai cat'? (No, you don't have to answer that.)

Even in the usual log-in features of websites, I'm very picky about what info to put in.

So why the hell was I doing bidding in an online auction? Hell, I've never even tried bidding to begin with!

But thanks to a tip from a little bird named Andrew, I found out that Avalon had this little treasure up for grabs, the Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature edited by Alberto Manguel. Manguel, known for reading for the renowned Jorge Luis Borge in his twilight days, had later become known for putting out books on books, reading, and stories. In this case, Manguel had come up with an anthology on fantastic literature, stories "that evokes the darkness that lies beyond the real world" comprising 72 tales of hauntings, dreams, time warps, transformations, and dealings with God and the devil.

Obviously, everyone knows my fascination with speculative fiction. But what's even great about this anthology is that this book has a good sampling of fantastic fiction not limited to England and North America. Some of the writers included here: Julio Cortazar, Tennessee Williams, Edith Wharton, Rudyard Kipling, Ray Bradbury, Max Beerholm, Graham Greene, Charles Dickens, Jean Cocteau, W. Somerset Maugham, Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, Isak Dinesen, Herman Hesse, Italo Calvino, Alexander Pushkin, Robert Louis Stevens, D. H. Lawrence, Hilaire Belloc, H. G. Wells, Vladimir Nabokov, Cynthia Ozick, Oscar Wilde, Franz Kafka, Walter de la Mare, Henry James, Hans Christian Anderson, E. M. Forster, O. Henry...

*runs out of breath*

So what's not to like?

Fortunately enough, I didn't have the same bad experience Andrew had when I bidded for this item. A meeting later and I was now the proud owner of this book:

Not bad for a first-timer, eh? Supposedly, this anthology was followed by Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic. Wow, more good stuff.

But in any case, I can't stop looking at this book because of the wonderfully paranoid cover by George Tooker (which has his full art work "Subway" at the back of the book):

Now if that painting doesn't get under your nerves...