Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Have Fun, Go Mad!

But it wasn't all bad news for the start of this week.

Since it's my birthday this coming month, Fully-Booked sent me a nice little discount promo that clears around 40% of whatever I purchase at any of their branches. Of course since this is just a one-time, big-time effort only for this month, I had to make it count.

Funny enough, despite me mum agreeing to finance this book-buying expedition, I didn't have the heart to go wild (that and me mum telling me to limit myself to five books). So I picked up:

  1. The first book of Glen Cook's latest series, The Tyranny of Night. Cook had actually been making his mark in the genre as early as 1984 with his military-fantasy line, The Black Company, even as most writers were turning epic-in-scope thanks to Daddy Tolkien. Now that's over, Cook is turning his hand to epic, which should be interesting to see.
  2. SF-writer John Wright's second fantasy series, Orphans of Chaos, which seems to be a combination of Harry Potter and Roger Zelazny (or reminiscent of Professor Xavier's Academy for mutants). I like Wright because he dreams big and this one about a bunch of captive kids who may be offsprings of different mythologies looks fantastic.
  3. I liked SF-writer Justina Robson's Natural History so when she came out with this mixture of SF-fantasy, Keeping it Real, I picked it up. Of course I'm somewhat wary as Robson's newest seems to be jumping on the bandwagon for SF-females-with-big-guns/elves-in-America with some heaping of romance on top. Who knows? We'll see...

What's funnier is that whenever I feel like I want some respectability in my book-buying, I immediately reach for any book by literary fantasist John Crowley. I don't know; it's an instinctive reaction, like the NRA reaching for their guns when faced with civil liberties. ("You want literary? Here's John Crowley in your face!") Last time it was Otherwise, an omnibus of his earlier novels; this time I was about to reach for Lord Byron: The Evening Land but I resisted buying it. Maybe next time.

Boy, I can't wait 'til the big day arrives and I can really splurge...

6 comments:

Vin said...

Wow! A new Glen Cook novel! I've gotta get my hands on that. :)

I'm such a fan of the Black Company series, it was a great showcase of handling military-fantasy.

PS: I hope you're feeling better. I look forward to seeing you at the launch on the 10th.

banzai cat said...

Yeah, was surprised meself to see a copy of that in FB. Are you planning to get a copy of his Dread Empire book? Will be ordering a copy from Booktopia.

See ya on the 10th also!

Vin said...

Oooh! Order one for me too. I'll get it.
I just passed there recently and bought a ton of stuff.
Including Leviathan 4: Cities.
I heard they had Leviathan 3, but you already got it. :)

banzai cat said...

Hehe I'll mention to it to Robert. I actually sent him an email asking about the price tag. Hopefully he'll get back to me soon.

As for Leviathan 4, ah-hah! So you're the guy! ;-) Was eyeing that meself but that's alright. Good to know that book's in good hands. :-D

Don said...

Wow. December ka din pala. haha.

How do you get one of those discount thingies? Heheh.

banzai cat said...

Moi, December? Nup. :-D

And ya gotta get a discount card from FB unfortunately.