Friday, April 09, 2010

March books



I managed to up the number of purchases for this month, a total of 11 books. It's an interesting batch, with great gems and some picks I've been sorely waiting for quite some time.

For example, Harlan Ellison's anthology Partners in Wonder and Karen Joy Fowler's short-story collection Artificial Things are incredible finds. Ellison's anthology has the SF grandmaster joining with some notable writers like Roger Zelazny, A.E. Van Gog, and Robert Bloch to write collaborative stories. Meanwhile, Fowler's first collection was still definitely genre before she wandered away into literary territory.

A third find I picked up was the Ellen Datlow-edited Omni Visions I & Omni Visions II from the online bookstore Avalon, a pair of matched anthologies from Datlow's days at the famous science magazine.

I've been a rabid fan of P.C. Hodgell and her latest book Bound in Blood recently came out locally. Horror, humor, action-- if ever there was a series that's sorely underrated, Hodgell's ongoing adventures of Jame is one of them. Fortunately, Baen Books has just published the previous books in the series so anyone can jump right in to enjoy the fun.

Another sequel-book I've been keeping an eye out was Charles Stross' The Jennifer Morgue, his latest about Bob Howard and the super-sikret agency, The Laundry. Think a cocktail drink of James Bond and H.P. Lovecraft with a dash of Dilbert and you'll get the picture. On the other hand, I liked Joe Hill's stuff when it first came out before-- despite the (non-)hype about his parentage-- so it seemed natural that I'd get his latest book, Horns.

I've earlier mentioned that one of my stories was finally published in the Neil Gaiman Graphic/Fiction Awards Prose Anthology collection and I managed to get my contributor's copy this month. Meanwhile, I'm always willing to try out new epic fantasy books and I found Adrian Tchaikovsky's first book a great read. So I picked up the second book, Dragonfly Falling, as soon as I could.

The last couple of books, Escape from Hell by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and In the Court of the Crimson Kings by S.M. Stirling were chance buys in that these were the sequels. (Chance because I hadn't read the first books yet.) However, I've read their previous works and I thought these would be worth it.

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