I just bought.....

[FicusFan]

My latest Haul:

Song of Nero TP Tom Holt (UK)
1610: Sundial in a Grave TP, Mary Gentle (UK)

The Separation HC, Christopher Priest (UK)


The Haunting PB, Charlee Jacob


Moon's Shadow PB, Catherine Asaro

The Lamp of The Wicked PB, Phil Rickman (UK)

Dracula Unbound TP, Brian Aldis

The Twist TP, Richard Calder

The Book / The Writer HC, Zoran Zivkovic

 

[DrBloodmoney1]

The Meisha Merlin edition of To Ride Hell's Chasm by Janny Wurts.
Broken Angels by Richard Morgan tpb
Discount HB of Tim Powers' Declare

DrB

 

[FicusFan]

My latest finds:

Undead and Unwed PB, by Mary Janice Davidson. It looks like a funny vampire romance - I saw the title in Locus several months ago, and decided to try it when it came out.

Battle for Atlantis PB, by Greg Donegan

Fitcher's Brides TP, Gregory Frost

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World TP, by Haruki Murakami. Richard Morgan (who wrote Altered Carbon recommended this in the interview Soon posted, so I thought I would pick it up.

A Good Hanging PB, Ian Rankin

And one of my local books stores had a display of modern copies of Ray Bradbury PB books and I picked up several.

Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Fahreneit 451

I also got two ARCS from by discussion group:

Forge of Heaven by CJ Cherryh, book 2 of the gene wars
The Arcanum by Thomas Wheeler

 

[Hobbit]

The Collected Short Stories of CJ Cherryh;

Times Eye by Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter (because I couldn't wait until June for the UK version, and there's a nice CD ROM that I don't think will be with the UK release)

The Television Companion (Doctor Who) by David Howe and Stephen Walker - the best summary around, updated and expanded and finally in Hardback)

Hobbit

 

[Julian]

Originally posted by rune
I buy books like some women buy shoes I just can't resist and have just bought :-

The Ring - Deborah Chester
The Pillars of the World - Anne Bishop
The whole Black Jewel Series (Bk 1,2,3,4) - Anne Bishop
Summon the Keeper - Tanya Huff
Shapechanger's Song - Jennifer Roberson

My to read pile is growing!

rune

Ah Rune - you're even worse than I am!! Don't you ever get discouraged by what you're setting yourself up for? I've been buying more than I can read for a few years now... and I'm wondering when on earth I'm going to get down to finishing this big pile off...

But I'm glad to see you bought the Black Jewel series. I think you'll like that one... And you did get Glen Cook's Black Company series, didn't you??

 

[FicusFan]

Originally posted by Hobbit
The Collected Short Stories of CJ Cherryh;

Hobbit

I am still debating that one with myself.

I prefer to wait for books to go into paper, but I am not sure this one will. It is so large it might not work out, or it may take years before it goes. So I am not sure yet whether to wait and risk it going out of print all together, or buying the massive thing now and then regreting it when the TP comes out it six months.

 

[Julian]

Originally posted by Hobbit
The Collected Short Stories of CJ Cherryh;

Just to be clear - you're talking about "The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh" (hardcover edition), right? FicusFan's post - "this massive thing" - got me doubting, but this seems to be just a HB of 650 pages or so. Not like the Integral Editon of Jack Vance, say

 

[Hobbit]

LOL - yes, that's the one. The exchange rate at the moment between the US and the UK is so good for me at the moment that I went for it.

I have read a few of them before, as it is mainly a collection of two old collections, Sunfall and Visible Light, though Sunfall has an extra story exclusive to this book. There is a section of other stories not collected together before.

It is also probably more Sf than Fantasy, though there is Fantasy in there too. The Dreamstone is in there, which was later made into a novel.

Rereading some of these (I'm dipping in and out of them) has reminded me that I prefer her short stories to her more recent stuff. There seemed to me to be a lot of padding in her recent books that has made them difficult for me to finish, and in one case at least, start. These are short; trimmed down to the basics her writing comes over as very good whilst still keeping a plotline.

And yes, 642 pages is not that long these days - but the breadth in this one (28 or so stories) is terrific. Well done to DAW Books for putting it together, I say!

 

[Julian]

Originally posted by Hobbit
LOL - yes, that's the one. The exchange rate at the moment between the US and the UK is so good for me at the moment that I went for it.

Ah, yes! Same good rate for us here on the continent!

Thanks for the comments. I already have Sunfall, but this nevertheless seems interesting.

 

[JohnH]

************************

 

[Clarkesworld]

I just added The Collected Jorkens by Lord Dunsany to my to-read pile. It's nice to see Night Shade Books putting this series out. They are doing it justice.

-Neil

 

[Hobbit]

Nothing like a good difference of opinion to make you appreciate what is there instead of what you wish was there.

LOL...you are quite right and that's what makes life interesting here...

To make my opinion clearer, with the atevi series I only read the first two and really struggled to finish the second. I did appreciate the writing but found them so dull.

The Fortress series I enjoyed a little better, though still found them hard going, certainly harder than say her Morgaine series which I love.

And yet I do normally like lengthy Sf and Fantasy....

..and Downbelow Station is one of my favourites.

What I have noticed is that reading the short stories makes me appreciate/notice her writing more, and by reading the older stories I found myself enjoyng her work again. Perhaps it is that the shortness of them means that I am less dulled than I have been with her later work. Doesn't mean to say they are bad, but I didn't enjoy the recent stuff as much.

Still makes the collection a good recommendation.

As you find out round here, it takes all sorts - and I am often contradictorary!

Hobbit

 

[Julian]

Originally posted by JohnH
[q]
Cherryh is one of the leanest writers I have read

Maybe just me, but I wouldn't describe her - then or now - as lean.

LeGuin is lean, so is Alan Garner. But Cherryh?
Care to elaborate?

P.S. Just got Garner's Thursbitch today. Anyone read this yet?

 

[Zsinj]

As I've mentioned here before I've started reading the Runelords Series by David Farland. I really like it, allthough the magic system, with it being so original, is hard to get into for me. Don't get me wrong, I love original ideas in fantasy. It's just that it's gonna take some time for my brain to adapt to it.
But anyway, since I'm reading the Runelords Series, and I have books I & II, I decided to get book III, "Wizardborn" while I was at it today.
There's one thing though, I find Darrell Sweets' art to be quite sucky, (No personal attack intended. Goooood mods! Niiiiice mods! They musn't hurts usss! ) Sweet has a quite notorious habit of making the characters on the covers completely contrary to how they look in the books. Plus he makes almost everything look, I don't know how to describe it, all bright and cheery and flowery, and that's what I hate! There are a few exceptions in which he excelled a bit in his art, such as the cover to "The Brotherhood of the Wolf", and a few in the Wheel of Time Series such as "The Great Hunt", "The Dragon Reborn" "The Shadow Rising" "The Fires of Heaven" and "A Crown of Swords", but other than that, bleh!!!
To give you an example of how bad Sweet is on interpreting the books characters through his art, here is a pic of a Frowth Giant from the Runelords done by Howard Lyon.

This is almost exactly how the creature was described in the books, and exactly how I imagined it to look.

And here is Sweet's horrifically bad version of a Frowth Giant:

Do I really need to say any more, folks?

 

[Erfael]

Not to raise any hackles, but other than stylistic differences, those two frowth giants look pretty much the same to me.

There is a difference between different concept and different style. Those two giants are conceptually the same, but stylistically different.



And to keep on topic,

I recently got:

a ton of used books
Graham Joyce's Tooth Fairy
Jeffrey Ford's THe Portrait of Ms. Charbuque
Kay's Last Light of the Sun

 

[fluffy bunny]

To give you an example of how bad Sweet is on interpreting the books characters through his art, here is a pic of a Frowth Giant from the Runelords done by Howard Lyon.

This is almost exactly how the creature was described in the books, and exactly how I imagined it to look.

Am I the only one, or does that look very similar to the mystics from the film 'The Dark Crystal' (only a lot bigger)?

To get back to topic, I've bought:

Islandia (Austin Tappan Wright)- the size seems daunting though

Sabriel (Nix)

Little Big (Crowley)- not for the bookclub, but it's one of those that I've kept putting off

 

[Erfael]

Well, give it a tail and an extra couple sets of arms, and, sure, it looks just like a mystic.

 

[FicusFan]

I just got:

The City Trilogy HC, by Hsi-Kuo Chang. It is modern Chinese literature from Taiwan translated into English. It is a SF/F story.

The High House & The False House PB, by James Stoddard

Sex and the Single Vampire PB, Katie MacAlister

a used copy of Ghost From the Grand Banks PB, by Arthur C. Clarke

I Am A Cat TP, Soseki Natsume, serials from around 1900 published in a magazine looking at life in Japan at the time from the POV of a kitten/Cat.

Night of Blood PB, Richard Knaak. I was so taken with the cover I had to pick it up just to see if the main characters are really minotaur like beasts.

I found a book from the UK for sale in Barnes & Noble (they are doing more of that) called Colours in the Steel PB, by KJ Parker it is the first book of the Fencer Trilogy I got that and ordered the other two which were also available in the US: The Proof House, The Belly of the Bow

 

[Eleal]

On Monday the postman delivered the following:


Mercedes Lackey: Brightly Burning
Just another Valdemar-Story, hopefully one of the more interesting, like 'Take a thief'.

Mercedes Lackey, Joust
I sounded interesting, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Diana Pharaoh Francis, Path of Fate
This was recommended in a German fantasy forum. It's a first novel that I'm eager to start.

Sean McMullen, Voyage of the Shadowmoon
Yes, I'm late. But my pile of unread books is growing enormously.

Deborah Chester, Shadow War
I already own the first volume, but haven't read it yet. I'm going to buy the third one as well, that's for sure.


Eleal

 

[Ouroboros]

I don't normally post what I've bought in this thread, but I might as well mention I picked up a copy of Gemmell's new Swords of Night and Day this evening.

Its a heftier book than its predecessor, White Wolf, and boasts a Skilgannon cover where he doesn't look like he tweezes his eyebrows. The art is by the same artist, John Bolton, but this time our hero's face is looking very bestial, with a sloping forehead and portruding simian mouth.

Anyway, I'll post my thoughts on it in a few days. I'm planning a quick re-read of White Wolf so I can make an accurate comparison.