What books have you recently procured? Either through spending your own hard earned cash; receiving it as a gift; borrowing from a library; or through dastardly means up to and including thievery, inveigling it out of a weak willed family member/friend or conning a little old woman out of that expensive and hard-to-find copy at a flea market. Whatever the modus operandi, list your acquisitions here.
Got myself a horror, Mr. Shivers, by Robert Jackson Bennett and a psychological thriller, Concrete Jungle, by J. G. Ballard. I'm particularly happy about the very short Ballard novel as I recently read High Rise and it has been the best and most powerful work I've read so far this year.
Got myself Soda Pop Soldier by Nick Cole on @ofer's recommendation. I'll probably be reading this sooner than some of my other buys that have been waiting on my to-be-read pile for many months because the thread 'SF with gaming elements' made me realise how much I love gaming as a theme in genre fiction.
Made three paperback purchases: On My Way to Paradise by Dave Wolverton Svaha by Charles de Lint Mirror for Princes by Tom de Haan
Recently got: The Eagle and the Raven by Pauline Gedge The Druid King by Norman Spinrad Druids by Morgan Llywelyn The Iliad (both the Fagles and Lattimore translations)
I've made a number of purchases since Jan/Feb (mostly physical books). SF & F Celestial Matters by Richard Garfinkle Down the Bright Way by Robert Reed American Gods by Neil Gaiman (on Kindle and a re-buy - I had the original, edited version that first came out, now I've got the expanded version) A Deeper Sea by Alexander Jablokov Carve the Sky by Alexander Jablokov Other The Snow Walker by Farley Mowat (a re-buy) The Gospel of Corax by Paul Park Endzone by Don DeLillo (Kindle) Libra by Don DeLillo (Kindle) Post-Captain by Patrick O'Brian (Bk. 2 of Aubrey-Maturin - long overdue, read the first bk. last year and it was one of my highlights)
I actually made a bona fide haul a couple days ago, every Kindle edition of Malazan Book of the Fallen. I had forgotten about Amazon's matchbook price thingie if you've bought the hardcopy of a book, so I got all ten of them for $2.99 each. And now I probably will reread them, something I had sworn not to do as the first time was quite enough. Of course I say that now.
My most recent hauls have been late 19th century works of realism: La Regenta by Leopoldo Alas (@Elvira's recommendation) and two works by Giovanni Verga whom I've had marked down to read for some years now, his supposed verismo masterpiece Mastro-don Gesualdo, and the collection Sparrow and Other Stories.
In the last couple of days I have bought the following: Beginning Operations: A Sector General Omnibus by James White. I have been keeping an eye on these books for a while and this omnibus has hit its lowest so far $6.04 El Día de las Hormigas by B. Werber sequel to Empire of the Ants. Foundation Trilogy by I. Asimov I have also completed the Musashi trilogy by E. Yoshikawa with the second and third book. Also, as I'm enjoying myself with Age of Myth, I have bought the first three books of The Riyria Revelations. Last but not least, The Kill Artist (Gabriel Allon #1) by Daniel Silva. This crime series has been highly recommended to me. I love summer holiday...
Happy reading, and I hope this is good. I was so wanting to read the sequel for years but still nothing in English *sad face*.
Some paperback books I bought relatively recently, all of them new except for the Jeter novel. Anybody already read any of these titles? I've read the Coetzee and Outram books before.
Interesting choices. I haven’t read any but I already had my eye on Fledgling. I am familiar with Kehlmann’s Measuring the World. I have a couple of friends who have read it. One loved it, the other one found it disappointing. I look forward to reading your opinion.
At Boreas's suggestion, follow the link to the Subterranean Press Steven Erickson page; you can see much of the limited edition artwork for their beautiful Malazan editions by clicking on each volume. http://subterraneanpress.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=erikson
It's my yearly Zelazny time again. Instead of rereading Lord of Light for the umpteenth time, I decided I'd try to get into some other books he's written. I initially wanted to go for more religion stuff, but I realised that's mostly really hard to get, so I looked at Amber. Turned out the first Amber book (in English) is like 15 Euros on German Amazon - and all ten in one edition is about 16. So I now have Zelazny in biblical proportions. Let's hope those books are as good as their reputation!
Sinuhé The Egiptian by Finnish author Mika Waltari. This classic has been recommended to me many times over and somehow I have never got round to read it. . The Werewolf Principle by Clifford Simak. And Octavia Butler Seed to Harvest Patternist #1-4
I also had the Amber omnibus. That thing is a certifiable murder weapon. I read the first story-arc which consists of the first five novels. It was very good, but for some reason I never continued to read the second arc.
Nice! Really interested to hear some of the names of cocktails from the both of them, but especially the "literary twist".