I put these up on my Facebook account back before I had the blog, but I suspect many non-Facebook people would like a look at them as well.
Gene Wolfe, Liz Hand, Rosemary Wolfe
Chris Nakashima-Brown, Gordon Van Gelder
Chip Delany, Liz Hand
Paul Di Filippo, Howard Waldrop, Jeri Bishop.
Peter Straub, John Crowley
Gary K. Wolfe, John Clute
Slashdot tells us that Roland Emmerich, the towering cinematic genius* who brought us such classic films* as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012, is going to be filming Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series as a “3D Epic.”
My thoughts:
* Warning: Content may be 95% sarcasm by weight.
In the Before Time, the Long Long Ago (i.e., before I started this blog), I would ask The Vast Wisdom of Usenet (i.e. rec.arts.sf.written) what books I should read this year. Now that I have the blog, I’m posting the question here.
Below are 100 books (or a more, counting multiple titles by a single author) of fiction I’m considering reading in 2010. With a few exceptions (like forthcoming books), they’re all books I already own in first editions. Most likely I’ll get to considerably less than 100. The first few are books I’ll probably get to (or have already read), whereas the rest are a little vaguer (and in alphabetical order by author). That’s where you come in. Tell me which of the books below I should or shouldn’t read, and why. If a book’s not on the list, it’s probably because I’ve already read it, or have no interest in it, won’t get to it this year, etc., so save your electrons instead of suggesting alternates (there are plenty of other places for that). And if I list Book #2 in a linear series, rest assured I’ve already read Book #1.
I don’t promise I’ll read all the highest rated works, but those most highly praised are considerably more likely to be added to the reading stack, which is what’s happened the previous years I’ve done this.
Just sent out to regular customers last night, with lots of tasty first editions by Roger Zelazny, Jack Vance, Joe R. Lansdale, Stephen King, etc. Email me at lperson1@austin.rr.com if you would like to receive a copy.
And of course, there’s the main webpage, but I haven’t updated it with the new titles yet.
As opposed to John Joseph Adams, who suggested Gene Wolfe, John Klima, who thought it should go to Gene Wolfe, and Jess Nevins, who said “Hey, how about Gene Wolfe?”
There were also a few other choices bandied about…
Embrace the anachronism arachnoid mechanism.
Postscript: And as long as we’re linking to films about big-ass mechanical things attacking people, check this out.
Since I attended a family event in the Dallas Metroplex over the 1/15/10-1/17/10 weekend, I took the opportunity to do something I had long wanted to do: Visit Larry McMurtry’s Booked-Up book store (actually spread across four buildings) in Archer City.
The drive itself (a solid five hours) completely redefined my “ass end of nowhere” scale. It’s pretty far away from anything else, so only serious bibliophiles need apply.
As for the store itself, there’s a huge amount of stuff for a general book hunter to look for (especially in areas like pamphlets, foreign language books, Texana, literary criticism, and probably several others), but not a whole lot of SF/F/H. I found about $50 worth of stuff, most of it in the general fiction section.
Then I drove to Recycled Books in Denton, and bought $1,200+ worth of stuff (and that was after my dealer discount).
By contrast, I found very little of interest at the main Half Price Books just off 75 in Dallas; all they seemed to have were multiple copies of very common titles. (I did a lot better when they were in a smaller building just down the block, the one with the boat-shaped section in the middle of the store.) Maybe their non-fiction section is more worth browsing.
Below is the list of books I’m adding to my own library, including items from Recycled Books, Booked Up, and a three different Half Price Books. All of these are Fine/Fine first edition hardback copies, unless otherwise noted:
I also found a bunch more books that are going in this month’s Lame Excuse Books catalog.
So, if you’re going to be book shopping in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, by all means visit Recycled Books, which seems to be the best used bookstore in Texas. Visit Booked Up if you have the time to drive out that way, but the SF selection is fairly poor.
SF Signal has a Mind Meld up asking people to name their top five choices for anime. I wasn’t asked to participate in this one, but if I had been, my list would probably look like this:
My review of GitS:SAC can be found here. I also have a review of FLCL available, should I be able to find someone who’s willing to pay me for it…
I’ve got a big-ass post on my trip up to Archer City and the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex coming up, so I thought it was high time to engage in some preliminary bookgeeking by listing all the books I’ve picked up since my ginormous post on my library. This may be of very limited interest to people who aren’t book collectors or science fiction fans, but it it will help me document my library on an ongoing basis, making it much more likely that I’ll finally be able to compile a detailed, comprehensive list of what I actually have.