book acquisitions
For about fifteen minutes just now I contemplated attempting to write up a comprehensive report of my WisCon activities. Then I realized that I didn't want to. Sometimes I have to do things even though I don't want to. This is not one of those times.
I may get around to writing up some of the things I thought about while at WisCon, or some of the things that renenet and I said that made melymbrosia laugh during WisCon, or (most probably) some of the things I cooked for the vastly-more-involved-in-WisCon-than-I-was people who were living in my house over the weekend. Or maybe not.
But before WisCon got properly underway, truepenny, matociquala, melymbrosia and I went bookshopping at three different used bookstores over the course of a couple of days.
My combined haul:
fiction
Mary Balogh, Slightly Married - based on oracne's recent comments.
C. J. Cherryh, Foreigner - this one came out of a recent conversation with truepenny.
Colette, The Claudine Novels
John M. Ford, Growing Up Weightless
Nicola Griffith, Ammonite
Barbara Hambly, Dog Wizard - truepenny handed me this one and insisted that I buy it because it's a hardcover and thus does not have the paperback cover, which she assured me is an abomination not to be tolerated; apparently it's the third in a series, so she'll be loaning me the first two. Thank goodness for my personal downstairs SFF library, which you will note does not prevent me from spending piles of money on the genre in a doomed attempt to catch up. :::sigh:::
Diana Wynne Jones, Homeward Bounders - truepenny handed me this one too. Are you sensing a pattern here?
Ursula K. LeGuin, Searoad
Laurie Marks, Dancing Jack - melymbrosia handed me this one without comment. I assume this means that it's good and not that she was using me as a social experiment in gullibility. I have some other Laurie Marks on my list, but hadn't even heard of this one.
Maureen McHugh, China Mountain Zhang - in an edition that's not nearly as lovely as the recent trade paperback, but I really need to unlearn the tendency to hold out for trade editions.
Patricia McKillip, The Moon and the Face
Andre Norton, Moon of Three Rings; Witch World
Marge Piercy, He, She and It; Woman on the Edge of Time - yes, okay, it's embarrassing that I haven't already read these.
Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh
Joanna Russ, The Zanzibar Cat - another one handed to me by melymbrosia.
Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden - Mely handed me this one, too, but in fairness it was on my list and she just found it before I did.
Sean Stewart, Resurrection Man - after oracne's happy burblings about Perfect Circle, I'm especially looking forward to this one.
Windling & Arnold, eds., Elsewhere, Vol. II
Windling & Sherman, eds., The Essential Bordertown - see note on Ryman.
Patricia Wrede, Snow White and Rose Red - I have been meaning to get this since it came out in summer 1990, during my first round of bookstore employment; in fact I don't remember why I didn't snap it up at the time.
Jane Yolen, ed., Xanadu 3 - see note on Ryman.
poetry
Carol Moldaw, Chalkmarks on Stone
drama
Derek Walcott, The Odyssey [ETA: another one melymbrosia handed to me.]
nonfiction
Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism
Zaheva Karl McKeon, Novels and Arguments - My coup for Thursday. Really psyched about this one.
Ian Watt, The Victorian Novel: Modern Essays in Criticism - Pretty far from being "modern" at this point, but it's from an era of lit crit that I find very readable, frequently insightful, and occasionally unintentionally hilarious.
Joseph Williams, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace - I could stand to re-read this myself, but I usually find myself wishing I had a copy to hand when talking with students about the possibility of crafting academic yet readable prose. I think there's a newer edition out, but this one should serve my needs just fine.
other amusements
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes; Something Under the Bed is Drooling; Weirdos From Another Planet; Scientific Progress Goes Boink; Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons - In theory I already own all of these and a couple of other Calvin & Hobbes collections as well, but it's become increasingly clear over the last decade that my little brother has no intention of ever giving them back, the weasel. Time to take matters into my own hands.
I may get around to writing up some of the things I thought about while at WisCon, or some of the things that renenet and I said that made melymbrosia laugh during WisCon, or (most probably) some of the things I cooked for the vastly-more-involved-in-WisCon-than-I-was people who were living in my house over the weekend. Or maybe not.
But before WisCon got properly underway, truepenny, matociquala, melymbrosia and I went bookshopping at three different used bookstores over the course of a couple of days.
My combined haul:
fiction
Mary Balogh, Slightly Married - based on oracne's recent comments.
C. J. Cherryh, Foreigner - this one came out of a recent conversation with truepenny.
Colette, The Claudine Novels
John M. Ford, Growing Up Weightless
Nicola Griffith, Ammonite
Barbara Hambly, Dog Wizard - truepenny handed me this one and insisted that I buy it because it's a hardcover and thus does not have the paperback cover, which she assured me is an abomination not to be tolerated; apparently it's the third in a series, so she'll be loaning me the first two. Thank goodness for my personal downstairs SFF library, which you will note does not prevent me from spending piles of money on the genre in a doomed attempt to catch up. :::sigh:::
Diana Wynne Jones, Homeward Bounders - truepenny handed me this one too. Are you sensing a pattern here?
Ursula K. LeGuin, Searoad
Laurie Marks, Dancing Jack - melymbrosia handed me this one without comment. I assume this means that it's good and not that she was using me as a social experiment in gullibility. I have some other Laurie Marks on my list, but hadn't even heard of this one.
Maureen McHugh, China Mountain Zhang - in an edition that's not nearly as lovely as the recent trade paperback, but I really need to unlearn the tendency to hold out for trade editions.
Patricia McKillip, The Moon and the Face
Andre Norton, Moon of Three Rings; Witch World
Marge Piercy, He, She and It; Woman on the Edge of Time - yes, okay, it's embarrassing that I haven't already read these.
Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh
Joanna Russ, The Zanzibar Cat - another one handed to me by melymbrosia.
Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden - Mely handed me this one, too, but in fairness it was on my list and she just found it before I did.
Sean Stewart, Resurrection Man - after oracne's happy burblings about Perfect Circle, I'm especially looking forward to this one.
Windling & Arnold, eds., Elsewhere, Vol. II
Windling & Sherman, eds., The Essential Bordertown - see note on Ryman.
Patricia Wrede, Snow White and Rose Red - I have been meaning to get this since it came out in summer 1990, during my first round of bookstore employment; in fact I don't remember why I didn't snap it up at the time.
Jane Yolen, ed., Xanadu 3 - see note on Ryman.
poetry
Carol Moldaw, Chalkmarks on Stone
drama
Derek Walcott, The Odyssey [ETA: another one melymbrosia handed to me.]
nonfiction
Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism
Zaheva Karl McKeon, Novels and Arguments - My coup for Thursday. Really psyched about this one.
Ian Watt, The Victorian Novel: Modern Essays in Criticism - Pretty far from being "modern" at this point, but it's from an era of lit crit that I find very readable, frequently insightful, and occasionally unintentionally hilarious.
Joseph Williams, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace - I could stand to re-read this myself, but I usually find myself wishing I had a copy to hand when talking with students about the possibility of crafting academic yet readable prose. I think there's a newer edition out, but this one should serve my needs just fine.
other amusements
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes; Something Under the Bed is Drooling; Weirdos From Another Planet; Scientific Progress Goes Boink; Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons - In theory I already own all of these and a couple of other Calvin & Hobbes collections as well, but it's become increasingly clear over the last decade that my little brother has no intention of ever giving them back, the weasel. Time to take matters into my own hands.