Zenna Henderson's Pilgrimage: The Book of the People is an early entry on the SF Mistressworks list: a 1961 collection bringing together a number of short stories originally published in the 50s. Rather than just collecting together the individual stories into an anthology, the author wrote interstitial connecting material, effectively turning the ( Read more... )

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Catch-up reading on my return from the US recently: two issues of The DFC plus the most recent one which arrived this weekend, a re-read of Diana Wynne Jones' Deep Secret (I left three DWJs out for Richard and this was his favourite, leading to me having another read of it), Woodrow's Rumble Strip (mighty fine and well done, though the word ' ( Read more... )

Have been meaning to say - I bought a rather good book in Stansted the other day, and it did me very well, despite being one that my eye had skimmed over and dismissed as being likely to be chicklit & not my sort of thing. (The hardback has to my mind a more appropriate cover, dunno why they've changed it really ( Read more... )

(ISBN 978-019-921447-1)

In which our heroine author, Deborah Cameron, say no they bloody don't, it's all bollocks and pernicious bollocks too.

( It's dead good - here is what it says in brief, but go & buy it for lots and lots more details )

...Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner - a neat little Japanese edition (in English, fear not) borrowed from the lovely Julian. Look, there's a blog too! More substantial than The Long Tail (which I ought in return to lend Julian, quick read though it will be), with more surprising conclusions, but in a generally similar stylistic

Another stonking OUP recent publication:
Zombies and Consciousness.

By definition zombies would be physically and behaviourally just like us. Eh? I thought zombies distinguished themselves behaviourally from us by, er, shuffling around slowly and, oh yeah, trying to eat brains. How did the author miss this key bit of info out?

...have just nipped over to the OUP library to borrow Orononoko (Behn) and Villette (Bronte). Was going to borrow Anna Karenina and/or Middlemarch, but they were both pretty chunky, so took out Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea (Verne) instead (praise be to the inspiration of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen).

Nabbled this from girlycomic -- pretty long, hence the cut.

( Books I've read, out of some top 200 that I don't know the origin of. The ones I've read are in bold. )

I suppose I do live a bit of a hermit-like (semi-hermitic?) lifestyle, but then again, I rather like it. I've worked for a chunk of today (and mighty cold it was too, until I found that hot-air heater), gone shopping a bit (comics, muesli, and milk, though forgetting to pick up the dry-cleaning which is a bit of a shame) and here I am at the end of ( Read more... )