Sunday, July 11, 2010

What You Get When You Can't Get What You Want

I went out book-shopping yesterday, specifically to get Charles Stross's new Laundry novel The Fuller Memorandum.

My local Borders, though -- despite the friendly in-store system that said it was "likely in store" -- was out of stock. The guy I was talking to even checked the fabled Back of the Store, to no avail.

So I bought these two books, instead. Hey, I was there, and had a coupon -- I was going to buy something. (Oh, and then, later, I went to the closest B&N to try again...and they didn't have it either. I think I'll give the Package Fairy a couple of days, just in case Ace Publicity has decided to smile upon me this month, and then order it from somebody online.)

Kitty's House of Horrors is the seventh in an excellent contemporary fantasy series by Carrie Vaughn; I've got both the sixth (Kitty Raises Hell) and the eighth (Kitty Goes to War) on my read-it-sometime-soon pile, and this one will fill the gap in between them, and, I hope, also spur me to read all three.

And Swords & Dark Magic is a new anthology of swords & sorcery edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders. S&S is the kind of fantasy I always whine is in too-short supply, and I know and trust both Jonathan and Lou -- so I had to buy this book. (I've already read the first story -- an uncharacteristically un-gory Steven Erikson piece -- which shocks me, given how the anthologies and collections usually pile up around here. I always want to read more short fiction than I actually do -- but maybe this book will help shift the balance.)
----------------
Listening to: The Indelicates - Savages
via FoxyTunes

3 comments:

James A said...

As a regular but intermittent reader of yours, I'd really welcome it if you read through _Swords & Dark Magic_ and then, in some moderately timely manner, reviewed it. Just my small attempt to put my thumb on the aforementioned balance.

Andrew Wheeler said...

James: You're in luck; I'm already about a third of the way through Swords & Dark Magic, so I should be done with it by the end of the week and have a review up here maybe a week after that.

Dave Truesdale said...

Until Andrew provides his own review, Tangent Online has provided this one, which you can read simply by clicking on my name above. It was posted on July 4, and others have found it quite useful and have quoted from it.

Best,
Dave

Post a Comment