Incoming Books: 24 November

I took a trip to the comics shop earlier this week, and haven't managed to blog about it since. (And if you want to take that as "too busy" rather than "too lazy," it's fine with me.) But, since I am obsessive, I will list them now, for the three people who are on the Internet instead of having something better to do:

Lawrence Block's One Night Stands and Lost Weekends, a collection of very early stories originally published as two small-press hardcovers, One Night Stands and The Lost Cases of Ed London. I've been vaguely thinking that I needed to track down those two books for the past few years -- and have been stopped by the price -- so it's great to see Harper putting out an economical edition. I don't expect these to be all that good, of course, but I've read a couple of very early Block novels recently -- Grifter's Game and A Diet of Treacle -- and found them decent noir thrillers, so I'm hoping the stories will have a similar kick.

Guy Delisle, I've learned, has published books other than his Asian travelogues Burma Chronicles, Shenzhen, and Pyongyang; he's also done a few books of wordless humorous comics. So I grabbed one of those, Aline and the Others -- it looks quite different from his travel books.

There's a new B.P.R.D. book -- part of the ever-expanding Hellboy universe -- called 1946, and I got a copy of that, even though I've already read it. (I need to write up my review of it and another Hellboy spinoff for ComicMix soon -- as in today soon.)

The eleventh volume of Fables also came out; it's called War and Pieces. I haven't read it yet, but I gather it's another object lesson in just how cruel Bill Willingham can be to his creations -- many writers flinch, but one of Willingham's great strengths is that he neither flinches nor pushes too far; he's precise and correct in his plot-driven cruelty.

And last was the big art annual, Spectrum 15. I used to buy these for the SFBC -- for thirteen years! -- but now I'm reduced to buying single copies for myself in a store. O tempora, O mores!