Incoming Books: September 27

I'll get to my usual "Reviewing the Mail" post tomorrow morning -- which will cover the things that publishers sent me for review last week -- but I also got one book randomly from a friend (without even a note, though I think I know why he sent it) and the box of stuff I ordered from Top Shelf's recent sale. So I'm breaking those out into a separate post, since they're not "for review" in the same way, and to keep the other post from getting too long.

Anyway, that mysterious book, from someone who can identify himself here if he wants, is The World of P. G. Wodehouse, a look at the life and work of the greatest comic writer of the 20th century from 1971 by Herbert Warren Wind. (And which is a slightly expanded version of a profile from The New Yorker -- it's good to know some things in publishing never change.)

And the rest of these books came from Top Shelf, at ridiculously low prices:

• Lilli Carre's Tales Of Woodsman Pete, stories about a solitary bearded guy in the woods (along with some Paul Bunyan stories as well). I read Carre's The Lagoon during my Eisner frenzy earlier this year, so I wanted to take another look at her work.
• Lone Racer, by Nicolas Mahler -- about a formerly major race-car driver who's been marginalized by time. Again, I read Mahler's Van Helsing's Night Out last year (from the last time Top Shelf had a big sale), and really liked it, so I'm happy to find more of his stuff.
• Trenches is a graphic novel about the first World War by Scott Mills -- I didn't know anything about it or him before I saw it in the Top Shelf sale, but Top Shelf has great taste in their publishing program, so I decided to give it a try.
• Top Shelf Under the Big Top is an anthology from 1999 -- hm, I hadn't realized it was that old. I like to grab comics anthologies every so often to introduce myself to cartoonists that I haven't noticed before, but I'm not sure who I'll discover in a ten-year-old book. (Well, you never know, I guess.)
• And speaking of anthologies, I also got Top Shelf Asks the Big Questions, which is somewhat newer, from 2003.
  

I'll probably have another Top Shelf round-up post once I get through most or all of those; watch this space.
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Listening to: RATATAT - Mirando
via FoxyTunes