Books and Stuff

A weekly round-up of my book news.   Not a lot to report this week - I've not been well.

What I've been reading...

Finished Jim Butcher's Grave Peril .

Carrying on with Darwin's Armada and The Voyage of the Space Beagle.

Books and Stuff

A weekly round-up of my book news.

What I've been reading...

Carrying on with Darwin's Armada. I've really quite enjoyed reading about Hooker and Huxley - I must dig out a book on the Ross expedition.

On the fiction front, I've carried on with The Voyage of the Space Beagle and started Jim Butcher's Grave Peril, another from the Dresden Files.

First appearance of the short story

As my post on retrofuturism proved so popular, I thought I'd share some covers from old editions of The Voyage of the Space Beagle.

The book, which was first published in 1950, was a 'fix-up' of a number of short stories, the first of which - 'Black Destroyer' - appeared in Astounding Science Fiction for July 1939.  One of the stories was allegedly the inspiration for Alien, and van Vogt got a pay-off from 20th Century Fox after threatening to sue.

Lots more versions of the cover here.

First edition of the novel

The less interesting (to me) 1977 version I own.

What I've bought...

Gail Carriger, Souless - 30p
Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - 30p
Leon Tolstoy, War and Peace - £1.75

Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems - 95p

Herodotus, Snakes with Wings and Gold-Digging Ants - 95p

Bernard Ireland, The Fall of Toulon - £1.99
Paul Jordan, The Atlantis Syndrome - £1.99
Marilyn B. Ogilvie, Searching the Stars: The Story of Caroline Herschel - £1.99

And finally...

I've been introduced to goodreads.com.  By me listing the books I own and rating those I've read they've produced some interesting recommendations for me to look out for.  I've also been 'befriended' by one of the authors I've rated, which is an interesting situation!

Books and Stuff

A weekly update of my book news.

What I've been reading....

I finished Fool Moon.  Second book in to the Dresden Files and I'm now hooked - the plot is intelligent and the pace fantastic.  Harry Dresden is feeling left out in the cold by his police contact, but once he's called in after a particularly grisly murder, he's soon up to his elbows in werewolves in several different flavours...  Great stuff!

Sadly, there aren't many people selling these for a penny on Amazon.  I'll pause in the series before I get carried away.

Having got my pulp fix that out of the way, I picked Shark Island up again and finished that.  I must stick to one thing at a time...  This was the second in the Wiki Coffin Series - murder mysteries set on the American Exploration Expedition of 1838-1842 - and it settled in nicely, with some decent character development and scene-setting.  The murderer was less glaringly obvious than in the last book, which always helps!

I'd recommend both these, very different, books.

After that, I feel the need for non-fiction, so I've started a book I bought last month - Iain McCalman, Darwin's Armada, which is about the different voyages made by Darwin, Huxley, Hooker and Wallace. 

What I've bought....

For some reason I've never read any A.E. van Vogt, so I've picked up the 1950 classic The Voyage of the Space Beagle (£2.80), which came highly recommended.  Onto the to-read pile it goes...

John Scalzi, Old Man's War (£2.81) - I've heard some good things about this, but we'll see.  I was a little disappointed by this when it arrived.  I'd bought it second-hand through Amazon but hadn't read the small-print well enough - when we opened the packet we found that the cover was badly torn.  Caveat emptor!

Not home unfortunately.  I lost my main book room when The Wife Decided we need a new bathroom.  I did get a shed though.

Books and Stuff

A weekly update of my book news.

What I've been reading this week...

This week I was feeling like something light and non-threatening - comfort eating for the mind.  What I really fancied on Sunday night (feeling out of sorts) was some guff science fiction, something pulpy, but I couldn't decide what.  Normally in these circumstances, I'd fall back on one of Heinlein's juveniles, but I couldn't face something I'd already read.

In the end I picked up Jim Butcher's Storm Front, the first of his Dresden Files Series, which hit the spot.  The Dresden Files are a series of stories about Harry Dresden, a wizard and hard-boiled PI who acts as a consultant to the Chicago PD on cases with a supernatural aspect.  Quite fun, and I enjoyed it a lot.  That being so, I jumped right into the second book in the series, Fool Moon.

What I've bought....

Henning Mankell, The Man Who Smiled (an Inspector Wallander mystery) - 50p.