The Line Between Genius and Insanity
Friday was my birthday! Of course, I don’t usually wait for my birthday to acquire books. I’ve been picking them up pretty much non-stop.
As usual, I start off with the electronic books. I believe that Tor’s new web site launches next week. With that, I suspect they will cease sending out a free electronic book every week. Which is a shame, even if I haven’t gotten to reading most of them yet. I will.
- In the Midnight Hour / Patti O’Shea.
- Battlestar Galactica / Jeffrey A. Carver.
- The Green Leopard Plague / Walter Jon Williams.
- Flash / L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
- Soul / Tobsha Learner.
- The Golden Path: Vol. 1: Into The Hollow Earth / Anson Montgomery
Walter Jon Williams’ book is courtesy of Night Shade Books. Anson Montgomery’s book is courtesy of Chooseco. The rest were distributed as part of Tor’s Watch The Skies.
I had a bunch of trade credit from Michael’s Books, so I printed off my Amazon wish list and headed in to see if any of them were available used. I also decided to cross the street and browse the shelves at Henderson Books for the first time. They have a much better selection and higher quality over at Henderson, but fewer of the pulpier S.F. books. I didn’t keep track of which books I got at which place though.
- Inadmissible Evidence / Philip Friedman. Replacing a copy I had years ago and don’t seem to have anymore.
- Polaris / Jack McDevitt.
- Childhood’s End / Arthur C. Clarke.
- The Green Mile: Part Three: Coffey’s Hands / Stephen King. Just need to find part 1 now.
- Parable of the Sower / Octavia Butler. Signed even. This is to get a little more non-white-male fiction in my reading list. It’s supposed to be pretty good.
- China Mountain Zhang / Maureen McHugh.
- Half the Day Is Night / Maureen McHugh.
- The Undercover Economist / Tim Harford.
- Revelation Space / Alastair Reynolds.
- Burn / Sean Doolittle. I read Dirt when Uglytown published it, but didn’t grab Burn before it came off the shelves. To my delight, it’s been put out in paperback by Dell.
- Survival / Julie E. Czerneda. Lots of times authors use their middle name or initial to differentiate themselves from someone with the same name. I don’t think there’s another Julie Czerneda running around writing books though.
- Marseguro / Edward Willett. Willett promoted this on Futurismic this spring, and I figure why not give him a chance.
- Six Easy Pieces / Richard P. Feynman.
I’m not done yet though. I know. Stop shaking your heads. After I started writing this post even. Today is my best friend’s birthday, so he drove up from Seattle and we ran by Costco to stock up as part of our running around, where I grabbed one book. Can’t get cheaper than Costco except used. Also, we saw Hellboy 2 which I do not recommend.
- Justice Denied / J. A. Jance. I’m a completist with regard to Jance’s stuff. It’s not deep material, but I like it.
Still not done. Over the last month, I’ve also grabbed a few free books.
- Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year: 1988 / Charles Brooks ed. Reviewed this one already, but I got more.
- Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year: 1989 / Charles Brooks ed.
- Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year: 1990 / Charles Brooks ed.
- Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year: 1991 / Charles Brooks ed.
- Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year: 1993 / Charles Brooks ed.
- Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year: 1994 / Charles Brooks ed.
- Close to Home / Erskine Caldwell. I just couldn’t not pick this up. The back cover advertises in lurid copy that it’s all about … race-mixing. I haven’t researched Caldwell yet, so I don’t know if he’s a racist and this is meant to play into Southern whites fears and prejudices, or if this was meant to tweak the ever so fragile sensibilities of those who were prejudiced. Either way, Signet sure played it up in the back cover description. I still have a copy of The Turner Diaries that I haven’t yet read. I’m surely not prejudice free, but I don’t understand overt racism. Reading older works like that (and perhaps the Caldwell book) is partially an attempt to get inside the heads of those who are and see what makes them tick.
- Ragtime / E. L. Doctorow.
- The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship / Stephen Potter.
- Romance / Ed McBain.
- The Power That Preserves / Stephen R. Donaldson. I read both the first and second chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever in the early 1990s, but got rid of the books when I needed space. I have space, so I’m glad to have some of them back in my library.
- The Wounded Land / Stephen R. Donaldson.
- The One Tree / Stephen R. Donaldson.
- White Gold Wielder / Stephen R. Donaldson.
- The Swiss Family Robinson / Johann Wyss.
- Black Sun Rising / C. S. Friedman.
- Everything Is Illuminated / Jonathan Safran Foer.
- Under the Banner of Heaven / Jon Krakauer.
- Silent Spring / Rachel Carson. This made HumanEvents.com’s honorable mention on their list of the 10 most harmful books. So did B. F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity which I grabbed free a couple of months ago too. And The Feminine Mystique made the top ten and I also got it from the free pile. HumanEvents.com should blame Michael’s Books for turning me in to evil incarnate.
- The Salterton Trilogy / Robertson Davies.
That’s it! Well, for now.
Photo by Nicholas Gray, used under a Creative Commons By-Nc-Nd 2.0 license.
