I done good. I bought only two books this month. I won a third book via a contest. I read five books off my pile. I am officially at -2 for the month of June.

Also, I pulled a number of books off my shelf and put them in a box to be given away. I needed to be a little more ruthless in culling my book collection. So into the box went some books I liked but shouldn’t have been must-keep-for-all-time. More books will go into this box over the next couple of months.

As I did last year, I will be soliciting donations to the A.L.S. Association in memory of my mother, Dorinda Bender, who died from A.L.S. last October. I will send a book to anyone who donates $20 or more via the web page I will set up for the A.L.S.A. Walk to Defeat A.L.S.

On to this month’s acquisitions… So few I’m not even going to use a list. First book I bought was Akashic Books’ Seattle Noir edited by Curt Colbert. I liked Colbert’s Jake Rossiter series, and I liked Delhi Noir from the publisher. The second book I bought up just hours before the end of the month. That was The New Space Opera 2 (they shoulda called it The Newer Space Opera dammit!) edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan. My third physical book acquisition came via a contest Harper Studio had on Twitter; I won Who Is Mark Twain?, a collection of previously unpublished essays by Mark Twain.

In non-acquisitions: I checked out, read, and returned Daniel Farber’s Lincoln’s Constitution from the Seattle Public Library. And I downloaded Stephen Piziks’ In the Company of Mind from his web site.

My shelf space actually increased this month! That’s only happened one month in the last couple of years.

Image 114 Space by Jason Vance used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.

Two big batches of books this month: one from the Small Beer Press $1 a book sale, and one of stuff I bought at the dealer room at Wiscon.

First the cheap books from Small Beer Press:

• Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison (see review)
• Kalpa Imperial by Angélica Gorodischer
• Endless Things by John Crowley
• Trampoline edited by Kelly Link
• Water Logic by Laurie J. Marks
• Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller
• Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead by Alan DeNiro
• Mockingbird by Sean Stewart
• Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand
• Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
• Storyteller by Kate Wilhelm

And my Wiscon haul:

• Big Big Sky by Kristyn Dunnion
• Delhi Noir edited by Hirsh Sawhney
• The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor
• Filter House by Nisi Shawl
• Seeds of Change edited by John Joseph Adams
• Federations edited by John Joseph Adams
• The Secret City by Carol Emshwiller
• The WisCon Chronicles edited by L. Timmel Duchamp
• The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 2 edited by L. Timmel Duchamp and Eileen Gunn
• The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1 edited by Karen Joy Fowler
• Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel (see review)
• The King’s Last Song by Geoff Ryman
• What Remains by Ellen Klages and Geoff Ryman (special commemorative book published for Wiscon)
• Superpowers by David J. Schwartz

And a few miscellaneous books:

• When Science Goes Wrong by Simon LeVay (from the library) (see review)
• Panic Attack by Jason Starr (electronic galley)
• Open Your Eyes by Paul Jessup (free download from Apex Books)
• The City & The City by China Miéville (won an ARC from publisher)
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (audio download from the library) (see review)

Photo when I die, pack me in a crate of books — may 22 (day 22) by Lindsey T. used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.

I was bad. Even if you don’t count the fact that I finally cataloged two boxes of books that were my mothers, on at least three occasions during the month I bought armloads of books. I’m not even going to compare what I read to what I bought to claim any sort of victory against my hoarding like I claimed last month. You’d just laugh. I’m not even going to attempt to count the number of books I added this month.

Electronic books I got for free:

• The King of Lies / John Hart
• Down River / John Hart

Library books acquired and returned (or soon to be):

• The Myth of the Rational Voter / Bryan Caplan (review)
• Deadville / Ron Koertge (review)
• Tree of Smoke / Denis Johnson
• Twilight / Stephanie Meyer (review)
• Letter to a Christian Nation / Sam Harris (review)
• The Taqwacores / Michael Muhammad Knight (review)
• Breaking Rank / Norm Stamper (review)

From a visit to the Seattle Mystery Bookshop for a Lisa Lutz signing. This is why bookstores do signings. They get people like me who show up for them and buy out the store’s stock of books.

• Curse of the Spellmans / Lisa Lutz
• Revenge of the Spellmans / Lisa Lutz
• Homicide My Own / Anne Argula (a.k.a. Darryl Ponicsan)
• Krapp’s Last Cassette / Anne Argula
• Casino Royale / Ian Fleming
• Moody Gets the Blues / Steve Oliver
• Fury / G. M. Ford
• Shaman Pass / Stan Jones (review)
• Child 44 / Tom Rob Smith
• Edge of Evil / J. A. Jance

Heather gave me a book:

• Three Cups of Tea / Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

My friend Michelle pared down her books so she could move into a smaller place (from a studio to even smaller!). Some people adopt abandoned puppies from the pound; I adopt people’s abandoned books.

• I’m No Hero / Henry Friedman
• At the Drop of a Veil / Marianne Alireza
• Interpreter of Maladies / Jhumpa Lahiri
• House of Sand and Fog / Andre Dubus III
• Fiskadoro / Denis Johnson
• Girl, Interrupted / Susanna Kaysen
• The Virgin Suicides / Jeffrey Eugenides
• Let’s Learn Hindi / Chaytna D. Feinstein
• Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgement / Nikki Giovanni
• The Pure and the Impure / Colette
• Ultramarine / Raymond Carver
• William Faulkner: Early Prose and Poetry / William Faulkner
• American Psycho / Bret Easton Ellis
• The Sea-Wolf and Selected Stories / Jack London
• How to Win Friends and Influence People / Dale Carnegie
• The Red and the Black / de Stendhal
• Cat and Mouse / Günter Grass
• The Fox / D. H. Lawrence
• The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Novels / Henry James
• The Fountainhead / Ayn Rand
• Slapstick / Kurt Vonnegut
• Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask / David Reuben
• A Spy in the House of Love / Anaïs Nin

I figured I’d already blown any pretense of restraint for the month, so why not go to the Friends of the Seattle Public Library book sale (or as I like to call it The J. A. Jance remainders sale):

• A Is for Alibi / Sue Grafton
• Cruel Intent / J. A. Jance
• Damage Control / J. A. Jance
• 100 Dastardly Little Detective Stories
• 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories
• The Elegant Universe / Bryan Greene
• The Secret History / Donna Tartt
• That Hideous Strength / C. S. Lewis
• Titan / John Varley
• The Mile-Long Spaceship / Kate Wilhelm
• The Woman Who Married a Bear / John Straley
• Software / Rudy Rucker
• Adulthood Rites / Octavia Butler
• The River of Time / David Brin
• The Lathe Of Heaven / Ursula K. Le Guin
• Four Ways to Forgiveness / Ursula K. Le Guin
• Ecotopia Emerging / Ernest Callenbach
• First Avenue / Lowen Clausen
• The Best Science Fiction of the Year / Terry Carr
• The 1976 Annual World’s Best SF / Donald A. Wollheim
• Thirty-Three Teeth / Colin Cotterill
• Flood / Andrew Vachss
• Strega / Andrew Vachss
• Ratking / Michael Dibdin
• Book Crush / Nancy Pearl
• Papal Sin / Garry Wills
• Deepsix / Jack McDevitt
• Little, Big / John Crowley

Photo Stacks of Books by Tom Reynolds used under a Creative Commons By-Nc-Nd 2.0 license.

I was pretty damn good this month. I purchased books a grand total of one time. And it wasn’t my fault that time. I swear. I did pick up a whole bunch of free electronic books however. I read more physical books than I acquired.

First, the electronic books:

• The Crooked Letter / Sean Williams
• Blood Engines / T. A. Pratt (from Suvudu Free Library)
• His Majesty’s Dragon / Naomi Novik (from Suvudu Free Library)
• Return Engagement / Harry Turtledove (from Suvudu Free Library)
• Red Mars / Kim Stanley Robinson (from Suvudu Free Library)
• Assassin’s Apprentice / Robin Hobb (aka Margaret Ogden) (from Suvudu Free Library)
• Spirit Walk / Charles de Lint (from Tor.com)
• Seaborn / Chris Howard
• Deathworld / Harry Harrison
• Persuader / Lee Child
• The Moon and the Sun / Vonda N. McIntyre

I got two books from the Seattle Public Library:

• Cartographia / Vincent Virga (review)
• Steal Across the Sky / Nancy Kress (review)

I picked up five new physical books on a trip to Bellingham. I meant to bring my copy of Pirate Sun to finish reading at The Black Drop. However, once I got there I realized I’d left the book at home. I had to have something to read while drinking my Black Drop soy marquis, so I walked over to Michael’s Books. Grabbed one textbook from the free pile, and decided to clean out Michael’s stock of John Christopher’s adult science fiction. I also grabbed one book from my building’s free shelf downstairs.

• Starting and Managing the Small Business / Arthur H. Kuriloff
• The Little People / John Christopher
• The Ragged Edge / John Christopher
• Pendulum / John Christopher
• The Long Winter / John Christopher
• Around the World in 80 Days / Jules Verne

I read seven of my unread books, two library books, one audiobook, and one previously read book. Unread physical books in my library dropped by ONE! This is progress.

Image Thank you,….I’m in Heaven. by Flickr user just.K used under a Creative Commons By-Nc-Nd 2.0 license.

At the beginning of the month, a friend purging her books in preparation for a four to five month road trip gave me three of her books.

• The Golden Compass / Philip Pullman
• The Subtle Knife / Philip Pullman
• Gardens of the Moon / Steven Erikson

The U.W. Bookstore held an event called Read Date early in February. Speed dating for book geeks. I went, but left just before it started because there were quite a few more men than women, and I was by far the youngest person there at that point. A few more people showed up late and were within my age range, so perhaps I should have stuck around. Instead, I went book shopping.

• Dust / Elizabeth Bear
• I Am Legend / Richard Matheson
• The Accidental Time Machine / Joe Haldeman
• Beholder’s Eye / Julie E. Czerneda
• Migration / Julie E. Czerneda
• Halting State / Charles Stross

While visiting a friend, my host pressed three books on me. Two are loans, however.

• Koko / Peter Straub
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy / John le Carré (review)
• The Tailor of Panama / John le Carré

Mid-month, I got a new Seattle Public Library card to replace one deleted for lack of activity. Then I moved 120+ books from my Amazon wish list to the S.P.L. system. And borrowed one of them. Not actually an acquisition, but I like putting the books here anyway so I know where these things come from.

• Palestinian Walks / Raja Shehadeh (review)

And yesterday I saw that Pyr made one of their books available as a PDF download.

• The Crooked Letter / Sean Williams (download)

Over the course of the last month I’ve been slowly working my way through Ričardas Gavelis’ Vilnius Poker. It’s good, but difficult. I just can’t get myself into difficult reading at the moment though. It may take me another month to finish the book. Beyond that, I think I will take a break from difficult. Most of the books I’ve acquired this month fall into the not difficult category.

Here’s what I’ve added to my pile this month!

First item I picked up at Costco. Figured it would be quick reading.

• The Appeal / John Grisham

I made one big purchase at B&N when I stopped in for the Kat Richardson signing.

• Manifold: Time / Stephen Baxter
• Hand of Evil / J. A. Jance
• Day of the Dead / J. A. Jance
• The Blue Door / David Fulmer
• Keeping It Real / Justina Robson
• Getting To Know You / David Marusek
• Parable of the Talents / Octavia Butler
• Greywalker / Kat Richardson

I got one nice haul from Michael’s Book free pile on a visit to Bellingham.

• Dead Wrong / J. A. Jance
• Change Your Life In 30 Days / Rhonda Britten. Started this, but I’m not really keeping up with the chapter a day thing.
• The Innocent Man / John Grisham
• The King of Torts / John Grisham
• Out of the Deep I Cry / Julia Spencer-Fleming

I got three review copies this month.

• Starfinder / John Marco (review)
• Atmospheric Disturbances / Rivka Galchen (published last year. I grabbed it from Paul Constant’s pile at the last Slog Happy)
• Vilnius Poker / Ričardas Gavelis (through Library Thing Early Reviewers)

Night Shade Books offered a good deal on a subscription to Electric Velocipede; buy a one year subscription get any two in stock Night Shade Books.

• Electric Velocipede: Winter 2008 / John Klima ed.
• Implied Spaces / Walter Jon Williams
• 9Tail Fox / Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Brandon Sanderson provided a Creative Commons licensed version of his upcoming novel Warbreaker, which I downloaded in PDF form.

And lastly, my friend Rowan gave me three books today.

• The Golden Compass / Philip Pullman
• The Subtle Knife / Philip Pullman
• Gardens of the Moon / Steven Erikson

Whew!

Image by Michael Summers and used under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives 2.0 license.

For the month of December, I have acquired only three books. The first was lent to me by a friend:

• London Fields / Martin Amis

The other two came from Amazon.com.

• The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money / John Maynard Keynes. I got this with the vague idea of trying to read along as Marginal Revolution blogged the chapters in sort of an online reading group. I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up though, so this will be a long term project.
• The Pirate Sun / Karl Schroeder.

It’s the first month in well over a year where I acquired fewer books than I disposed of.

Yeesh. I’ve been putting off this post for a while. Here’s the books I’ve acquired since the last listing on 15 July. Don’t let me slide on this again!

I’ll no longer be including free electronic books in this list; assume I’m putting them in my collection when included on the Free Books roundups. Those e-books for which I fork over good money, those will be included here.

Actually, speaking of that, let’s include the only e-book I’ve ever paid for right now.

• September 2008 Asimov’s Science Fiction from FictionWise. Already reviewed.

I received a few books for review from authors, publishers, and promoters.

• American Wife / Curtis Sittenfeld requested by me through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program. Already reviewed.
• Extraordinary Engines / Nick Gevers (ed.) requested by me through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program.
• Return to the Middle Kingdom / Yuan-tsung Chen. Review requested by promoter and already posted.
• Knight’s Fork / Rowena Cherry. Received this after I lumped Chick Lit and Romance together in one of my Free Books roundups. Ms. Cherry wrote on the envelope Not chick lit!. Futuristic Romance according to the A.R.C. copy. I probably won’t read and review this. I opened to a couple random pages and saw lines like Being incurably chivalrous, and cursed with an indifferent sex drive, ’Rhett might leave the inconvenient chastity belt in place. If a Seattle area reader wants to take a crack at this, I’ll trade my copy for a review for Rat’s Reading.
• Read, Remember, Recommend / Rachelle Rogers Knight. After linking to one of Bibliopages’ book contests, Ms. Knight sent me a copy of her reading journal. Although it seems pretty decent on quick perusal I probably won’t include a review on Rat’s Reading since I won’t use it for my actual book journal. This blog is my reading journal and I use LibraryThing and Amazon to track my catalog and wish lists. I find I’m more consistent about keeping them updated when they are online. If you know a reader who isn’t a creature of the internet like I am this journal might be the thing.

The following were all books I’ve purchased in the last couple of months.

• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection / Gardner Dozois (ed.). From Powells.com. By the way, this spring I started including Powells.com links on all new reviews. It seems a fair number of people who clicked through on the Amazon links bought used books. Except Amazon doesn’t sell the used books itself; those are third party sales facilitated by Amazon. The big online used sites work similarly. Powells is the Mecca of used books on the west coast, and their sales aren’t third party. So if you want a used copy, click the Powells link because you know you are going to get a decent copy and you aren’t dealing with an Ebay-like middleman.
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection / Gardner Dozois (ed.). From Powells.com.
• Metropolitan / Walter Jon Williams. From Powells.com.
• Brasyl / Ian McDonald. From Powells.com.
• Zahrah the Windseeker / Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. From Amazon and as part of a commitment to read five of the top ten obscure speculative fiction works as selected by Feminist SF The Blog. Already reviewed.
• Solstice / Ulises Silva. Another one of the five Feminist SF works. Already reviewed.
• Midnight Robber / Nalo Hopkinson. Another one of the five Feminist SF works. This is next up on my reading list after I finished my current Dozois anthology.
• The Fox Woman / Kij Johnson. Fourth of the five Feminist SF works.
• Swordspoint / Ellen Kushner. Last of the five Feminist SF works I selected.
• Ragamuffin / Tobias S. Buckell. Already reviewed.
• Last Argument of Kings / Joe Abercrombie. I ignited a mini-firestorm this spring with my review of the previous book in this series with some incendiary comments in an otherwise positive review. Will my view on this one prove less flammable? I sure hope so.
• Universe 12 / Terry Carr (ed.). From The Bookcase in Qualicum Beach, BC.
• Away / Amy Bloom. From The Mulberry Bush Book Store in Qualicum Beach, BC. At the end of my vacation last month I had about $50 CAN left. Rather than convert it back, I decided to just buy books.
• Web of Evil / J. A. Jance. Also from the Mulberry Bush.
• The Golden Spruce / John Vaillant. Also from the Mulberry Bush.

Everything else in this entry came from the Michael’s Books boxes of free books.

• The Get With the Program! Guide to Good Eating / Bob Greene.
• You on a Diet / Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz.
• Born to Grill / Cheryl Jamison and Bill Jamison.
• Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish / Dean Ornish.
• Organizational Behavior Third Edition / Linda K. Stroh, Gregory B. Northcraft, and Margaret A. Neale.
• Physical Geology Second Edition / Rochard Foster Flint and Brian J. Skinner.
• Native North Americans: An Ethnohistorical Approach / Daniel L. Boxberger (ed.)
Managerial Economics and Business Strategy Fifth Edition / Michael R. Baye.Corporate Information Strategy and Management Seventh Edition / Lynda M. Applegate, Robert D. Austin, and F. Warren McFarlan.
• Economics of Strategy Second Edition / David Besanko, David Dranove, and Mark Shanley.
• Asian Americans: Contemporary Trends and Issues / Pyong Gap Min (ed.)
• The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthopological Approach / Dale F. Eickelman
• Asian Americans: An Interpretive History / Sucheng Chan
• The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature Fifth Edition / Michael Meyer
• The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women Second Edition / Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar.
• The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces Sixth Edition Volume 2 / Maynard Mack (ed.)
• MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers Sixth Edition / Joseph Gibaldi.
• Cliffs Notes on Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
• Cliffs Notes on Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
• Cliffs Notes on Atwood’s THe Handmaid’s Tale
• Cliffs Notes on Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus & Antigone.
• Monarch Notes William Shakespeare’s Othello
• The Wrong Murder / Craig Rice.
• The Right Murder / Craig Rice.
• The Ox-Bow Incident / Walter Van Tilburg Clark.
• East Wind West Wind / Pearl S. Buck.
• Rough Crossings / Simon Schama.
• Getting Things Done / David Allen.
• Dancing at the Rascal Fair / Ivan Doig.
• Invented Moralities / Jeffrey Weeks.
• The Safety of Objects / A. M. Homes.
• The Last Time They Met / Anita Shreve.
• The Jane Austen Book Club / Karen Joy Fowler.
• The Bounty / Derek Walcott.
• Five Great Short Stories / Anton Chekhov.
• Daylight in Nightclub Inferno / Elena Lappin (ed.)
• The New Writings of the South / Charles East (ed.)
• Boy / Roald Dahl.
• Mohawk / Richard Russo.
• Turn on the Heat / A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner).
• Mildred Pierce / James M. Cain.
• The Cider House Rules / John Irving
• The Misanthrope and Other Plays / Molière
• The Ides of March / Thornton Wilder
• The Sackett Brand / Louis L’Amour
• The Time Machine / H. G. Wells. Already have a copy, but grabbed this for giving away or something like that.
• Thyme of Death / Susan Wittig Albert
• Mind Transfer / Janet Asimov
• Inherit the Stars / James P. Hogan
• Cabal / Clive Barker
• A House in Space / Henry S. F. Cooper, Jr.
• Tobacco Road / Erskine Caldwell
• The Bad Place / Dean R. Koontz
• The Iron Sun / Adrian Berry
• Moving Into Space / Larry Geis and Fabrice Florin (eds.)
• Bang the Drum Slowly / Mark Harris
• Blood Oath / David Morrell
• Death Takes Passage / Sue Henry
• Antarctica / Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Widening Gyre / Robert B. Parker. Wasn’t sure if I already had this one or not, so I grabbed it. Turns out I did have a copy.
The Micro Millennium / Christopher Evans
• The End of the Affair / Graham Greene
• Flowers for Algernon / Daniel Keyes
• Nova / Samuel R. Delany
• The Gentle Giants of Ganymede / James P. Hogan
• Giant’s Star / James P. Hogan
• Code of the Lifemaker / James P. Hogan
• Buying Time / Joe Haldeman
• Black Holes / Jerry Pournelle (ed.)
• The Road to the Stars / Ian Nicolson
• The Genesis Machine / James P. Hogan
• Redshift Rendezvous / John E. Stith
• A Wreath of Stars / Bob Shaw
• Hard Wired / Walter Jon Williams
• With Open Hands / Henri J. M. Nouwen
• The Vintage Mencken / H. L. Mencken
• Games People Play / Eric Berne
• Granta 87 / Ian Jack (ed.)

Photo Hoard – Global Consulting Group Installation by Peter Walsh used under a Creative Commons By-Nc-Nd 2.0 license.

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.

Time for a new edition of King Rat’s insane book hoarding!

E-Books first!

• Starfish / Peter Watts
• The Uninvited Guest / John Degan
• Touch of Evil / C. T. Adams and Cathy Clamp
• A Shadow in Summer / Daniel Abraham
• Orphans of Chaos / John Wright
• The Big Rusty Lie / Ryan Speck
• The Conservative Nanny State / Dean Baker
• In the Bleak Midwinter / Julia Spencer-Fleming
• A Fountain Filled With Blood / Julia Spencer-Fleming
• Black and White / Lewis Shiner
• Hal Spacejock / Simon Haynes

The next bunch were grabbed from Michael’s Books free pile. A few are quite damaged. Still readable though.

• Otherness / David Brin
• Earth / David Brin
• Brightness Reef / David Brin
• Heart of the Comet / David Brin and Gregory Benford
• The Practice Effect / David Brin
• Glory Season / David Brin
• The Uplift War / David Brin
• Infinity’s Shore / David Brin
• The Gods Themselves / Asimov (when did he drop Isaac?)
• Footfall / Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
• The Prize Winners Handbook: How to Win Sweepstakes, Contests, Lotteries and Bingo / Jeffrey Feinman
• Triviata: A Compendium of Useless Information / Timothy T. Fullerton
• Readings in Economics, 7th ed. / Paul A. Samuelson
• The Frumious Bandersnatch / Ed McBain
• The Green Mile Part 2: The Mouse on the Mile / Stephen King
• The Green Mile Part 4: The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix / Stephen King
• The Green Mile Part 5: Night Journey / Stephen King
• The Green Mile Part 6: Coffey on the Mile / Stephen King
• How to Lie with Statistics / Darrell Huff
• Weapons of Fraud / Anthony Pratkanis and Doug Shadel
• Captains Courageous / Rudyard Kipling
• How to Clean Practically Anything

I thought the Green Mile part three was in there too, but I guess not. I’ll have to be on the lookout for installments one and three.

Amazingly enough, I only bought one book in the last month! Go me!

• The Bourne Identity / Robert Ludlum

My friend Cynthia is pruning her books in preparation for a move. She was kind enough to drop off a box of books for me.

• Grotesque / Natsuo Kirino
• All She Was Worth / Miyuki Miyabe
• Shadow Family / Miyuki Miyabe
• Havana Red / Leonardo Padura
• The Postman Always Rings Twice / James M. Cain
• Double Indemnity / James M. Cain
• A Window in Copacapana / Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Rosa
• The Silence of the Rain / Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Rosa
• The Vanished Hands / Robert Wilson
• Instruments of Darkness / Robert Wilson
• The Blind Man of Seville / Robert Wilson
• The Big Killing / Robert Wilson
• Blood Is Dirt / Robert Wilson
• A Small Death in Lisbon / Robert Wilson
• Hard-Boiled / Bill Pronzini ed. and Jack Adrian ed.
• Vintage Science Fiction / Peter Haining ed.
• Undercurrents / Ridley Pearson
• Beyond Recognition / Ridley Pearson
• Chain of Evidence / Ridley Pearson
• The Art of Deception / Ridley Pearson

What? I said I only bought one book this month. Stop laughing at me.

Image credit: Nutty for Nuts taken by Flickr user AutisticMajor used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.