a laugh at Dan Brown’s expense

Posted by: Redhead on: October 12, 2011

• In: Alastair Reynolds | James Lovegrove | Jesse Bullington | Mark Hodder | pyr
• 9 Comments

Ahh, the smell  and feel of new books.  Even if they are only new-to-me.  Even if they came from the library and I have to give them back. They are still the physical object known as book, usually smooth on the outside by not always, often shiny and sometimes embossed.  Sometimes with print on three of six faces,  alluring cover art or none at all, dearest book thing how do I love you?

Allow me to introduce you to my latest aquirrings:

Terminal World, by Alastair Reynolds.

I didn’t have much luck with Reynolds’ debut novel, Revelation Space,  it was an “almost” book for me. Almost awesome, but not quite.  So when Terminal World was announced as my local SF group’s October read, I was excited to give Reynolds another shot. I’m about 100 pages in, and so far, so good!

The photo doesn’t do it justice at all, but the cover art is stunning. It’s embossed, so the light reflects of the artwork in all sorts of alluring ways.   and it’s got air ships!  Let’s see if I can get a decent close up of the cover art:

Also recently purchased is The Age of Odin by James Lovegrove.  I’ve been on a bit of a Norse Mythology kick lately (watching the beautifully put together board game Yggdrasil being played might be to blame. . .  but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post), so I couldn’t resist this book.   Has anyone ever read this or any of Lovegrove’s other titles? The blurb on the back promoting his The Age of Zeus sealed it’s fate as a book that was coming home with me.   It’s funny, but poor Dan Brown!

This next goodie I’ve been waiting for for a while, and when I got the e-mail that ARC’s were available, I jumped with joy, squee’d around my office, and immediately responded requesting one.   It’s  Mark Hodder’s alt history The Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon,  the third (and final?)  episode of the adventures of Burton and Swinburne. This volume promises the return of one of my favorite time jumping characters, and I wouldn’t mind some more screen (page) time of one of my favorite fellow short redheads with slightly sick senses. . .   of humor.

Although I may need to make another book cover, perhaps a blue one (I bought the silver embroidery thread just for that!) because that spidery looking thing is already freaking the crap out of me.  I don’t care that it’s mechanical or steam powered or whatever, it’s a frakin’ spider!   speaking, have you seen that smartphone tv spot where someone’s phone wallpaper is a tarantula, and everyone keeps whacking on the phone to kill it?  hilarious!  but also f’ing creepy.

and last but certainly not least is The Enterprise of Death, by Jesse Bullington.  This will probably get read fairly soon, because it is a library book, and appears to be another one of those books for people like me who “like that sort of thing“.  Also, it’s got the words alchemy, necromancer and Renaissance Europe on the back. Anyone read it? is it good? dark? gritty? gross?   Vandermeer blurbed it, so it’s got to be good, right?

So there you have it,  the latest book things that entered my apartment.  And yes, for those of you who are keeping track, I DID trade some books in at the used book store.  when you have this many books crammed into this little square footage, books in requires books out.

Tags: aquisitions, books, fantasy, historical fiction, library, mythology, PYR, science fiction, space opera, ToBeReadPile