a genteel black hole that knows how to read

It is at this stage fairly possible that I've found myself a house rental, enabling me to remove myself from the domicile of the Evil Landlord, a gesture which will be accompanied by the unmistakeable sound-effects of stretching, twanging and pained meeping noises as deep-seated roots resist uprooting for all they're worth. Unless there's something fairly horrible lurking beneath the innocent surface of the rental agreement I should be moving within a couple of weeks, and have hence been forced to buckle down and, avoiding the ricochets of disturbed .303 bookworms, weed my giant L-space book collection so I have some faint hope of compressing it all into boxes for travel without actually collapsing the local space-time continuum. My study floor is currently bedecked with tottering piles of volumes, faintly tear-stained as a result of the emotional upheaval of deciding to chuck them.

I will, of course, stick most of them into voluminous bags and haul them off to the local charity shop, but before I do that I'd like to give CT-based witterers of the sf/fantasy persuasion (i.e. most of you) a crack at claiming any of them which look as though they might usefully enhance your reading life. Photographic listage follows. If you want any of these, please let me know and I'll label them yours and shunt them in your general direction via trained mongoose or brown paper parcel switches in the park, or something. (This is the first installment. It's approximately a sixth of them, and I haven't tackled the non-sf yet).



The house, for the curious, is a semi-detached recently-renovated two-bedroom Victorian in Lynfrae, which is a subset of Claremont; I re-toured it this morning in the company of Claire and Stv for moral support and second opinions, and they like it as much as I do, which is quite a lot. And it's not just because it's bucketing with rain at the moment and the whole world is a nicer place.

My subject line is, of course, Terry Pratchett, although I can't remember which book it's from and am callously leaving that as an exercise for the reader.

I could be happy on my own

This would be all a lot easier without the discovery that my camera has a broken catch on its battery lid, which is why it's been telling me that the battery is flat after four photographs for the last few months. I have thrown out, with unnecessary imprecations, an awful lot of perfectly fine batteries. Further book stack photos are taken with my cellphone, with something of a reduction in quality, apologies.

There has been something deeply satisfying about arriving at the realisation that both Jasper Fforde and Gregory Maguire annoy me utterly and don't have to be given shelf space. Also, that while I enjoyed the C. J. Cherryh, I look elsewhere these days when I have a yen for feminist sf, and will probably never re-read these. And Kim Stanley Robinson is Worthy But Often Incomprehensible, and life's too short.

The subject line is Franz Ferdinand. I have been rediscovering Franz Ferdinand as driving music over the last few weeks, it's bloody good fun, although falling very distinctly into the category of "Rock Music Which Makes Me Drive Slightly Ferally". The song is "Live Alone", which has been making me laugh because it's so bloody apposite just at the moment. Anthem adopted, forthwith.

toll the hounds

More Kim Stanley Robinson. Why do I have all this Kim Stanley Robinson? I've only kept the Mars ones, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The Steven Erikson I bought because I had to mark a Masters dissertation in them; they were interestingish, but didn't really do it for me enough to warrant shelf space. I have limited sympathy for grim/dark/gritty fantasy. I am also, with a sense of vindictive satisfaction, getting rid of Thomas Covenant, which I've only really kept out of a vague feeling that I ought to as a good fantasy critic. Nope. Really, no. (The Philip Mann whose title you can't read is The Eye of the Queen. I bought the Philip Mann because a colleague recommended them as part of my Masters dissertation, and I referred to them in passing for half a sentence and never read them again.)

memoirs of a spacewoman

Is there no end to these, you cry? Possibly not. I really own an awful lot of books, some of which are rather more awful than they should be, and others of which I've read an awful lot less than I should. (Pardon while I channel a drunken Bilbo Baggins for a moment). In this batch I am tossing, with profound political joy, Orson Scott Card, since the man's frothing homophobia has finally reached the point where I can't actually bring myself to read anything he's written. (The Alvin Maker series were among my Masters dissertation texts, and were presumably fun at the time, but I appear to have grown out of them on multiple levels). I actually recommend the Gail Carriger, they're frothy romps if ever I read one. Victorian werewolves and gay vampires of the more urbane sort, and a feisty heroine who hits things with her parasol. I'll probably replace them in e-book format because they're a fun guilty pleasure read. Unike the Laurell K. Hamilton, which, despite the claim of its title, is simply a terrible piece of writing. The John Brunner are definitely in the category of things I should have read an awful lot more than I have. The Peter Dickinson is one of his adult ones, which I don't think are as good as his kids' books. You will pry my considerable collection of Dickinson kids' books from my cold, dead hands.