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Books

Multi-national and multi-lingual book roundup!

Picked up in print in Victoria this past weekend, when Dara and I kept having fun ducking into small used bookstores and going “So! Do you have any books in French?”:

  • La communauté de l’Anneau, Les deux tours, and Le retour du roi. J.R.R. Tolkien. These are, of course, the French translations of the three books of The Lord of the Rings.
  • Harry Potter à l’École des Sorciers, Harry Potter et La Chambre des Secrets, and Harry Potter et Le Prisonnier d’Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling. The French translations of the first three Harry Potter books.

Grabbed from Kobo:

  • Bitter Seeds, by Ian Tregillis. Alternate history of the “WWII but with magic” school. Noticed this a while back as potentially interesting, grabbed now because Kobo had the price down to 2.99.
  • Wide Open, by Deborah Coates. Contemporary fantasy, by which I mean, fantasy set in the real world, but in a more rural setting rather than an urban one. Sounded interesting, about a woman coming back from a stint in Iraq and having to deal with her sister’s ghost.
  • Cold Magic, by Kate Elliott. Steampunk. Saw this one come out a while back, thought it sounded interesting, finally buying a copy.

And grabbed from Angry Robot directly, because they decided they wanted to celebrate SF written by women after the recent flaps over the Hugos and the Clarkes this year, to wit, go Angry Robot!:

  • vN, by Madeline Ashby. SF. Liked the concept of a heroine who’s an intelligent, self-replicating robot–a synthetic humanoid.
  • The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, by Cassandra Rose Clarke. SF, and again, oddly enough, about intelligent humanoid robots! In this case, a love story involving one.
  • Walking the Tree, by Kaaron Warren. Fantasy. This sounded like it had an interesting worldbuilding concept, about an island civilization dominated by a giant tree and a woman who’s charged to walk the circumference of the island.

75 for the year.

April 11, 2013 by
Books

Post-Norwescon book roundup post

Picked up in print at Norwescon:

  • Beyond This Horizon, by Robert A. Heinlein. SF, of course. This was actually a freebie in the swag bag, but it’s a book acquisition, so it counts!
  • Throne of the Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed. Fantasy. Grabbed this one because I’ve been hearing good things about it for ages, and it turns out it’s one of these year’s Hugo nominees anyway, so hey!
  • The Sail Weaver, by Muffy Morrigan. This is really kind of science fantasy, from the sound of it, rather than SF or F. This was being sold by the author in the dealer’s room at the con, and she sold me on it when she pitched it as “tall ships and dragons IN SPACE”.
  • The Wicked Instead, by Vivien Weaver and and No Deadly Thing, by Tiger Gray. Urban fantasy. Again, being sold by the authors in the dealer’s room. Picked these up after I had a lovely conversation with both authors about their covers, and once I told them I was an author myself and mentioned Carina, they piped out with the name of my editor–Deb Nemeth! So after that awesome conversation, I pretty much HAD to buy both books.

Picked up electronically directly from the authors and/or publishers:

  • 7th Son: Deceit and 7th Son: Destruction, by J.C. Hutchins. These are books 2 and 3 of his 7th Son trilogy, the first book of which had been traditionally published but didn’t sell well enough for his publisher to continue the trilogy. He’s self-pubbed the remaining two as ebooks. I quite enjoyed the first one so was very happy to scarf up the other two.
  • The aforementioned The Wicked Instead and No Deadly Thing, also bought digitally because the trade paperback copies I bought are large and I’m reluctant to damage them by carrying them around on my commute. Also bought because woo, supporting Seattle-area SF/F authors!

Picked up from Kobo:

  • Dawn, by Octavia Butler. Book 1 of her Xenogenesis trilogy. Picked up because I’d tried to start reading this before in print, but the omnibus edition I have is HUGE and not really friendly to being carried around on my commute. And they’ve finally been made available in ebook form!
  • Poison, by Bridget Zinn. YA fantasy. Picked up pretty much because of reasons described here.

63 for the year.

April 1, 2013 by
Books

50th anniversary Doctor Who book roundup

Picked up in print from Barnes and Noble, because I DO buy Kit in both formats:

  • Mountain Echoes, by C.E. Murphy. Book Eight of the Walker Papers.

Picked up from Kobo:

  • Avis de tempête and Sturmnacht, by Jim Butcher. These are the French and German translations of Storm Front, which is of course Book 1 of the Dresden Files.
  • Dhampir, Thief of Lives, and Sister of the Dead, by Barb and J.C. Hendee. These are the first three books of the Hendees’ Noble Dead series, one of the few fantasy series doing a treatment of vampires that I’d ever read anything of. I liked the first couple of them. This is me re-buying them in ebook form.

Also picked up from Kobo, but calling these out in a separate list as they’re all the ebook releases of the special 50th Anniversary editions of selected Doctor Who novels, one for each Doctor!

  • Ten Little Aliens, by Stephen Cole
  • Dreams of Empire, by Justin Richards
  • Last of the Gaderene, by Mark Gatiss
  • Festival of Death, by Jonathan Morris
  • Fear of the Dark, by Trevor Baxendale
  • Players, by Terrance Dicks
  • Remembrance of the Daleks, by Ben Aaronovitch
  • Earthworld, by Jacqueline Rayner
  • Only Human, by Gareth Roberts
  • Beautiful Chaos, by Gary Russell
  • The Silent Stars Go By, by Dan Abnett

52 for the year.

March 24, 2013 by
Books

Mixed-media book roundup

Picked up in print from Third Place:

  • Midnight Blue-Light Special, by userinfoseananmcguire. Book 2 of the Incryptid series. Bought for obvious reasons. 🙂

Picked up in print from the comic book store at Pike Place Market:

  • Zombie Haiku and Dawn of Zombie Haiku, by Ryan Mecum. Bought because I got the first of these to give to the team as part of this past Christmas’ white elephant gift exchange and I thought it was quite silly. So I went back and got both of these. Because yes indeed, sublimely silly!

Picked up in print from Comicon:

  • Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess, by Phil and Kaja Foglio. Second of the Girl Genius novels.
  • Anne Steelyard: The Gate of Dreams and Starlight and Anne Steelyard: A Thousand Waters, by Barbara Hambly. The second and third of the Anne Steelyard graphic novels, which I grabbed because a) Barbara Hambly, and b) I thought the concept of a story set in an Indiana-Jones-esque timeframe but with a female lead character sounded like fun, and c) I liked the look of the art. The table I bought them from had only books 2 and 3 though so I’m going to have to swing back and get book 1.

Grabbed for free off of B&N since it was a Friday freebie:

  • The Taken, by Vicki Pettersson. Book 1 of the Celestial Blues series. Grabbed because I liked the idea of a previously deceased P.I. from the fifties having become an angel and needing to keep a modern-day rockabilly fangirl from being murdered. Sounds like it might be a nice change of pace in urban fantasy, at least enough that I’m absolutely willing to give it a shot.

And, grabbed off of my Third Place Kobo account:

  • Mountain Echoes, by userinfomizkit! Book 8 of the Walker Papers. Grabbed because, well, DUH. 😀
  • A Turn of Light, by Julie E. Czerneda. Grabbed because as I’ve posted about before, Czerneda is one of my all-time favorite SF authors. This is her first fantasy novel!

35 for the year so far.

March 10, 2013 by
Books

The Kobo is still shiny ebook roundup post

Latest roundup of books, particularly motivated by trying to get caught up on the releases of several of my fellow Carina authors!

Thus, from Carina Press:

  • The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf, by Tia Nevitt. The second of her fairy tale adaptations, which I had to grab pretty much because of adoring that she’s got a dwarf heroine, and let’s hear it for heroines of atypical body types!
  • Blood of the Pride, by Sheryl Nantus. This one’s urban fantasy. I liked the idea of a cat shifter who’s unable to shift being the protagonist, and this is also me supporting the SF/F side of Carina’s catalogue!
  • Golden Triangle, by David Bridger. See previous comment re: supporting Carina’s urban fantasy. This is the second of Mr. Bridger’s books.
  • Journey of Awakening, by Shawna Thomas. This is the second book from Ms. Thomas I’ve picked up from Carina, and this one’s more fantasy than her other one. I’ll want to get caught up soon on her too.

From Kobo & Third Place, for the new reader:

  • Sweet Deception, by Heather Snow. Historical romance. I read book 1 of her series not terribly long ago, rather liked it, and am picking up book 2.
  • Mark of the Lion, Stalking Ivory, and The Serpent’s Daughter, by Suzanne Arruda. These are all re-buys, and are the first three books of the historical mystery series featuring Jade del Cameron.
  • The Man in the Queue, by Josephine Tey. Mystery. First of her Inspector Alan Grant series. Grabbed because the fifth of these, The Daughter of Time, was recently highly spoken of on tor.com.
  • The Spiral Hunt, by Margaret Ronald. Urban fantasy. Grabbed because I’d seen this spoken well of on Whatever, because it’s urban fantasy with scent-based magic, and because Kobo currently has it listed for .99.
  • Still Life With Murder, by P.B. Ryan. This was a recommendation, in the realm of historical mystery, and Kobo has this one for .99 right now too.
  • The Hanover Square Affair, by Ashley Gardner. Another recommendation of the historical mystery variety. And, again, .99 right now on Kobo!

In print, from Third Place:

  • The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. Book 5 of the aforementioned Alan Grant series. Bought in print specifically because of being happy with Third Place’s customer service, and also because of the aforementioned positive review on tor.com.
  • Blackveil, by Kristen Britain. Fantasy. Book 4 of her series about the Green Riders, picking up at last because my previous copies of books in these series were all in mass market paperback and the book’s finally out in that form.

Last but not last, from B&N for the Nook:

  • If I Fall, by Kate Noble. Historical romance. Book 4 of her Blue Raven series.

26 now for the year.

February 24, 2013 by
Books

The oh HEY I have a whole new ereader book roundup

But this is not to say I haven’t bought books lately in print as well, because I have!

Picked up in print from Third Place:

  • Cold Days by Jim Butcher, which I have of course already read, but I hadn’t yet picked up my paperback copy to add to my collection. Because oh my YES Mr. Butcher is on the “must have both electronically and in print in case of zombie apocalypse and OHNOEZ NO MORE ELECTRICITY” list.
  • The Inexplicables, by Cherie Priest. The latest one in her Clockwork Century series–looking forward to this one since it takes the action back to steampunky, zombie-infested Seattle!

Meanwhile, as I have posted about earlier, I’ve picked up a Kobo Mini in my effort to start shifting my ebook purchases over to support Third Place. A big part of this is motivated by the desire to support said store, though there’s a considerable amount here as well of being disgruntled with Barnes and Nobles’ customer service. I’ve never had any particular issues with the Nook as a device; the hardware is lovely and the current edition of the software on mine is simple and doesn’t screw up what I want it to do, i.e., let me read books. But I’ve never been happy with B&N’s customer support, especially in regards to supporting Mac users.

(The Nook desktop app is still broken on Mountain Lion, for example, and I’ve never heard yet if they’re planning to bother to fix it any time in the next few years. Every time I google about it, I see a whole bunch of cranky Mac users posting to the B&N forums.)

So yeah. That I can support Third Place now with my purchases is lovely and from what I’ve seen so far, responsive customer support on Kobo’s part is bonus. These things together have combined to get several shiny new ebooks showing up on my shiny new Kobo Mini, several of which have been on the Rebuy list for a while. But not all!

So, picked up from Third Place/Kobo:

  • The Duchess War, by Courtney Milan. Grabbing this one because I’ve quite liked her historical romances, and this one’s starting a whole new series. ALSO, Kobo’s selling it for real cheap right now, but if you act super-fast, i.e., by the 20th, you can use a coupon to knock 50% off the price. How shiny is that? Thank you, Smart Bitches Trashy Books!
  • The Wounded Sky, by Diane Duane. Because this is one of my favorite Star Trek novels from the first big run of them. We have a physical copy in our library but I wanted an ebook too.
  • Strangers from the Sky, by Margaret Wander Bonanno. Another Trek novel. This is one I’d actually grabbed a German edition of when I’d grabbed a compilation from the Kobo set, one which included Vonda McIntyre’s Enterprise: The First Adventure–so I wanted the original English edition of this too!
  • Murder with Peacocks and Murder with Puffins, by Donna Andrews. These are rebuys, the first two books of her Meg Lanslow series. Decided I wanted them back in ebook form.

But–it’s important to note that I’m not actually going to bail entirely on my B&N account for now. For organizational purposes, if I started buying a series on B&N, I’m going to continue to do so. Like, say:

  • Victory of Eagles, by Naomi Novik. This is book five of the Temeraire series. Which I did actually already own in hardback, so I clearly needed an ebook copy! Once I finish doing some beta reading for userinfokisanthe, I’m going to jump back into my mad dash through the rest of this series, prepping for Book 8 to drop this summer!

Total of 11 for the year, so far.

February 15, 2013 by
Books

Overlapping years book roundup

Picked up in print:

  • The Wild Ways, by Tanya Huff. Book 2 of her Gale Women series. Just finished Book 1 and enjoyed it immensely, so had to scarf this one up ASAP.

Meanwhile, picked up electronically:

  • Touched by Magic and Wolverine’s Daughter, both by Doranna Durgin. I have paperback copies of both of these, but Durgin has made them available until the 15th for free out of her backlist, so I took the opportunity to scarf them down. Touched by Magic is one of my long-standing favorites of hers, and I definitely recommend it!

And these two were the last two ebooks I picked up to close out 2012:

  • Mariana and The Shadowy Horses, by Susanna Kearsley. These were on sale for .99 each, so I snagged ’em even though I own copies of both in paperback.

That finishes off the 2012 count at 148, and starts off 2013 at 3.

January 13, 2013 by