gosh I have a lot of books

Ghost Talkers

Earlier this year, y’all may recall, a lot of ebook customers got a lot of credit from the settlement of the lawsuits pertaining to ebook pricing. I’m still annoyed that agency pricing has returned as fallout from this, because it’s put a big dent in my ebook buying.

On the other hand, it also means I got a boatload of credit from Barnes and Noble for my history of purchases with them.

Part of me is a bit wry about this, given that I have moved my ebook purchasing by and large over to Kobo. But hey, I’m still willing to go scarf books on barnesandnoble.com if I don’t have to pay for them, so hey! It took me a while to decide on the titles I want to get. I have however finally finished up spending that credit tonight, so here’s a roundup of all the things I got as a result of the credit drop.

Purchased from bn.com in print:

• Elfquest: The Final Quest Volume 2, for generally obvious “because it’s delightful to be able to buy new Elfquest graphic novels again” reasons. I’ve been buying the individual issues in digital form direct from Dark Horse, but I absolutely wanted print copies as well. So I’m racking those up in print as they come out.

And, here are the ebooks I’ve gotten over the last several weeks, most of which were acquired tonight:

• The Bone Whistle, by Erzebet YellowBoy. Contemporary fantasy. I had my eye on this story way back in 2007 when it was originally published by Juno Books, with the author using the name Eva Swan. I never was able to get a copy, though, before Juno shut down. She later released it herself under the name Erzebet YellowBoy, so I finally was able to grab it in ebook form.
• Le combat des dieux, by Élodie Tirel. High fantasy. Book 3 of her Luna series for young readers. This is of course the third of the series I’ve been reading in French to try to improve my reading comprehension in that language, and since I enjoyed the second one (at least what I could pick up of it), I’m moving onward to the third. I continue to be rather charmed by how the series seems entirely unrepentant about hitting all the classic fantasy tropes hard. 😀
• Ghost Talkers, by Mary Robinette Kowal. Historical/WWI fantasy. Grabbing this one because I’ll pretty much grab anything Kowal chooses to release, and this is her latest novel, about a squadron of mediums whose job it is to get intelligence on the front from the ghosts of recently slain soldiers.
• Arabella of Mars, by David D. Levine. SF. Pretty much my entire feed of followed blogs and social media pals lost their minds over this release, so yeah, the buzz, it is strong with this one. And it sounds like great fun, with a blend of SF and steampunk viewed through a lens of English colonialism. Sure why not, I’ll have some.
• Radiance: A Novel, by Catherynne M. Valente. SF. This is another recent title in the vein of SF with a heavy side helping of classic/pulp flavor, only this one also throws in a hefty dash of classic cinema flavor as well.
• An Accident of Stars, by Foz Meadows. Fantasy. Specifically, portal fantasy. Grabbing this because I’ve read several of Meadows’ blog posts and appreciate her way of expressing herself. And also because portal fantasy with several leading female characters? Fuck yeah, I’m on board!
• The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers. SF. Because again, the buzz is strong with this one, a novel that started life as a self-pub release and later got itself a formal book deal. Plus any SF novel that invokes Firefly in its buzz is pretty much bound to get my attention.
• The Ballad of Black Tom, by Victor LaValle. Horror/Lovecraft pastiche. This one got a lot of attention because of revisiting Lovecraft–and specifically, one of his most racism-steeped stories, “The Horror at Red Hook”, bringing an African-American perspective to the events that story mentions. Since I’m one of the folks who likes Lovecraft’s worldbuilding but has a hard time dealing with his racism, I expect to particularly appreciate this one.
• The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, by Kij Johnson. Another Lovecraft pastiche, this time bringing in a female perspective. Given that I very much liked the She Walks in Shadows anthology that came out last year, I expect to like this too. Particularly given how I came out of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath with a very strong “WTF DID I JUST READ?!” reaction!
• The Duke of Olympia Meets His Match, by Juliana Gray. Historical romance. Picked this up because I saw it favorably reviewed on dearauthor.com (you can see me in the comments on that link). And because I’m charmed by the idea of a romance featuring older characters.
• HEX, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. Horror. This is the English translation of a best-selling Dutch horror novel, which I saw get some positive buzz on Tor.com, such as this review here. This story sounds like it blends the modern and the gothic very well, and I liked what I read of excerpts, so I’m going to dive into the full book. Plus I appreciate being able to read something that originated in a non-US market.
• False Hearts: A Novel, by Laura Lam. SF. Picking this up again because of seeing it plugged on Tor.com (really, those folks at Tor.com are a large contributor to my book purchasing decisions!), and specifically, because I saw this nice little short story set in the universe of this novel. Between that and being intrigued by the premise of a pair of (originally) conjoined twins as the protagonists of the story, I wanted to pick this up.
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Firestorm, by Greg Keyes. Bought because I’ve quite liked the two movies in the current Apes franchise, and because I wanted to see what the prequel story setting up the plague we see in Dawn would be like. Also, because I’ve read stuff by Keyes in the past so I know he’s capable of laying down a good story.
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, by Alex Irvine. This is the official novelization of the movie which came out a couple years ago. Because hey, I liked the story! And I do still like a movie novelization every so often!
• It Takes Two to Tangle, by Theresa Romain. Historical romance. This went onto my queue a couple years ago entirely because of this review on Smart Bitches Trashy Books. And, now that I’m refreshing my memory about the book and see that I had in fact dropped a comment on that review, I am pleased to be reminded about this novel’s delightful opening line.
• Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho. Steampunk/fantasy. Yet another strong-buzz book, with Tor.com contributing heavily to my hearing about this one. I particularly like that both of the lead characters are people of color.
• The Last Witness, by K.J. Parker. Fantasy. I heard about this one through Tor.com because it is in fact one of their releases! The protagonist is someone who makes his living by ridding people of unwanted memories. Except now he’s been targeted by someone because of one of the secrets he now holds. Sounds fun!

This roundup all by itself doubles my total of acquired books for the year, taking me up to 36.

(And I should note for the record that some of my ebook settlement credit went to things that are not books: namely, two MST3K DVD boxed sets! But I think that any of my fellow fans of cheesy movies will agree that more MST3K in one’s library is always a good thing.)

ETA: OH HEY I forgot one. I also grabbed Jo Walton’s The Just City, because Tor.com has an ebook club now and that was this month’s freebie. Make that 37 for the year!

Winterwood

First book acquisition post of 2016! A bit delayed, since these books have been acquired over the course of the last several weeks. Purchased in print via Amazon CreateSpace:

• First Daughter, by Caitlin Clare Diehl. Fantasy. Got this because she’s another member of NIWA and I liked the sound of her plot blurb. Also because I was curious to see a book that’s a direct product of CreateSpace!

Purchased digitally from Amazon (for values of ‘purchased’ meaning ‘I got it for free, actually’):

• The Legend of Yan-Kan Mar, by Holly Jones. SF. Grabbed this because Holly is a relation of mine and I wanted to support a family member with getting the word out about her work. That she was celebrating the release by handing the book out for free didn’t suck, either!

Purchased digitally from Kobo:

• Unbound and Revisionary, by Jim C. Hines. Urban fantasy. Books 3 and 4 of his Magic Ex Libris series. Gotten since Book 4 just dropped and I need to get caught up on these!
• Winterwood, by Jacey Bedford. Book 1 of the Rowankind series. Historical fantasy, in the Napoleonic era. Grabbed this because I really liked the sound of the plot pitch when I saw this getting talked up on Tor.com, because the cover is gorgeous, and because the words “cross-dressing privateer captain” had me ON FREGGIN’ BOARD.
• The Witch Who Came in From the Cold and Tremontaine, both of which are ebook serials from Serial Box. I’ve been seeing these folks get talked up on Tor.com lately, as they issue stories in serial form in both audio and ebook forms, and I really liked the idea of a spy adventure in 70’s Prague featuring witches. Likewise, the Tremontaine serial is set in the same universe as Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint novels and I am on board with revisiting that setting, absolutely. So I grabbed the first episode of both of these stories to see if I’ll want to read the rest of them.

7 total for the year so far.

The Day the World Came to Town

Forgot to get this posted in a timely fashion, so here it is at least to finish off my book acquisitions for the previous year.

Acquired in print:

The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland, by Jim DeFede. Picked this up from the gift shop at the Seattle Rep, the night I saw the play Come From Away. Because I figured a) reading this was obligatory to better appreciate the play’s context, and b) the purchase would help support the Rep!

Acquired from Kobo:

The Force Awakens, by Alan Dean Foster. This is the official novelization of the new Star Wars movie, which I wanted to pick up despite the ebook being pricier than I usually like. (The wait list on the library queue was unacceptably long, and I wanted to read it NOW.) I have in fact read this now as of this writing, and can report that while it was generally a straightforward adaptation of what we all saw on screen, there are a few additional details that I wish would have made it into the final theatrical cut.

And that puts me at 79 total for the year. Which is pretty low for me, historically!