Today the postal service brought a galley of Elizabeth Hand‘s Saffron and Brimstone: strange stories from M Press, which made me very, very, very happy. (This is an expansion of her award-winning collection from PS Publishing, Bibliomancy, which we were never quite able to get our hands on, so double yay.)
Earlier this week, Gwyneth Jones sent along copies of Bold As Love and Castles Made of Sand, which also made me very, very, very happy. Both these packages were the best kind of suprises.
And we went to the bookstore, with me whining, but I don’t want any more books, I really feel ill about it, but I have too many great books sitting at home, I don’t even want to buy any more today. So, I picked up Rachel Cohn & David Levithan’s Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist the moment I saw it, bought it immediately, without thought, and started it right away. Oh, you know how most people write about music and it’s just cringe-inducing? It’s just dancing about architecture? This book just nails it; starts out with the titular Nick playing bass in a club and SELLS it. The antithesis of cringing. (And I’m now obessed with tracking down everything Levithan’s ever written — if someone sent me a copy of Wide Awake I would pledge undying devotion. Or something.)
(I also almost bought Annette Kurtis Clause’s Freaks: Alive on the Inside! (title – eh, but freaks! and Blood and Chocolate is fab). But we have an ER bill coming. So maybe next time.)
And I’ve been reading The King’s Last Song. So so so good. There are few writers whose work, no matter what it is, instantly makes me fall in love. Geoff Ryman’s one of them. (Karen Fowler and Kelly Link are two others. Christopher, of course. Eduardo Galeano. I should probably make a real list. But suffice to say there are a very few that don’t seem capable of disappointing me.)
Happy reading.
ps Finished this entry after drinking wine and soaking in pollen outside. Important to note in case of incoherence. ‘Night.
I loved those Gwyneth Jones books, I found them just magically & wonderfully good & of course she is so smart and such a good writer….
Nick & Nora was great, eh?!?
I lost all restraint at the bookstore yesterday and spent a TON of money, it was not good: especially because really I should only be reading for work. Actually I feel sure I am not alone in finding that I end up buying the most books when I really don’t have time to read them, it is a substitute: when I am really reading a lot of fiction, it’s almost all from the library.
(That said, I’m about 100 pages in to Charles de Lint’s new novel; and the other things I got are all also instant-gratification-y, so I think I will read them in the next few days unless I exercise more self-control than is historically likely….)
Gwenda neglected to mention that I got the ROAD magazine special collector’s edition with tons of photos and articles about February’s Tour of California. It’s my new favorite book.