Go the library - and other book babble

Hooray!

In the Forest of Hands and Teeth and Princess of the Midnight Ball are both now on my holds list with the library. I also requested they get The Shadow Queen by Anne Bishop, but no sign of that at this point.

I had been feeling myself to be in a bit of a dilemma, as three of my favourite authors (to the point I will buy them in hardcover) have books coming out early next year. (For any interested parties, they are The Sharing Knife: Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold, Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs and The Shadow Queen by Anne Bishop.) I want to buy them, but since I need to combine the three to make shipping from Amazon vaguely reasonable (it'll still be US$20 for the three), that means they won't ship until the third one is released and then, going on my Acheron experience, could possibly still take two months to get here.

The books are going to be in the library by then and I'll be desperate to read them. So I was caught, feeling I really should read my own copies, but for the one that is published first at the end of January, it could be as late as May before I get it.

Then I had a moment of revelation.

I'm doing two different things here. I'm getting hold of books I want to read and I'm supporting favourite authors that I want to get the sales to keep getting the contracts to write more books for me to read. Which means it doesn't matter if my own copies of the books sit on the shelf unread until the day I decide to reread them (which will happen with these being favourite, keeper books).

So now I have library holds on both Horizon and Bone Crossed, and as I said above, I've put in a purchase request for The Shadow Queen.

Life is particularly nice when you can have your cake and eat it too.

And in further library news, I picked up three books I'd reserved today (The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen, Thirteen Orphans by Joan Lindskold and Brisingr by Christopher Paolini, which is a particularly fat one). When this is added to my discovery and enjoyment of The Obernewtyn Chronicles by Isobelle Carmody, means my TBR list has suddenly expanded back close to 40. My dream goal was to read some of the books on it and get it under 30, but I guess I'll just have to work on keeping it under 40.

I've been aware of the original Obernewtyn book since it came out in around 1985 but never read it. I can't remember what got me aware of the series again this year, but I went looking for it in the bookshops here and finally found it - for NZ$32 for an itty bitty YA paperback. There was no way I was paying that much and when I found a website saying the series was being released as ebooks this December I decided waiting a bit longer wouldn't hurt me. I'm now about halfway through Obernewtyn and thoroughly enjoying it. It's the kind of book I loved when I was a YA (as I was back in '85 when it came out) and so I'm getting a good story and a nice dose of nostalgia at the same time. At halfway, I went and bought the next two from Fictionwise (one of the dangerous sides to ebooks being the ability to purchase immediately). I'd loved to have picked up the whole rest of the series, but decided I should read a couple more before spending even more money. All the same, I suspect I'll keep going. Oh dear, more for the TBR list.

I finished Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn yesterday and I'm struggling to come up with what I have to say about it. I liked it, but... I especially liked the characters but as it progressed, something about the overall thing turned me off it a bit and I'm still trying to figure out why. The thing I think is my problem, I also consider a strength of the book and well done, so I'm feeling kind of confused. Hopefully some kind of post will show up about it in the next few days.

Right, it is past my bedtime - as Dave has just come to tell me - so I shall stop meandering (or I could go on all night) and post this. I hope it doesn't have too many typos as it is kind of late for me.