The OF Blog: November 10 Book Porn

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

November 10 Book Porn


Just only a few books for this mid-week edition of book porn.  In the first photo are books that I've ordered that have arrived in the past few days.  Still soldiering on with my collection of the leatherbound Easton Press edition of Edward Gibbon's seminal work on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.  Lionel Shriver's book will be reviewed late this month or early next as part of my planned coverage of the National Book Award finalists.  The King of Kahel is the first offering from Amazon's AmazonCrossings imprint, devoted to the publication and promotion of translated fictions.  And David Harrison's recently-released book on dying languages, The Last Speakers, is the sort of non-fiction I want to read this time of year.



And here are three review copies I received, all from Pyr Books.  The Shepard book is not a high priority read, since I found the first two volumes to be rather underwhelming.  The Griffiths' book may be good (or not), but I'm not interested in vampire stories of any vein.  Alas, Enge's book is a third volume and I have not read the first two, so it might be a \while.

Any of these particularly appealing to you?

2 comments:

Walter Rhein said...

Are you offering to unload some of them?

Liviu said...

King of Kahel is an interesting book and I may order it tonight, will look for a little more sample than available at Amazon, but I like how it starts.

Not a vampire fan either, but Gryefriar is with "scientific vampires' in the Empire of Fear vein, though a much lighter adventure than there; so no undead vampires here and a fun adventure

I read Gibbon many years ago - one the few western histories available under communism, I guess for its anti-religious message; entertaining as fiction but the history has been debunked to a large extent and the for the Byzantine ear something like the Norwich masterpiece is much better, while for the 'fall" of Rome there are a ton of new books by modern historians (Goldsworthy is one notable such, but others too0

 
Add to Technorati Favorites