With the recent posts about the book culls I'm doing over the next few weeks and months, some might be pardoned if they had concluded that I was no longer buying any books. I am, but I'm concentrating more on buying some higher-quality hardcovers and some non-speculative works, since my interest in spec fic has been flagging for several months now. In this first photo, here are three Easton Press editions of books from their series of the one hundred greatest books ever published. I ordered the last two online a couple of weeks ago, while Hawthorne's book I found at McKay's this morning.
Here are four Folio Society editions of 20th century histories of the four most famous empires of the ancient Near/Middle East. Will be reading those around/after I finish reading Gibbon's classic on Rome.
Each of these I picked up for myself at McKay's today (I bought another two dozen books or so, but those are for my students or for the class and not for my personal use). One dual French/Russian edition of two Gogol stories, one German edition of Kafka, two Spanish editions, and the UK edition of Lauren Beukes' book, which I had originally planned to buy after it was released in the US in 2011.
Three Booker Prize (and one National Book Award) finalists, the beginning to John Julius Norwich's classic three-volume history on the Byzantine Empire, and some book by some Esslemont guy about some fantasy setting called Malazan something or another...
Expect reviews on most, if not all, of these books in the coming weeks and months.
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8 comments:
I had that edition of The Scarlet Letter. Good stuff, although my feelings about Hawthorne are very mixed.
Maybe you should wear a scarlet A for getting rid of Alice Munro. :)
I maybe the only one who can laugh at this but, the only book pictured I haven't heard of is the, Esslemont.
I like discovering new things...
I'm looking forward to your thoughts on Zoo City.
we've got John Julius Norwich series, my other half was pretty impressed by them.
Ha! I do plan on buying more Munro in the future, but that collection was spotty for me.
Double ha in regards to the Esslemont, considering how he's been talked up on a handful of SF/F blogs in recent months :P
Speaking as a historian, Norwich makes for a good narrative read, although he purposely does not focus on certain microhistory elements that are commonplace in many academic-oriented histories.
As for Beukes, near future. Did start reading it a few minutes ago. Too early to have more than vague impressions.
The Norwich series on Byzantium is fantastic. Of the Folio Society editions, I would rate them as follows:
Egyptians: Solid A (Gardiner was a doyen of Egyptology)
Babylonians: B- (not terribly well written but informative)
Persians: C- (focuses entirely on the rise of Persia and its threatening of Greece, then Alexander's conquest)
Hittites: F (the arrangement was terrible, the explanations often made one more confused and if I hadn't read a different book about the Hittites I would have no interest in them)
Sad to hear that, since I know the least about the Hittites of the four empires. Plan on buying the other two Norwich volumes in January and then reading it then or in February. Halfway through Volume V of the Gibbon right now.
Try Trevor Bryce's The Kingdom of the Hittites. It's very interesting (at least I thought so).
Thanks! I'll look into it, especially since I find myself wanting to read more narrative histories these days.
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