In a bookshop, idly

[hawkwing_lb]

So, I was in a bookshop yesterday. As you are, you know. Wandering, looking, sometimes (though not often, if I want to be able to buy lunch next week!) buying.

There will be muttering about prices in the next bit, so if such things annoy you, you are forewarned.

In which prices are compared.

So, buying books.

In Easons, the paperback of Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce is 9.10 euro. In Hodges Figgis and Waterstone's the same book retails at 8.75 euro. On Amazon.com, it retails at $5.99. Assuming shipping @ $3.00 (anyone care to enlighten me as to whether this is an accurate figure?), that's (today, at least) roughly 7.45 euro. Saving: in buying from HF: 0.35 euro; in buying from Amazon.com: between 2.30 and 2.65 euro.

Damn but we're getting hammered on price.

Another experiment. When Demons Walk, Patricia Briggs. Forbidden Planet sells it for 10.99 euro. Retail price at Amazon.com: $6.50. Assuming shipping at $3.25, that works out to 8.10 euro. Saving: 2.89 euro.

A third experiment: Sabriel, Garth Nix. Local bookshop sells it at 10.20 euro. On Amazon.com, an illustrated version (my version has no pictures) retails at $7.99. Assuming shipping at $4.00, that works out to 9.95 euro, approximately. Saving: 0.25 euro.

I suspect that the chains here order through the UK. Thus for currency conversions we're getting hammered twice: once from dollar to sterling, and then again from sterling to euro. Evidence for this thesis comes in the form of Charles Stross' The Family Trade, out of Tor Publishers, found all alone in Hodges Figgis for 6.10 euros. As it retails on Amazon.com for $6.99, and assuming shipping at $3.50, it comes in at 8.70 euros, making it one of the few times it's been cheaper to buy from nearby rather than from abroad.

Throughout, I've assumed the cost of shipping to be approximately equal to half the cover price. I haven't touched on the comparative price of TPBs or HBs: they vary between 14.00 euro and 33.00 euro, bottom-end of one and top-end of the other. The moral of this story, friends? Ordering from Amazon.com is in general but not always less expensive than toddling down to the local HF or Waterstone's. It's for-damn-sure less expensive than buying via Easons.

You have guessed that my retailer of choice is Amazon.com, right? With Hodges Figgis (Dawson St) about ten points back in second?

PS: Also, US editions of Tamora Pierce's books have better covers, in addition to being cheaper. Mine are pink-ish and girly, instead of having pictures of swords, wolves, horses, or other more content-appropriate images (you'd think it was a book about hair, honestly). The covers for The Immortals series all look the same, and they only have the title on the spine. I mean, come on, people. Just because the author's a female who's writing about a female main character, there's no need to completely alienate those of us who see a pink cover and automatically cringe (I have an allergic reaction to pink. Ask anyone). Damn good thing I heard of Pierce by the Internet first, or I'd never have picked up any of her books.

Comments

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

Aw, I love the Immortal series. Some of the first fantasy I read, back in the day.

I'm kind of afraid to go back and look, though, in case I don't love it as much as I do in my memory. :)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Back in the day, was it? :-)Coming to it for the first time, I found it not as complicated as I would like, perhaps, but the Immortals stuff has Harry Potter well beaten. Hands down. :-)

Actually, it's kind of like your style, a little :-).

Have you read more Pierce than the Immortals? Care to recommend one or two? :-)

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

I liked the Lioness series with Allana. Same 'verse. Similar style and all that. :)

I think that's all I've read of her, though. Last time I looked for her in the store there wasn't anything new.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :-)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

And I think I know what you mean about not loving something you read as a younger person the same way years later. But, you know, you could love it in different ways :-). I started reading Jordan's Wheel of Time when I was ten or so, and I haven't yet lost my appreciation for the first four books he wrote. An immense juggling act, and he can still keep most of the balls up after book five... but they wobble :-). Mind, that annoyed me the first time through :-).

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes..I remember a book I once thought was fabulous: Prince Ombra. By..Roderick MacLeish. It's a very poetical and lyric book on good versus evil, and I swooned under its spell. Then I re-read it a few years later. Eh.

One does change. One grows jaded, cynical even. One loses the ability to suspend one's beliefs or disbeliefs...whichever it is.

Robert Jordan. He Who Must End It Now. I loved the first book. I watched eagerly as the second book arrived. I fervently awaited the third book. By the fourth book, I was beginning to feel the early signs of cynicism, of weariness, of deep despair that it would never end. Sadly, I was proved right. I gave up somewhere around then, although my poor brother kept going for another book or two. He even sent them to me. :-)

Now other books do withstand the test of time. Lois Bujold comes to mind, as does CS Lewis' Narnia. Robert E. Howard, who wrote Conan and others. (Oh, if you haven't read Robert E., you should. His work is classical and yet timeless.) Jules Verne.

Hm.

::Wanders off to peruse the stacks in the basement..::

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Apparently, the latest book is The Penultimate Tome. Having read Knife of Dreams - yes, I'm still reading them as they come out, and yes, I remain convinced that books 1, 2, and 4 were his best - it remains for me to say: I Don't Believe It. Not unless The Ultimate Volume is twice the size of any of the ones that have preceded it, at least.

Indeed, I am a Bujold fan. Howard, though... He's good, but... I don't really appreciate the tone of most of his work. :-)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Apparently, the latest book is The Penultimate Tome.

Oh really? Hey, listen -- I've got this bridge we don't need anymore. I can let you have it, cheap, just because we're friends, see?

If you're not in the market for a bridge, can I interest you in some beachfront property in Arizona?

Oh, you don't believe it. Darn.

As for Howard, well -- that was the first science fiction I read, at the tender age of 4years, because of the lurid cover art by Frank Frazetta, and I was hooked then.

Another author who didn't age well was Piers Anthony. I used to think his stuff was the greatest since sliced bread, and just recently tried to re-read some of the books from the 70s and 80s. Yuck. Even his prize-winning "Magic of Xanth" books weren't so great. Readable, yes, but not great.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I've never read Piers Anthony. Is his stuff really that bad?

I find it very hard to read fantasy or SF from before the eighties, with a handful of exceptions, simply because the authors hold an entirely different set of cultural assumptions and biases to the ones I possess. Anne McCaffrey, for example, I could read when I was younger, but now I can see the stuff that my nine- and ten- and eleven- year-old self didn't recognise (just because the dragons made you do it, rape is all right?!).

I think as I've grown older and into my cultural biases, it's got harder for me to simply to be able to accept the assumptions on which a book is based, if they're very obviously of line with my own. Some of the cultural bias regarding women in less modern SFF annoys me that way - it really annoys me when I run across it in modern SFF as well - and sometimes it's something I can't put my finger on but it makes me uncomfortable, and not in an I should go away and reevaluate what I think I know uncomfortable.

Also, of course, some of it is that I'm more conscious of prose and rhythm these days, and what sounded perfectly fine to my younger ear now sometimes jars.

Oops, waffling :-).

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

I've never read Piers Anthony. Is his stuff really that bad?

Not BAD... but think too many puns and dirty old man.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

That's his later stuff, starting mid-80s. Earlier stuff was more edgy. One stand alone book about an apocalyptic series of rains flooding the Earth was interesting. Rings Of Ice, that was it.

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

Last year I reread _A Wrinkle in Time_.

It was a sad day. I kept itching for a red pencil.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

A Wrinkle in Time? Don't think I've heard of that one before.

But, be comforted! If you can see what other people aren't doing right, you can see how to do better than them!

This is probably not much consolation. :-)

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

You haven't heard of A Wrinkle in Time?!?!? *gasp!* *shock!*

The prose leaves much to be desired, but you MUST pick up copies of Wrinkle and its companions. Erm, Madeline L'engle (I think that's how you spell it).

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L'Engle it is...and it's worth reading at least once. Push aside the heavy Christian theology (and this one really is heavy on the Christian theology, unlike Narnia, which can just be read simply), and focus on the characters. Well, just once.

I will always be grateful to that book for introducing the concept of tesseract, which I have found of exceptional usefulness to me. ;-)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Christian theology...

Well, if two people who've read it are saying it's good, I may manage to overcome the dread that fills me at those two words. I have a deep and abiding suspicion of books that preach.

::googles tesseract::

Hmm, interesting.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Yes, that tesseract thingie is so useful and interesting. You can do all sorts of things with it.

I think Harlan Ellison had a very scary short story about a tesseract. I don't remember a title, or where it might have been located.

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I didn't think it was that heavy. Not even to the point Narnia was, because Lewis believed allegories should be easy to get.

But I definitely agree on the tesseract. Very helpful in my day-to-day travel. ;)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Ah, well, that's something I recently realized when I picked up Wrinkle just a few months ago. It's much heavier (IMHO) than Narnia, which I just re-read a few weeks ago. But as they say, YMMV. :-D

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

*nod* Well it's Christiany in a different way. Narnia is more allegory, and can be read on two levels. Wrinkle is more... it's part of the character growth, I guess, and can't be ignored as easily.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Yes, and Madeline L'Engle is more religious than CS Lewis was, IMHO. All of her books have included religious themes and even religious characters. When I was younger, I didn't mind it, but I don't think I could re-read any of them now.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Crud. Wrong icon. Hee...it's funny though.

My pointer must have rolled just as I clicked on it. I swear, it wasn't intentional!!!

::slinks away::

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

The early Piers wasn't bad, but we get into the changes of cultural assumptions that have occurred since the 70s. The later Piers, to wit, the extended Xanth "trilogy" got cutesy. The original trilogy wasn't bad, just...not as great as I'd remembered it.

And then there what you pointed out: you just don't get some of the adult stuff even if you understand the words and the concepts as a child. I was reading RE Howard as a child and totally missing some of the underlying assumptions and biases -- I know I would have a different experience reading his stuff now.

Plus, one's tastes and likings do change over the years. Why, for a while I was into the alternative fiction of Tanith Lee and other strange writers. Now I can't even bring myself to pick up those books, much less read them.

Theodore Sturgeon -- there's one I'll have to look at again and see how things have changed. He was oddly prescient in terms of treating his female characters well, and the story of his that I liked best used that to carry along the plot to some extent. I've forgotten the title, but it was in a collection named The Stars are the Styx. He was a very poetic writer.

Ray Bradbury -- I have re-looked at Something Wicked This Way Comes, mainly because there was a quote in there about the "October people" that I wanted to re-copy. That one looks like it would hold up well.

OTOH, there are writers whom I've never ever been able to read -- LE Modesitt comes to mind, along with EE "Doc" Smith. In fact, I clearly remember searching for Grey Lensman, finally stumbling across a copy in a used bookstore in a small town near mine, finally clutching it in my eager hands, running home, sitting down to read it, and coming up short against some sentence that embodied sexism to the nth degree. I stopped right there, put it away, and never touched it again.

Oh, and Sheri Tepper owns the dubious honor of writing something so bigoted that I threw her book* across the room. I have never touched her stuff again, not even the books I really liked.

*..and it was a hardcover book, and a library book, to top it off. The horror. The shame.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

and it was a hardcover book, and a library book, to top it off. The horror. The shame.

Insert appropriate gasps of shock, since that's something I've never yet been driven to do. [I am now extremely curious as to what bit of bigotry prompted this reaction, but notice, I'm not asking. I can be restrained :-)].

I've never read any Sturgeon, Smith or Tepper. On the other hand, I own quite a few books by Modesitt, despite the rather clunky prose style, characters and plot. Only the fantasy, though. ::shrug:: You take what you can get, and Modesitt does have a British publisher.

I tried reading Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, not too long ago. Didn't manage to get much past the second page. I managed the same distance with Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. There are some books I'm just not cut out to read :-).

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Not all of Bradbury is the same. If you didn't care for F451, do try some of his short stories, or his other books. I found Something Wicked This Way Comes to be much more lyrical when I first read it, oh..more than 20 years ago. He wrote a lot of neat short stories, though.

Sheri Tepper had a nice little series on the Land of the True Game, which was a planet on which some people had powers like shapeshifting or talking to inanimate objects. There were three trilogies, each focused on a different character. Those were good writing, and I miss them -- but I won't touch her books again.

Because in Gate to Women's Country she claimed that (1) homosexuality was a defect caused by in utero exposure to something (not specified) and that (2) since that had been identified, pregnant women no longer had to worry about bearing gay or lesbian children. It was so full of hatred and bigotry that it took my breath away, and it was shocking because I'd enjoyed her writing so much up to that point. The odd thing is, that same book has the men (off in their Men's Countries) are presented as engaging in sexual behavior -- but it's because they're so warlike and evil and other bad things and once all the evil warmongering males are eliminated by the women, the remaining males will be the good hetero kind, gentle and artistic and not warlike at all.

Simplistic much? ;-)

And that was the only book I've ever tossed. :-)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

in Gate to Women's Country ...the remaining males will be the good hetero kind

Um. Um. Um. ::speechlessness::

Clarify something for me? Is she saying homosexuality is bad and causes evil? Or that only evil people (predetermined evil)engage in homosexual acts?

Not to, you know, insult a book I've never read or anything, but that sounds a bit cracked. Well cracked, even. Truly deserving of tossing.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Gee..since I couldn't bring myself to actually read the book, I can't really say which it was. It was all very simplified and confused and muddled. I think it was basically that the evil warmongering men were engaging in homosexuality because they had no women to otherwise act with, and the kind/gentle/artistic males didn't because they were with the women, but it could have been other things. The evil males did evil things and the nice males did only nice things. So I think she was saying both - that homosexuality is evil and that evil people engage in it.

Yes, it was cracked. And well deserved tossing. All feminists should retch at that premise.

OTOH, if you want a good book on a similar premise, have you looked at Wen Spencer's A Brother's Price? That was really well written. She just published that last year. Men are scarce and must be protected by their sisters. ;-)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

A Brother's Price is very good, yes. :-)

[davefreer.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I have a huge collection of 60-80's sf. I really battle with anything after William Gibson, as I found the tone of sf shifted so that I could no longer ID with it. Some of the earlier stuff was sexist and dated. Some of it was less sexist and far more exploratory than the genre is now. Some of it -- like EFR's "next of Kin" is a little dated but so funny and clever a satire as to be re-readable, despite the prose. But some of the prose isn't bad... Ever read Zelazny's "I Immortal"? Cooper's "Overman Culture"? Spinrad's "Agent of Chaos" (a lot of his stuff stinks on ice, but that is a good one) or on fantasy side de Camp's "Fallible Fiend"? Scott Rohan and Scott's "a spell of empire"? I struggle with a lot of present fantasy, to be honest. And the Tepper sounds enough to make me tbar a book. My brother read a few, but gave her up.

Oh well, so long as I don't write too dated a stories to be read. Too sexist of course;-)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Oh well, so long as I don't write too dated a stories to be read. Too sexist of course ;-)
Oh, yes, indeed...that's exactly the word I'd use to describe you. Not.

Zelazny's "I, Immortal" was well-done and in some ways predicts the identity storage/theft/crisis of the computer age. EFR is all old, and you can spy the elderly bones of the story -- but he wrote so well that the social mores of his time aren't so apparent, and his stories are just fun.