Insanity take 2

[hawkwing_lb]

I don’t know how many books I own. I know I have over a thousand in fiction alone, possibly twice or three times that amount. I’ve packed the boxed books in behind the couch, repacked the shelf in the living room, brought one shelf from my room downstairs and packed that (and piled more on top of it) – I have enough hardbacks to fill one set, one set of shelves entirely. Quite possibly my shelf-packing wasn’t as efficient as it might have been, even though books are double- and triple-stacked, because I still have about nine shelves’ worth of books in my bedroom.

Three sets of shelves remain in the bedroom. One and one-half are still full.

Looking at them (as I recline here, gasping for breath, trying to get my wind back), I’m astonished to realise how much my tastes have changed in the last six or seven years. Despite being still a voracious reader – as much or even more so than I was the last time I completely unloaded my shelves – I’m a much pickier one these days.

That’s partly, of course, a question of how much inflation has affected my book-buying habits. It’s too costly for me to buy a book I’m not sure I’ll enjoy: not being an earner, I can’t afford to spend E12.00* or E25.00** without the guarantee of some return.

Partly it’s because I discovered the internet, and Amazon.com, and now instead of being limited to the books coming out from UK publishers, I have a choice of new and interesting furrin novels. It’s a novel feeling, and my delight in it still hasn’t worn off. (Hammered! City of Pearl! Heroes Die! Conflict of Honors! The Family Trade!) I’m not satisfied with Raymond E Feist, Anne McCaffrey, and David Gemmell anymore;*** I prefer newer, different authors doing newer, different things. I’ll take older different authors too (Samuel R Delany, to name but one), but there’s a certain sterility of imagination among some of the older books on my shelves; a rather formulaic adherence to an over-used model.

Yeah, I want New! and Fresh! Not something that smells more than a tad recycled. I’ve been spoiled, what can I say?

And as I’m learning to write myself, my tastes are changing. I want to look at the experimental, as well as the tried-and-true. The linguistically startling, the talented, the truly astounding as well as the merely excellent. I can’t afford, really, to give shelf-space to the average (even though I’m hanging on to many for reference). It has to be a cut above. It has to provoke some kind of emotion in me, be it love, hate, anger, irritation, curiosity, fascination, or some combination of these. Otherwise it’s not pulling its weight.

Enough talk. Back to the book-moving!


--------------------------
*paperback price

**hardback, going up to E34.00 sometimes in the case of imports (Sarah Monette’s Mélusine from Forbidden Planet costs that much, for example)

*** To name some of the older authors on my shelves

Comments

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

::revels in her own insanity::

How about Melissa Scott? Rosemary Edghill? Wen Spencer? :-)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

The insanity isn't the number of books (though, y'know, some might argue that), it's attempting to do a complete re-organisation two days after emerging from the clutches of the Ick.

But it's not like I've got anything else to do, hey? :-)

In response to your question: no, yes, and most emphatically yes. I own everything Spencer's published, though Tinker and Wolf Who Rules (that is the title, right?) are in e-book form. Question of space, y'know.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

::Waves hands hypnotically::

Try the Melissa Scott stuff. Mighty Good Road, The Kindly Ones, Dreamships, Burning Bright, and others in the SF line, plus Point of Hopes and Point of Dreams in a more fantasy-oriented fashion. The last two were co-written with her late partner, Lisa Barnett.


All have been out for years, so you'll find them only second- or third-hand. Good hunting!

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Okay. Maybe someday. There's only one second hand bookshop in Dublin (that I know of, anyway), and trying to find anything specific in its piles is pretty much hit and miss. Although once I did find a Samuel R Delany, but at the time I was looking for a Joel Rosenberg, so.

Anyway. Maybe someday.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

If I find any second hand copies, I'll get them for you. ;-)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Would you? If you do that, you'll have to think of something I could get for you in return. :-)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I'll think of somewhat. ;-)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you will. :-)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

That's an impressive list of authors to have found in a short while; I almost envy you the experience of having so much good stuff to dive into at once. I spent my undergraduate days in Dublin well before there was such a thing as ordering from Amazon, and the limits of what one could get then were a constant irritation. But I'm in Montreal now, where the major chains stock in most cases the best of both worlds - UK editions of Iain Banks and Steven Erickson, for example, alongside US releases of Jim Butcher and Neal Stephenson.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

The internet has been a major help in finding new authors - reading different people's opinions on different books and getting the odd few sample pages is almost as useful, and sometimes more so, as browsing in a bookshop, when deciding what do I want to try next?

UK editions and US editions? I could be envious, I think, but I would swiftly be bankrupt if I had that much choice.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

UK editions and US editions? I could be envious, I think, but I would swiftly be bankrupt if I had that much choice.

It does teach one self-control... I suppose it also helps that I have less reading time now than I did as an undergraduate, and also that I'm just not physically comfortable with spending most of a weekend in bed reading any more.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

If I may ask - and do tell me to shove off if you consider it prying - which college did you attend in Dublin?

My curiosity, unfortunately, is permanently set to 'ON'.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Not a problem - it is, after all, on my info page, so not one of the things I wish to keep obscure. *grin* Trinity, 1990-1994. My PhD's also from Trinity on paper, though the work was done at vearious other places, for odd accreditation reasons.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

"I'm in Montreal now"

..and I'm so jealous. :-) I would love to be book-shopping in Montreal -- or even Toronto -- right now. The local branches of the mega-chains have nothing on their shelves.