Holiday Book Score

Yeah, yeah, I know, you're gonna throw in my face my promise not to buy any new (used) books until I've made a dent in the eighty or so sitting on my Unfulfilled Promises Slash Unrealized Potential shelf. And yes, you're right. But my weaker self must protest: I have to strike when the strikin's good! Many of these books I want to read are out of print, and need seeking out when the stars somehow align and opportunity's right for seeking out.

A while back I made a list of ... oh ... about 215 SF paperbacks I want to read over the course of my life. Good ones, classics, and tales long lost from memory that I read as a child. Stuff I could learn from, seriously, and become a better writer. Stuff that I can enjoy, that will allow me to fully enter a newer, wondrous world and leave this less-than-satisfying one, temporarily, behind. Not entirely dishonorable reasons, I think. I also think this world's a better place for such books as these having been written.

So, a big opportunity stared me in the face on Friday. Me and my stepfather (who's turned into quite a voracious reader now that he's settled into retirement) checked out not one but two used books stores in some nearby hamlets where my folks live in northeast PA. (Any by 'nearby', we're talking 45 minutes by car over winding, wooded roadways.) I remembered my list when packing on Wednesday, and with the wife and kids in tow, we hit the bookstores.

I scored three great books off the list. Shall I describe them? Oh, why not?

* The Lovers by Philip Jose Farmer. Don't know exactly what this is about, apart from the obvious I can imagine, but I've heard and read that this is an excellent (and short) novel. I've read two other books by the author, both of which (Dayworld and The Wind Whales of Ishmael) were highly imaginative and readable, if somewhat ultimately unsatisfying. I'm currently reading this one, so I'll review it later in the week.

* Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick. Gotta admit, the guy is good. Went through a PKD kick this time of year around 2003, reading a bio of the author as well as the novels Ubik, The Man in the High Castle, VALIS, and an anthology of short stories. Weird, paranoid, imaginative. Works better on a 'meta-level' than as run-of-the-mill SF, if you know what I mean. I'm not sure I do, but some of his stuff is really, really good and some is merely okay. Next on deck.

* Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison. Ellison's somewhat of a blowhard, in my limited experience, having only written one truly great work (the novella A Boy and His Dog). I've tried other anthologies of his short story work and it's not quite my cup of tea. But this anthology is so famous, or infamous, in SF circles that I had to seek it out. Over 30 stories, a Who's Who of 1960s science fiction, it is said that this anthology revolutionized the genre. I hope to get to it after the PKD paperback, and blog on the exceptional stories as I read them.

Not a bad score, for a couple of hole-in-the-wall backwater bookstores, eh? Such bookstores are more often than not the best secret little places to find the most valuable little treasures.