Fruits of Labor

Well, been at the new job for a little over a year, and they rewarded all my hard work with a nice, big, fat raise. Woo-hoo! My first raise in, er, six years, give or take, given my spotty employment record of the past decade.

Anyway, seeing’s how the wife likes to treat herself annually when she gets her nice, big, fat bonus, I decided to treat myself in a similar fashion. But economically downsized; we still need to pay for this castle I live in and all the perks that go along with raising two children and providing for their needs. So I decided to spend $30 on myself.

Bingo! That means a trip to my favorite online bookstore, alibris.com.

I love ordering from this place for a couple of reasons. All the books are like a dollar or two. The shipping costs more than the book. Oh yeah – they’re shipped to my house! Every night I come home from work, I’m wondering if one of my books arrived! It’s one of the few sweet pleasures in my life. Don’t know if that’s pathetic or not, but that’s the truth.

So … here’s what I’m thinking about searching for this weekend, from most likely to least likely:


The Face of the Waters by Robert Silverberg. Read it twenty years ago, floored me, wanna read it again, haven’t found it in my bookstore rounds.

Nine Tomorrows by Isaac Asimov. As I said in my top-100 reads post, the best of his non-robot stories. Read it as a kid, wanna read it again.

Invisible Residents by Ivan Sanderson. Don’t remember much, if anything, about this book, except that I borrowed it as a kid from the library and loved it. Cryptozoological stuff on one end of the spectrum, weird kookie stuff on the other. I think.

Roller Ball Murder by William Harrison. Short stories, the titular of which that 1975 James Caan movie is an adaptation. Read it as a kid, disappointed trying to read other stories in the anthology, but willing to give it a go as an adult.

Planet of Death by Robert Silverberg. How can you not love that title? Read it as a kid, wanna read it again.

The Monster from Nowhere by Nelson Bond. See entry above, except that I never read this, just read about it.

Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson. His name raises red flags with me, but this whole thing could be just weird kookie enough to stimulate some weird kookie thinking in me.

I’ll probably pick up four of these, whichever ones I can steal off the website. Of course, anything of interest read will be blogged about.