New Purchases

Went to the local B&N a few days ago; browsed the used book shelves and scored a pair of potentially interesting reads. For $4.05. Total pageage is 395, so that just a tiny fraction more than a penny a page. Despite being stuck in some tight economic straights, I can’t spare any guilty feelings over a purchase like this.

Anyway, I found two hardcover SF books. One I started to read as a lad when it came out, way back in 1980. The second I picked up on a whim, based on what I knew of the author.

The first book’s Voorloper, by Andre Norton. Norton is something of an enigma for me. She’s published hundreds of SF books. I’ve seen them by the dozens on the used book shelves I regularly cruise. Yet I’ve never read a single thing of hers cover-to-cover, this book included. Three or fours years back I tried to get through her “classic” Witch World, but stopped a third in, disillusioned and disconnected. So, I want to read Voorloper for some bookworm closure.

The second score is The Killer Thing, by Kate Wilhelm. She was the co-author of The Year of the Cloud, a book I recently read and one I remember from my youth. The Cloud did not exactly bowl me over, like Witch World, but at least I finished it and I liked the premise. So based on the picture of the authoress on the back page, plus that title – The Killer Thing ! – I couldn’t resist picking it up. I’ll get to it sometime in the spring.

Also, digging through some books in search of my old copy of The Silmarillion, I came across two books I’d like to re-read and then review for this blog, sometime way down the line. Lord of Light is an epic from Roger Zelazny, about a group of futuristic astronauts who set themselves up like the Hindu gods on a primitive world. I read that during the Hindi phase of my comparative religion quest a decade ago between fielding help desk calls at my job. The other book is the much-touted Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, a book I began around the same time in my life – twice, actually – and never got beyond page one hundred or so.

All right. Happy Reading to you all.