Thursday, May 12, 2005

shelf life

A trip to Booktopia (2/F Intrepid Plaza, Libis, Quezon City) and Powerbooks at SM Megamall (where I got a chance to exercise my brand new but horrendously yellow PowerCard Plus) sated my weekly desire to buy books.

The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petrosky, my non-fiction pick, is about the history of the bookshelf (and the books that sit on it), written in an engaging manner that brings to mind my other favorites of this sort, such as Nathaniel's Nutmeg: Or, the True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History, by Milton Giles. I love information, be it arcane or mundane.

Encyclopedia of the Strange, Mystical, & Unexplained, edited by Rosemary Ellen Guiley is a nice hardcover that goes with the rest of my references on the fantastic. I can't get enough of stuff like this. Wave it to me from across the bookstore and I'll rush like a man in love.

The Prestige by Christopher Priest. Nikki spotted this hard-to-find novel, winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1996. Christopher Priest has written a number of novels, and this one (the title refers to the after effect of a magician's prestidigitation) looks like a keeper (have you read this, BC?)

She also found this lovely hardcover version of Andersen's The Snow Queen, translated by Eva le Galliane. There is a certain magic in slim hardcover fairy tales with color illustrations, isn't there? And The Snow Queen is of our favorite stories in the world.

Rounding up my purchases, I picked up a couple of horror anthologies: The Best of Cemetery Dance 2, edited by Richard Chizmar, and an omnibus edition of Clive Barker's Books of Blood Vols 1-3 (through all the times we've moved residences, my entire Barker collection has managed to vanish). I don't know why publishers say that anthologies are doomed to extinction since I know of people like me who just can't get enough (though, yes, we may be a very very small group).

Agh. The new bookshelf we bought a few weeks back is already full. We need another one... or we begin the culling process early this year.

Anyhow, the nice thing is that I haven't even hit the comic book store yet this week, so I'm looking forward to the new trades at Comic Quest (Basement, Building A, SM Megamall).

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home