I finally finished Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space last night. I quite liked it, but for some reason took forever to finish it. It's longish and I guess fairly dense but enjoyable. It's hard-SF (I guess, the definitions are always a little confusing): modified humans, space travel, true aliens, weird artifacts, some believable characters, and only a few places where I felt like I knew what would happen next. I'll be reading his other novels.
posted by kristin at 12:44 PM

Sundays Powells purchases:
Secret Life by Jeff VanderMeer
A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin

I'm currently working on Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space
posted by kristin at 11:55 AM

Old Men at Midnight by Chaim Potok wasn't my favorite of his, but it wasn't bad either. I wonder if I don't know enough about Judaism to understand the third part of the book. The first two sections were both fairly straight-forward, while the last was more obtuse.

Robert D. Kaplan's The Ends of the Earth was great, if a bit depressing. He travelled many of the third world countries describing what he saw. The book starts off in western Africa and ends in southeast Asia after traversing many of the countries between. His travels were in the early 90's, so some things have changed since then, but I have a feeling that most of the poverty and problems he saw are still there.
posted by kristin at 1:33 PM

I finally have a copy of Joe's Liver!

"This First Edition of Paul Di Filippo's Joe's Liver is limited to 300 signed and numbered copies. This is number 110."

I think the only one I'm missing now is Spondulix. Err, no Neutrino Drag also.
posted by kristin at 12:42 AM

The rest of the books bought in San Francisco (err, and Menlo Park) over the weekend:
Foucault for Beginners by Lydia Alix Fillingham
Lost in Place by Mark Salzman
Cowl by Neal Asher
Line of Polity by Neal Asher

The last two were purchased at Borderlands, which often has British titles not in print here yet. They also have the most SF-bookstore-appropriate cat. It's hairless and very alien looking, but very very friendly.
posted by kristin at 9:19 PM

Purchased at the book sale today:
The Physiognomy by Jeffrey Ford
Bitches Ride Alone by Laura Chester (yes, for the title)
The Jewish Holocaust for Beginners by Stewart Justman
Better Day Coming by Adam Fairclough
Special Libraries at Work by Elizabeth Ferguson & Emily R. Mobley
posted by kristin at 10:41 PM

PDX -> SFO is a short enough flight that I only read two books over the weekend.

I wasn't expecting Lisa Goldstein's The Red Magician to be a Holocaust book, but it was, and a good one.

I started Iain Sinclair's Lights Out for the Territory but couldn't get into it and put it down. I ended up reading Geraldine Brooks's Nine Parts of Desire instead. It's a quite good look at the current role of women in the Muslim middle east.

Nine Parts of Desire was one of my random SF bookstore purchases. The rest of which I'll post about this evening, along with my Powells Tent Sale purchases from lunch today. Anyone want to bet I don't make it back before the tent sale ends Thursday night? ;)
posted by kristin at 4:48 PM

I'm reading slowly this week. The Ends of the Earth (by Robert Kaplan) is enjoyable though, just not fast.

I've finished two books of short stories recently though. Dan Simmons' Worlds Enough & Time (which makes me really want to get a copy of Ilium) and Connie Willis' Fire Watch which was also very good. I'd read the first story in it before though.

Last week I got a notice from powells.com that a book I'd been looking for for ages was in stock and cheaper than I'd ever seen it ($7 instead of $75-100) so I had to order it. And while ordering just had to get up to $50 so I didn't have to pay shipping ;) So arrived today:
A Left Hand Like God by Peter J. Silvester (the one I'd been looking for)
Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
Leviathan Three edited by Jeff VanderMeer & Forrest Aguirre
posted by kristin at 10:36 PM