Return of the Book Thread

[Draegan]

Kindle now $189.00 + free 2 day shipping

[HaemishM]

My version of War and Peace is unabridged, at least as far as I know. It's the Project Gutenberg free eBook version.

[Tmon]

Kindle now $189.00 + free 2 day shipping

Wonder who drove who http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/index.asp

[Ingmar]

My version of War and Peace is unabridged, at least as far as I know. It's the Project Gutenberg free eBook version.

You get to read Tolstoy's somewhat odd essays about history that are interspersed through the novel proper, then, unless the P.G. version was made from one of those editions that move the essays to an appendix.

Don't feel bad about skipping those if you find them hard to take, they're not really part of the novel proper and missing out on them doesn't really diminish the experience at all.

EDIT: Honestly I kind of wish I *had* skipped them, they're really jarring in terms of how they interrupt the story, and philisophically they're kind of irritating.

[HaemishM]

I think it may move those to the appendix, as I don't see anything that jarring in the story so far. It's all been about the characters.

[dd0029]

Finished up Dave Duncan's Speak to the Devil last night.  Duncan is sort of a guilty pleasure.  He's like one step up from say Feist or Eddings, but I still like him and enjoyed this one.   It's the first of what can only be a series from that terrible ending.  That's about the first time I have ever run across a book that just ended.  I literally turned the page expecting something and it was over.  It ended like a bad TV movie with two characters walking through a door. 

He has a sort of interesting magic system that he drops into a fairly historical pre-Renaissance Europe.  I do have a problem with how he handled the magic system and the traditional Christian teachings about witchcraft.  I can't really see how those teachings would have ever existed, much less survived in a world where magic was real.  The magic system is too powerful and applicable to have such a blanket rejection.

[RhyssaFireheart]

So, after an unexpectedly informative job club session today about the resources available through your local public library, I stopped into mine and finally got a card after 9 years of living here.  And promptly took out two books by Sheri S. Tepper.  I tried looking for some Black Company ones, but either my library doesn't have them or they were out.

[Sky]

So, after an unexpectedly informative job club session today about the resources available through your local public library, I stopped into mine and finally got a card after 9 years of living here.  And promptly took out two books by Sheri S. Tepper.  I tried looking for some Black Company ones, but either my library doesn't have them or they were out.

First, yay! About time!

Second, Black Company was out of print for a long time, then they reprinted the paperbacks. I haven't checked lately, but that's why we don't have them.

[Rasix]

Ironwood's "Unified Theory of the Book Thread" holds true yet again.

[Ironwood]

Seriously, it's every fucking page.

 

[Arrrgh]

Seriously, it's every fucking page.

 

This Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery has a new Black Company story. And an Erikson, and an Elric...

[Ard]

Second, Black Company was out of print for a long time, then they reprinted the paperbacks. I haven't checked lately, but that's why we don't have them.

They've been reprinting them as omnibuses recently.

Chronicles of the Black Company
The Books of the South
The Return of the Black Company
The Many Deaths of the Black Company

[Sky]

Paperbacks. God forbid we should find a library binding, that's usually even cheaper than a trade paperback.

I had good luck with Malazan, what I couldn't get in hardcover I got in book club, which is also a hardcover.

[Sky]

Somebody left Mark Frauenfelder's (of boing boing) Made by Hand on my desk. While I think the guy is a bit more loopy than me, I can see why someone thought of me and my love of toiling around my property. I'm not quite ready to get chickens and bees at this point, but I'm moving in that direction. It's a light read with some interesting anecdotes, it really makes me want to stop being so lazy and start documenting my own trials and tribs as I learn to become handy.

[Ard]

Paperbacks. God forbid we should find a library binding, that's usually even cheaper than a trade paperback.

I had good luck with Malazan, what I couldn't get in hardcover I got in book club, which is also a hardcover.

Just to piss off Ironwood and keep the Glen Cook discussion going, I did some digging.  I can't really find evidence of more than a couple of the black company books ever having been in hardcover.  The last few were, but I couldn't find anything before She is the Darkness that had a hardcover available.  If any exist, they're pretty rare. I found some sort of compilation for sale on ebay from Australia that was a library version, but nothing from the US.

[Reg]

Glen Cook published nothing but paperbacks for the longest time. I don't think he ever had hardcovers until the last 3 or 4 Black Company books.

[Johny Cee]

Paperbacks. God forbid we should find a library binding, that's usually even cheaper than a trade paperback.

I had good luck with Malazan, what I couldn't get in hardcover I got in book club, which is also a hardcover.

Just to piss off Ironwood and keep the Glen Cook discussion going, I did some digging.  I can't really find evidence of more than a couple of the black company books ever having been in hardcover.  The last few were, but I couldn't find anything before She is the Darkness that had a hardcover available.  If any exist, they're pretty rare. I found some sort of compilation for sale on ebay from Australia that was a library version, but nothing from the US.

A library binding isn't the same as the hardback you pick up in a bookstore: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_hardcover_and_library_binding

Even if you don't get a hardcover release, many times a limited run library binding will be made for libraries (Captain Obvious!) because paperbacks would fall apart under the abuse.

Glen Cook published nothing but paperbacks for the longest time. I don't think he ever had hardcovers until the last 3 or 4 Black Company books.

This had more to do with the way fantasy/scifi used to be marketed in the '70s/'80s.  The vast majority of the books used to come out in paperback, even the big sellers, because paperbacks were more likely to end up everywhere from pharmacies to grocery stores to hobby shops.  If I've gathered correctly, niche and specialty books started being published first in hardcover or trade paperback in the '90s because of price discrimination, i.e. the fans of a series ran out and bought the book ASAP, so soak them for the higher margin hardbacks before releasing a paperback six months later for the more price conscious.  From memory, the entire output of Weis & Hickman was in paperback until the mid or late '90s.  And they used to sell like gangbusters.

I think some stupid huge portion of romance novels are still sold in paperback in supermarkets and box stores, as almost an impulse item.

[Johny Cee]

Seriously, it's every fucking page.

 

This Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery has a new Black Company story. And an Erikson, and an Elric...

This isn't a bad little collection of short stories, if you like sword & sorcery style stories.  Some interesting takes on the standard S&S setup in some of them....  I bailed out of the Elric novella half-way through, and I haven't bothered to read the Abercrombie short, mostly because I'm just tired of those two guys.  Also skipped the Cugel story because I don't want to read someone's licensed take on Vance's Cugel character. 

The Erikson is a bit weak... 

Most of the rest are pretty fun. 

[Reg]

Some fantasy and science fiction made it into hardcover even in the 80s. But you had to be a big, big name and have won some awards.  Just selling well wasn't good enough.  For example, everything Stephen Donaldson wrote after the first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever came out in hardcover 6 months or a year before the paperback edition.

I always assumed that it was the success of the first Black Company series that put Glen Cook into that league.  You're right though. Nowadays, every no-name author gets a hardcover edition right off the bat.

[Sky]

And the early boom of scifi/fantasy hardcover was shit quality, so they end up falling apart and we have to replace them with paperbacks. You should hear my fiancee go on about this at length in great detail; she's the fiction librarian (which has its perks!). The seconday markets of B&N and Amazon have been a huge boon, we get a lot of our books there now and we can also sell off excess donations and some stuff from our recycling bin. You'd be amazed at what some books go for, but it also means that a lot of cool books that might end up in my personal collection, don't anymore.

[Reg]

Every five or six years I rejoin the Science Fiction Book Club from Doubleday just to get hardcover prints of good books.  It's worth it if you're disciplined enough to only buy the books you actually want and remember to quit as soon as your commitment is fulfilled.

[Chimpy]

Every five or six years I rejoin the Science Fiction Book Club from Doubleday just to get hardcover prints of good books.  It's worth it if you're disciplined enough to only buy the books you actually want and remember to quit as soon as your commitment is fulfilled.

The problem I have always had with book clubs is that their hardcovers are physically smaller than the main run published hardcover editions and they have thinner pages that are sometimes closer to vellum than paper so you get some minor bleed through of the words on the back side of the page. They hold up better than a paperback (or a TOR hardcover) will, don't get me wrong. The "not quite as big as a trade paperback" size thing is more bothersome.

[RhyssaFireheart]

I must be the only person in this thread that doesn't care for hardbacks and would prefer to not have them if possible.  I find them clunky to hold while reading and they take up far more space than I like in my library.  I can tolerate trade paperbacks when they come out before the mass market paperbacks do, but I generally wait for the MMP instead. 

Of course, I try to take care of my paperbacks (except for the color fading on the spines, that's worse than I'd realized last time I redid the shelves) and don't sling them around or break the spines when reading.

[Samwise]

I must be the only person in this thread that doesn't care for hardbacks and would prefer to not have them if possible.  I find them clunky to hold while reading and they take up far more space than I like in my library.  I can tolerate trade paperbacks when they come out before the mass market paperbacks do, but I generally wait for the MMP instead. 

Of course, I try to take care of my paperbacks (except for the color fading on the spines, that's worse than I'd realized last time I redid the shelves) and don't sling them around or break the spines when reading.

+1

[Johny Cee]

I must be the only person in this thread that doesn't care for hardbacks and would prefer to not have them if possible.  I find them clunky to hold while reading and they take up far more space than I like in my library.  I can tolerate trade paperbacks when they come out before the mass market paperbacks do, but I generally wait for the MMP instead. 

Of course, I try to take care of my paperbacks (except for the color fading on the spines, that's worse than I'd realized last time I redid the shelves) and don't sling them around or break the spines when reading.

I like hardbacks.  If you have decent shelving (and I shelled out for a few nice 72" oak bookcases), hardbacks just look much nicer.  They tend to hold together much better, even the cheaper hardbacks, than paperback if you are a compulsive rereader.  Trade paperbacks can be quite attractive shelved as well, if you make an effort to collect all of an author in the same format.  The newish trade paperback collections of Ian Banks, Raymond Chandler and the Horatio Hornblower novels all look very nice shelved downstairs in the living room.

Even if you take care of paperbacks, they tend to start going after the third or fourth reread.


Just picked up Charles Stross' The Fuller Memorandum (the latest Bob Howard spy/Cthuthlu novel) and Mieville's Kraken.  Amusingly enough, early in the Bob Howard book while on the train the character talks about reading "a novel about a magical detective in Chicago", which has to be a reference to Butcher's Dresden books.

Slowly picking away at the reprint of the first book in Cook's "Starfishers" trilogy, mostly to make it last.  I'm patting myself on the back because I realized it's a space opera retelling of the Norse Ragnarok myth before the obvious tells.

[Sky]

They hold up better than a paperback (or a TOR hardcover)

Goddamned TOR. About half of our Modesitt collection is in paperback because the hardcovers fell apart and couldn't be repaired. Although our best binder retired and it's something of a rare skill now.

Bookshelves. Part of the reason I'm cutting and staining the trim for my living room is building skills for when I tackle the den which will become the library. Basically sheathing the room in bookshelves floor to ceiling.

[WayAbvPar]

I must be the only person in this thread that doesn't care for hardbacks and would prefer to not have them if possible.  I find them clunky to hold while reading and they take up far more space than I like in my library.  I can tolerate trade paperbacks when they come out before the mass market paperbacks do, but I generally wait for the MMP instead. 

Of course, I try to take care of my paperbacks (except for the color fading on the spines, that's worse than I'd realized last time I redid the shelves) and don't sling them around or break the spines when reading.

I am with you on hardbacks. However, I prefer trade paperbacks above MMP.

[dd0029]

To continue the derail, could someone explain to me this new form factor for mass market paperbacks?  They are slightly more narrow and a bit taller.  Why?

[Murgos]

To continue the derail, could someone explain to me this new form factor for mass market paperbacks?  They are slightly more narrow and a bit taller.  Why?

They look different so the publishers are getting away with charging more.

Anywa, I just read the latest Dresden Files, Changes, and I really liked it.  I am glad Butcher finally got the balls to make some permanent uh, changes, to the world Harry lives in.

[Chimpy]

To continue the derail, could someone explain to me this new form factor for mass market paperbacks?  They are slightly more narrow and a bit taller.  Why?

From a reader's standpoint, the font size is closer to that of a standard hardcover and the pages are usually not the newsprint of a mass market paperback but are a heavier weight which may or may not be more to the reader's liking.

From a sales perspective, they allow a larger area for cover art which makes them easier to display and catch the eye.

[Khaldun]

Just finishing Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog. Amusing look by an animal behavioralist at how dogs think and perceive, but definitely some new information/new angles, at least for me.

[Samwise]

Modesitt's latest Recluce book, Arms-Commander, is pretty good.  I know that all his stuff is basically the same book over and over, but I thought this was a nicely executed iteration of the pattern, with relatively few "haggling over pearapples" scenes.  The story picks up shortly after Fall of Angels and follows Saryn's adventures in Candar.

[Sky]

I saw that one on the new book shelf a while ago, been wanting to dip back into Modesitt, but after Haze's thinly veiled political nature, I've been staying away (one of the few books I've stopped reading partway in). Lord-Protector's daughter was pretty weak, too.  I found the settings of the earlier timeline books more interesting than the 'modern' Recluce books, even if you need the modern ones to make the earlier ones make sense.

[Abagadro]

I started reading Haze when I  was at a conference in St. George Utah so all the local flavor and geography was a hoot.  You should finish it.  He is really just comparing two approaches to collective action dilemmas rather than making a normative judgment as to which is better.  I enjoyed that book quite a bit on the political science level as well as sci-fi which is usually the case with Modisett.

[Johny Cee]

Supposedly HBO has greenlight an adaption of Charlie Huston's The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death.