pedanther

Fiction books
Bennett Cerf, Roy McKie. Bennett Cerf's Book of Riddles
Marianne de Pierres. Code Noir
Marianne de Pierres. Crash Deluxe
Marianne de Pierres. Nylon Angel
Phyllis Ann Karr. The Idylls of the Queen
Anthony Price. Our Man in Camelot
Brandon Sanderson. The Way of Kings

In progress
Murray Leinster. The Forgotten Planet

Non-fiction books
Declan Donnellan. The Actor and the Target

In progress
Barbara Sher, Barbara Smith. I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Verlyn Flieger. Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien's Mythology

Fiction books
(anthology). Batman Black and White volume 2
John Bellairs. The Pedant and the Shuffly (reread)
Paul Biegel. The King of the Copper Mountains (reread) (partial)
Alexandre Dumas, tr. Richard Pevear. The Three Musketeers
Austin Grossman. Soon I Will Be Invincible
T H Lain. Dungeons & Dragons: The Savage Caves
L S Lawrence. Escape by Sea
Alan Moore, et al. DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore
Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons. Watchmen (reread)
Richard Morgan. Altered Carbon
Mickey Zucker Reichert, Jennifer Wingert. Spirit Fox

Non-fiction books
(none completed)

In progress
Adrian Goldsworthy. Caesar

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

One of the reasons I recently moved into a larger house was so that I could get my books out of storage and onto bookshelves, or at least sort them into "To Read", "Have Read", and "Don't Want Any More".

A significant proportion of the growing "Don't Want Any More" set is turning out to be duplicate copies -- in some cases multiple duplicate copies, which happen like this: There is a book I really want, so I make a mental note to look out for it whenever I'm in a bookshop. Eventually I find a copy, and buy it. Some time later, in another bookshop, I see another copy, and because I remember that I was looking for it, I buy that as well. Having all the books in storage makes it worse, because the first copy gets forgotten easier when I'm not seeing it on a shelf every day, and when I get home with my new second copy, I don't immediately discover that it's a duplicate.


Yesterday, while I was browsing at the Boulder markets, I found a paperback copy of James Clavell's novel Tai-Pan. This time I remembered that I already owned a copy, but as the copy I remembered was a big unwieldy two-volume large-print edition I picked up in a library discard sale, I decided to buy the paperback anyway.

When I got home, I went to put it on the To-Read Bookshelf, and discovered a copy already there -- and not the two-volume large-print edition, which is still in storage, but another paperback.

In the evening, unpacking a box of books I'd got out of storage, I found two more copies. (Yet another paperback, and a large (but not large-print) hardcover edition.) That makes a total of four copies of Tai-Pan, not counting the still-absent large-print edition...