Books to go

[tigerfort]

ETA: These books have now all gone; some to new homes, others to Oxfam.

I've been having a bit of a tidy and sorting out (amongst other things) piles of books that neither K nor I think we're likely to read again (as well as the occasional duplicate). There are still some shelves I've not done, but since there are now well over a hundred books on the list and the boxes are starting to get in the way, it seems a good idea to get started. Stuff that no-one's interested in will probably go to a charity shop in a week or so to make space, but I'm happy to caretake books people actually want while I get organised.



Formatwise, "PB" means standard 180x110mm paperback, "LPB" is any larger-sized paperback and "HB" is a hardback of any size. Most of them are in one or another of the fairly-standard book sizes, but there's the odd peculiarity, as noted. Struck out items have been requested, here or elsewhere.

ETA: pretty much everything here is fiction, unless noted otherwise. Pretty much.

Author	Title	Format	Notes
A E Van Vogt	The Mind Cage	PB
A N Wilson	The Vicar of Sorrows	LPB
Adam Jacot de Boinod	The Meaning of Tingo	PB	Which got its own post. But not in a good way.
Agatha Christie	Sleeping Murder	HB	Miss Marple
Alfred Price	The Hardest Day	LPB	Cassell book about 18 August 1940, sometimes regarded as the turning point of the “Battle of Britain”
Andy Riley	Great Lies to Tell Small Kids	HB
Andy Riley	Loads More Lies to Tell Small Kids	HB
Ann Wroe	Perkin: A Story of Deception	LPB	Biography/Historical analysis of the life and possible origins of Perkin Warbeck
Arthur C Clarke/Stephen Baxter	The Light of Other Days	PB	Give me the Bob Shaw short story of the same title any day.
Audrey Niffenegger	The Time Traveller's Wife	LPB
Bernard Cornwall	The Winter King	PB	Signed
Bill Bryson	Down Under	HB	Non-fic
Bill Bryson	The Lost Continent/Neither Here nor There	HB	Two-in-one edition
Bill Bryson	Notes From a Big Country	HB	Non-fic
Bremner, Bird, and Fortune	You are HERE	LPB	Which is for the vicar what “Stupid White Men” is for the shrub
Brian Aldiss	Super State	HB
Brian Aldiss	The Saliva Tree	PB
Brian Herbert	The Garbage Chronicles	PB	Serious candidate for the worst book I've ever read
Bruce Palling (ed)	The Book of Modern Scandal	HB	Looks brand new; no idea where it came from. (Non-fic)
Catherine Asaro	Spherical Harmonic	PB
Charles Birkin	So Pale, So Cold, So Fair	PB
Cherie Priest	Boneshaker	LPB	Enjoyable if predictable steampunk-with-zombies
China Mieville	Kraken	LPB	Not much impressed by this
Chris BeeBee	The Hub	HB
Christopher Brookmyre	Boiling a Frog	LPB	OK, but I won't be rereading it
Christopher Brookmyre	Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks	LPB	Accidentally acquired a duplicate copy (“so good I bought it twice”)
Christopher Brookmyre	A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil	HB	OK but not brilliant Brookmyre
Christopher Brookmyre	Be My Enemy	LPB	The first Brookmyre I read; good enough to encourage me to read more.
Christopher Evans	Capella's Golden Eyes	PB
Christopher Paolini	Eragon	LPB
Christopher Priest	The Dream Archipelago	HB	Sort-of-connected short stories
Christopher Rowley	The War for Eternity	PB
Cliff Goodwin	Inspector Morse Country	HB	Looks brand new; no idea where it came from. (Non-fic)
Clifford D Simak	Cosmic Engineers	PB	One of Simak's weakest, on the whole
Dan Simmons	Hyperion	LPB
Daniel Keys Moran	The Last Dancer	PB
David Drake	Fireships	HB
David Eddings	Pawn of Prophecy	PB
David Gemmell	Lion of Macedon	PB
David Gemmell	Dark Moon	HB
David Karp	Sleepwalkers	PB
David Saperstein	Cocoon	PB
Eric S Nylund	Pawn's Dream	PB
Frank Herbert	Priests of Psi	PB
Fred Saberhagen	Octagon	PB
Freda Warrington	A Blackbird in Silver	LPB	Series of four; the first two volumes comprise a fairly standard fantasy quest, although things take a slightly different turn in the last two
Freda Warrington	A Blackbird in Darkness	LPB
Freda Warrington	A Blackbird in Amber	LPB
Freda Warrington	A Blackbird in Twilight	LPB
General Sir John Hackett	The Third World War	PB	A not-very-convincing-to-me 1980's prognosis of future war
General Sir John Hackett	The Third World War: The Untold Story	HB
George R R Martin	Dying of the Light	PB
Glenda Larke	The Last Stormlord	PB	Very poor generic fantasy, by an author who totally fails every subject from psychology to geology
Graham Greene	The Ministry of Fear	PB
Graham Joyce	Dreamside	PB
Granta	Issue 62: What young men do	LPB
Granta	Issue 63: Beasts	LPB
Granta	Issue 64: Russia	LPB
H Hawksley & S Holberton	Dragon Strike	HB	A somewhat later but not especially more convincing (to me) “Third World War”
J P Martin	Uncle	PB	The tale of a millionaire elephant who wears a dressing gown. Enjoyably silly children's book, but this is a spare and I only need one copy.
Jacqueline Carey	Kushiel's Dart	LPB
Jan and Ted Arundell	The Ten Dimensional Maze	LPB	About a foot square, in fact.
Janny Wurts	To Ride Hell's Chasm	HB
Jeremy Dronefield	The Alchemist's Apprentice	HB	Modern Urban something-or-other
Joel Glenn Brenner	The Chocolate Wars	LPB	About the weird internals and conflicts of Mars and Hershey (the author isn't really interested in non-merkin chocolate)
John Lewis Gaddis	Surprise, Security, and the American Experience	LPB	Non-fic
John Perkins	Confessions of an Economic Hit Man	LPB	Non-fic
John Varley	The Barbie Murders	PB	Short stories; some interesting ideas, terrible writing
Julia Gray	The Dark Moon	PB	Very generic fantasy
Justina Robson	Silver Screen	PB	Thoughtful AI-centric scifi; not Robson's best, but pretty good.
Karen Miller	The Innocent Mage	PB
Kate Elliott	King's Dragon	PB	Might appeal to fans of GRRM-style grim fantasy; I much prefer her more recent series
Katherine Langrish	Troll Fell	LPB	OK young-teen fantasy. Signed (not to anyone).
Keith Brooke	Expatria	PB	Part one of two; didn't inspire me to read part 2
Kenneth Bulmer	On the Symb Socket Circuit	PB	Serious candidate for the worst book I've ever read
Kevin J Anderson	Climbing Olympus	PB
L E Modesitt, jr	The Magic of Recluce	PB
L E Modesitt, jr	The Magic Engineer	PB
L E Modesitt, jr	The Order War	PB
L E Modesitt, jr	The Death of Chaos	PB
L E Modesitt, jr	The Fall of Angels	PB
L E Modesitt, jr	The Chaos Balance	PB
L E Modesitt, jr	The White Order	PB
L E Modesitt, jr	The Colours of Chaos	PB
L E Modesitt, jr	Magi'i of Cyador	PB
L E Modesitt, jr	Scion of Cyador	PB
Lance Parkin/Mark Clapham	Beige Planet Mars	PB
Lisanne Norman	Sholan Alliance series (Six novels)	PB	Mediocre scifi adventure series; credit where it's due, the author does at least have a rationale for inter-species fertility
Louise Cooper	Our Lady of the Snow	HB
Margaret Doody	Aristotle Detective	PB
Marjorie Bradley Kellogg	Reign of Fire	PB
Marshall Goldberg	Disposable People	PB
Maurice Collins	Eccentric Contraptions	LPB	A book of pretty pictures of assorted antiquated items, most of which aren't eccentric, and many of which don't really qualify as contraptions.
Melanie Rawn	Dragon Prince	LBD
Michael Cobley	Seeds of Earth	LPB	Volume 1 of an OK-but-not-brilliant sci-fi trilogy
Michael Coney	Friends Come in Boxes	PB
Michael Marshal	The Straw Men	LPB	(aka Michael Marshall Smith) does nasty non-sci fiction about serial killers
Michael Moore	Stupid White Men	LPB	Non-fic
Michael Palin	Hemingway's Chair	PB
Miles Harvey	The Island of Lost Maps	HB	Disappointingly dull book on a potentially interesting topic
Milos Stankovic	Trusted Mole: A soldier's journey into Bosnia's heart of darkness	HB	Pretty horrifying memoir of a soldier/translator/occasional spy's experiences working for the UN in Bosnia
Mitch Cullin	Tideland	LPB	Made into a film by Terry Gilliam; it certainly suits his style.
Peter F Hamilton	The Reality Dysfunction	PB	Promising beginning
Peter F Hamilton	The Neutronium Alchemist	HB	So-so middle
Peter F Hamilton	The Naked God	HB	Lousy cop-out ending
Peter Way	Sunrise	PB
R A Macavoy	Damiano's Lute	PB
Raymond E Feist	Prince of the Blood	LPB
Rebecca Skloot	The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks	LPB	Excellent piece of popular science/social reporting
Robert Jordan	The Eye of the World	PB
Roger Simon	Show Time	HB	A book about the weirdness of American political races in 1996.
Sarah Prineas	The Magic Thief	LPB	Bookcrossing Book. OK young-teen fantasy.
Sarah Prineas	The Magic Thief: Lost	LPB	Bookcrossing Book. OK young-teen fantasy.
Scott Lynch	Red Seas Under Red Skies	HB	I thought “Locke Lamora” was only so-so, and was notably less enamoured of this sequel
Sergei Lukyanenko	The Day Watch	LPB	All four books in the trilogy are OK, but I don't feel a need to keep this one (the only one I bought rather than borrowing)
Stephen Baxter	Space	One each of PB and HB, both to go
Stephen Baxter	Traces	HB	Short stories
Stephen Baxter	Exultant	LPB
Stephen Baxter	Titan	PB
Stephen Donaldson	Lord Foul's Bane	HB
Stephen Donaldson	The Illearth War	PB
Stephen Donaldson	The Power that Preserves	PB
Stephen Donaldson	The Wounded Land	PB
Stephen Donaldson	The One Tree	PB
Stephen Donaldson	White Gold Wielder	PB
Terry Brooks	Running with the Demon	HB
Terry Jones	The Knight and the Squire	PB
Tim Burton	The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy	PB	In which Burton tries to be Edward Lear, and fails hard
Toni Sortor	The Book of Clean Jokes	LPB	Filled with hilarious japes like... no, there aren't any good enough to be worth the effort of retyping.
Tony Ballantyne	Recursion	PB
Vera Chapman	The Enchantresses	PB
William Gibson/Bruce Sterling	The Difference Engine	LPB

Comments

[ceb]

I would happily relieve you of:
Andy Riley Great Lies to Tell Small Kids HB
Andy Riley Loads More Lies to Tell Small Kids HB
Graham Greene The Ministry of Fear PB
Graham Joyce Dreamside PB
Jacqueline Carey Kushiel's Dart LPB
J P Martin Uncle PB

Well done on making an inroad :-)

[tigerfort]

Noted and put aside (and thanks :). Partly I managed to sneak it in as part of rearranging my study/library to accomodate my new more comfortable chair - since I had to take half the books off the shelves anyway, sorting them a bit at the same time didn't feel as hard as trying to do it just because it needed doing.

Are you previously familiar with Uncle, or taking it on my recommendation? (Just out of interest.)

[ceb]

I'm not, no, but your description sounded interesting. I have a new nephew so am starting to keep an auntly eye out for good children's books even if he's a bit young for them yet ;-)

[segh.livejournal.com]

I'd like the Difference Engine, please.

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

Certainly; now put aside.