Charlie Stross

I've now read the first four volumes of Charlie's "Merchant Princes" series - which is to say that, in his original plan, I'm halfway through book 2. Unfortunately, I don't have copies of volumes five and six, and the Oxfordshire libraries website informs me that the only copies available on-shelf are in Witney, Henley, and Banbury, all of which are about as far away from me as it's possible to get while remaining within Oxlib. So if anyone is able to lend me "Trade of Queens" and "The Revolution Business", I'd be very grateful. Otherwise I'll just have to keep an eye out and wait for the city library copies to be in.

On a faintly related note, one of our local charity shops has a copy of the UK paperback of "Saturn's Children" for a pound, if anyone needs it? (I picked up a near-mint hardback of said book in the same shop for 50p a month or so ago. No, I don't understand their pricing either.)

Very Important Answers

In case anyone wants to know, people responded to my Very Important Question as follows:

Two People said Dragon (including one plea for a furry flying fire-breathing cross-breed)
Four People said Tiger (including one plea for a furry flying fire-breathing cross-breed, and one would-be sportsman)
kht got confused and said Dinosaur (but probably counts as a half vote for Dragon)

Which would appear to be a comprehensive win for the stripey ones, at least for the time being.

New books for 2010

I meant to post these as the year went along, and completely failed to. Also, it seems I never posted the last two months for 2009 either. Whoops!

Anyway, in 2010, I seem to have read a total of 69 books I'd not previously perused. Of those, 37 were borrowed from the library, and another eight were borrowed from other people, meaning that I only actually removed twenty-four books from my huge stack of unread books. I suspect I added at least that many (indeed, quite a few of the books on this list are either new buys or gifts), and certainly the bookcase remains full to overflowing. Diana Wynne Jones contributed a total of eight of the 69, while no other author was responsible for more than about three, but I think I've now run out of her back catalogue of stuff I'd not read, so I suspect that won't happen again. This year, I may try and keep track of re-reads, too, although if the list gets too embarrassing I won't make it public ;)

Full list behind the cut in blocks of ten; quite a few books are lacking any comment, especially near the beginning of the year, and there's even one where I failed to note the title. Organised: we'z herd of it.

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