[Abyss]

Salt-Man Z, on 16 February 2017 - 05:01 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 16 February 2017 - 04:40 PM, said:

I've been double-stacking for a while now.

Pfft, you're only at double-stacking?

Meh.
Fractal tesseracts or go home.

[MTS]

While we're waiting for our house to be built, the partner and I have had a bit of a moratorium on books until we can see how they'll all fit, as we have around 1500 already and it's not a huge place.

I went to Sydney during this week though, and couldn't help myself! So many great bookstores. So I bought:

A Crown For Cold Silver by Alex Marshall

The Path of Anger by Antoine Rouaud

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

Fool's Assassin by Robin Hobb

Rome Seizes the Trident by Marc DeSantis

So the next few weeks are sorted for me. Now to finish The Great Ordeal so I can actually read them!

This post has been edited by MTS: 17 February 2017 - 07:25 AM

[Macros]

my shelves arent that big, they're doubled stacked, with random piles gathering in corners.

I even did two pretty sizeable clearouts last year, probably 50+ books to charity shops but they've bee replaced.

[LadyMTL]

I have four bookcases and three of them are double stacked. When I moved this past summer I got rid of so many books that I thought my double stacking days would be over (or at least somewhat improved) but nope, I still have more books than places to shelve them. I even have a box of books in my office closet, because otherwise they'd just be loose on the floor. Methinks it's time to start shopping for bookcase number 5.

That said, I of course did buy more this week. I ordered "Assail" and "The City of Mirrors" from Book Depository, and then yesterday I saw vol. 1 of the "Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach" in paperback - the only B and KB story I read was "Crack'd Pot Trail", so I'm curious about this - and also decided to grab "Willful Child" since it was also in PB and I used to love Star Trek when I was a kid.

I just have to finish my Malazan re-read first, am on DoD so hopefully by the end of next week I can get to my TRP.

[Aptorian]

I like the idea of having bookcases with rows of books in your home, but in reality I think it's just an affection. I seldom reread books so once I finish a book I might as well just do away with the thing. Thus why I have slowly been switching over to e-book reading. But there's still that achievement aspect to it. Like the books arranged on the shelves is a trophy list, of books you conquered and added to your list. Like a reflection of the person you are. Which really is pointless.

I have this dream of having a completely digital library of books, music, films, games, pictures, what ever. Instead of owning shelves where you'd stack tons of physical media, I'd have one or more walls where long TV screens hung on their side, were arranged along one another. Each screen would represent a hard drive where e-media was stored. Via the screen you could browse through the various libraries, select media, expand it, download it, etc. But in reality the only reason for those screens to exist would be to remind you of the existence of these experiences. Like a audio/visual moving work of art representing time and exploration.

Once I become a rich and famous Librarian I will get right on that.

This post has been edited by Apt: 17 February 2017 - 12:49 PM

[Puck]

Apt, on 17 February 2017 - 12:46 PM, said:

I like the idea of having bookcases with rows of books in your home, but in reality I think it's just an affection. I seldom reread books so once I finish a book I might as well just do away with the thing. Thus why I have slowly been switching over to e-book reading. But there's still that achievement aspect to it. Like the books arranged on the shelves is a trophy list, of books you conquered and added to your list. Like a reflection of the person you are. Which really is pointless.

This. Once I realised it's more of a trophy display thing it was very easy to switch to ebooks. Has the added advantage of always having a bunch of books with me without the paper weight. I still have way too many paper books from before, but nowadays I only buy special editions and comics in dead tree. And cook books.

On topic, recent purchases:
Area X/Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer in a pretty hardcover omnibus edition
Seed to Harvest series by Octavia E. Butler in ebook
The Rain Wild Chronicles by Robin Hobb in ebook, which may be my last Hobb series, as Tawny Man was so crap now that I've had time to think about it, I don't fancy touching any Fitz book ever again, but I also liked the setting of Liveship Traders, so this is getting one last chance
A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson, ebook
..and also pre-ordered The Unholy Consult, because I love Bakker more with each book I read.

[Gabriele]

I suspect my books have hot book sex at night, and that's were all those cute little paperbacks come from.

Amazon has nothing to do with that, really.

[Salt-Man Z]

Yeah, I've mostly switched to ebook now, too, with exceptions for certain authors like SE/ICE (and if I get the dead tree version on Amazon, I can add the ebook cheaply as well.) But the bulk of my physical collection has been built up via browsing at Half Price Books, where I can nab books off the clearance rack for as little as $1 each. Shoot, that was my gateway to Malazan all those years ago, when I found 5/6 of the Thomas Covenant books for $0.50 each and thought, Why not? Granted, you can still score deals like that on ebook, but they're very few and far between. Just a couple weeks ago I found an ancient Glen Cook novel (A Matter of Time) at HPB for $1 and how am I supposed to pass that up?

This post has been edited by Salt-Man Z: 17 February 2017 - 04:24 PM

[Abyss]

The physical reality of my life now is that it is far easier and more convenient to carry around my tablet with dozens of books and graphic novels on it, which i can read even in low-light conditions without waking anyone.

Dead tree is pretty much done for me, and i restrict purchases to special editions, autographed copies, and the few GNs or illustrated books that are just too pretty not to own a hard copy of. It just makes no sense to acquire hard copies of anything when chance are i will never ever ever read them.

My dead tree TRP is down to a few shelves of books i haven't/can't/wont replace with e versions (Aspin and co's M.Y.T.H. series), and realistically a chunk of those i'm never really going to read and will donate sooner or later.

The actual book shelves do have a few things i just haven't purged yet and will... ie: hardbacks of most of the Wheel of Time... if i ever do reread that series, it will be in ebook, so fuck it, i was those 12 cubit feet back, but i'll keep my mmpbs of the first three books for nostagia. Still, Malazan gets its own shelf even if i have moved to ebooks. I'm conflicted on Dresden and a few others, but don't really have to make a decision any time soon.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

My shelves upon shelves of books are my Dragnipur.

[MTS]

Ms. MTS and I started to go the e-book route in the last few years, as the price differential is in some cases too great to ignore, and they're much more convenient for travel purposes (and furtive late-night reading). I would say now our book purchasing is around about 50% digital versus print, with new books being heavily weighted towards the former. We still cleave to the printed medium because we love the aesthetic though, and we tend to have a fair bit of turnover in our books so it's fairly sustainable. Numbers-wise we tend to donate more than we replace, so we're slowly whittling away at the total. Some I will never get rid of though, like my SE/ICE TPBs, and books with excellent covers (i.e. Glen Cook's Books of the South omnibus).

I disagree about displaying of books being a pointless affectation though. I can't say I've ever thought of my bookshelves as a 'trophy list', as if someone coming into our house should admire how many books we've read and therefore think better of us, or that it's a running tally that we should be proud of. That seems quite pretentious to me. Reading is such a big part of who we are though, and having books around our house personalises it to a degree that perhaps wouldn't be there if all our books were digital. It's like somebody who likes photography wanting to display artistic photos around the house. Sure, their work is mostly digital, but there is value in its display as well.

[LadyMTL]

MTS, on 18 February 2017 - 06:11 AM, said:

Ms. MTS and I started to go the e-book route in the last few years, as the price differential is in some cases too great to ignore, and they're much more convenient for travel purposes (and furtive late-night reading). I would say now our book purchasing is around about 50% digital versus print, with new books being heavily weighted towards the former. We still cleave to the printed medium because we love the aesthetic though, and we tend to have a fair bit of turnover in our books so it's fairly sustainable. Numbers-wise we tend to donate more than we replace, so we're slowly whittling away at the total. Some I will never get rid of though, like my SE/ICE TPBs, and books with excellent covers (i.e. Glen Cook's Books of the South omnibus).

I disagree about displaying of books being a pointless affectation though. I can't say I've ever thought of my bookshelves as a 'trophy list', as if someone coming into our house should admire how many books we've read and therefore think better of us, or that it's a running tally that we should be proud of. That seems quite pretentious to me. Reading is such a big part of who we are though, and having books around our house personalises it to a degree that perhaps wouldn't be there if all our books were digital. It's like somebody who likes photography wanting to display artistic photos around the house. Sure, their work is mostly digital, but there is value in its display as well.

I am right there with you and Ms. MTS. I've had an e-reader for 5-6 years now (or maybe longer, I can't really remember) and I love it. That said, it isn't always cheaper to buy the e-book, which is why I comparison shop and still buy a few in paper format. Just as an example, I got a paper version of Macrae Burnet's "His Bloody Project" from Book Depository for less than $11 CAD, and at the time it was around $15-16 for the ebook. As much as I love the convenience of having it in a digital file - and therefore not taking up room on my shelves - I refuse to pay that kind of price. Also, if I've already started buying a series on paper, like I did with MBOTF, then chances are I'm going to continue with that format.

As far as displaying books being an affectation, I also have to disagree with that. I consider reading and love of books to be an essential part of who I am; if no-one sees or comments on how many I have, that's fine with me. Now, I'm sure there are people out there who brag about how vast their collection is but who never read anything other than a text message or a tweet, and yes, with them it's probably a poseur thing. Personally, I think they're in the minority, and that most of us who do have several bookcases full actually do read and love our books.

This post has been edited by LadyMTL: 21 February 2017 - 12:33 PM

[Abyss]

When the stack has its own gravity and tidal effect we're beyond "several bookcases"!

[Abyss]

Just got FIERCE GODS by Col Buchanan. It's book 4 and the conclusion of his Heart of the World series.


I wasn't sure we'd ever see this because the series seems to have gone muchly underloved.



I have really really enjoyed it - fun sf and steampunk elements in a more or less fantasy setting, with a great assassin protagonist, some crazy-ass battle scenes, and an overall 'evil empire tries to conquer the world' plot that has some nice variation from the usual.
I expect FIERCE will be consistent with the rest of the series, which has been generally tight, fast paced and enjoyably dark without being outright grim.

Since this book finishes the series, if you're looking for a complete, not-overlong read, i think it's worth the dollars and eyetime.

[Andorion]

My Everyman's Library Hardcover of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials just got delivered. Its absolutely gorgeous!

[Mentalist]

"Wheel of Osheim" by Mark Lawrence in mmpb

and the next Kate Daniels novel, "Magic Slays" by Ilona Andrews.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 05 March 2017 - 11:01 PM

[Tsundoku]

The Mrs bought American Gods for me the other day as we were in a comic shop with a small but high quality book section and it was my birthday. She said to pick one and I've heard good things about American Gods on here, so it had better not disappoint!

[Macros]

Spoiler

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Number of downloads: 0

[Puck]

The first five books in the Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone, 'cause I remember someone raving about them (sorry I forgot who it was) in the Reading at the Moment-thread. For some reason they suddenly turned up dirt cheap on Google Books, and even cheaper in an omnibus. For anyone interested, I checked amazon and the kindle edition/s is/are also heavily discounted.

[JPK]

Puck, on 15 March 2017 - 09:42 PM, said:

The first five books in the Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone, 'cause I remember someone raving about them (sorry I forgot who it was) in the Reading at the Moment-thread. For some reason they suddenly turned up dirt cheap on Google Books, and even cheaper in an omnibus. For anyone interested, I checked amazon and the kindle edition/s is/are also heavily discounted.

Kobo too.