New blog provider

Faithful readers:

I have decided to switch from blogspot to wordpress and transferred the contents of this blog in their entirety to the new site. I will no longer update this blog.

Please go to the NEW home of Tales from the Bookworm's Lair at:

http://bibliorex.wordpress.com/

Thank you!

Lulu Sale

They're being cute: from now through July 5, take $17 off an order of $76 or more. So not a bad deal at all if you've got multiple books you've been wanting to pick up.

Use code JULY4305 at checkout.

June 2010 Book Acquisitions

Yes, I skipped a couple months worth of acquisitions, but I'm not going to go back and recreate those lists. Here's what I picked up this month:

• The first two volumes of the Complete Jack Vance (originally titled the Compact Vance Integral Edition). For a decade or so I have been kicking myself for not purchasing a copy of the original Vance Integral Edition, but now I'll have every work of fiction Vance -- one of my favorite authors -- has ever written. Woo hoo! This one is a real triumph for me, and I'm very happy to have these in my collection. I can't wait for the remaining four volumes to become available. Expensive, but oh so worth it.
• I bought two books from Amazon (had a gift certificate to cover some of the cost): Serial Vigilantes of Paperback Fiction (a reference work about a subset of the men's adventure genre; expensive, but a must for my collection given my interest in the genre) and The Girl Who Played with Fire, the sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I enjoyed the first one so much that I had to pick this one up. That's unusual because I typically don't like blockbusters, but the first in this trilogy really surprised me with how enjoyable it was.
• I purchased an autographed Polish edition of Glen Cook's The Black Company. No, I'll never, ever be able to read it but hey, for a couple bucks, why not? I've always found it interesting that Cook has such a following in Eastern Europe (of course, I can see that the bleak settings in his works would appeal to Eastern Europeans).

So that's it. I acquired 5 new books and read 20, with a net reduction in my "to be read" list of 15books. Not bad. I'm trying to have a new austerity program with my book purchases (wish me luck with that), though I am going to visit a new nearby used bookstore tomorrow. We'll see what they have. They're located in a dreary mall and I've heard that they're a tad expensive, so I don't have high hopes. But it should be fun, and I'm going to eat some damn fine Chinese food while I'm at the mall. Yum.

Dorchester Publishing $2 Sale

Dorchester Publishing has a number of their titles on sale for $2 each until July 30, including three Hard Case Crime novels (one of which I don't have), some horror, and some thrillers. They also have some westerns and romance novels on sale, but those aren't my bag.

You can read which titles are on sale here.

Crimespree Magazine Back Issues Sale

Forgot to mention this one in my last post. Crimespree Magazine is a great little magazine that is done by lovers of crime fiction for lovers of crime fiction. Editing of articles is...not great. But the content is very good and includes in each issue multiple interviews; lots of articles of crime authors; one or two short stories; tons of reviews of books, graphic novels, and DVDs; a recipe; and drawings for free books (just send in a postcard for each).

They are having a sale on back issues of the magazine from now until the end of July. Buy two or more and they are only $3 each, including shipping (US Only, Outside US we have to charge shipping). Some issues have limited copies left.

Complete list of back issues is found here.

Small Press Sales and Coupons

Here's a new feature for the blog: I'll try to list special sales and coupons for the small press publishers I come across.

First off: You'll have to move fast on this one, as it's only good for two more days, but Potomac Books is having a sale with a lot of their back inventory available for $5/book. Potomac publishes a lot of book on defense policy, intelligence issues, foreign policy, military history, and (oddly) sports. All of those categories are represented in this sale.

Potomac Books

Second up is a set of coupons for Wildside Press. They publish science fiction, fantasy, mystery, crime, and pulp reprints.

Wildside Press

Save $5 on your order of $25 or more. (Use coupon code 5BUCKSOFF.)
Save $10 on your order of $50 or more. (Use coupon code 10BUCKSOFF.)
Save $20 on your order of $100 or more. (Use coupon code 20BUCKSOFF.)

And lastly: use the code FREESHIP all summer (not sure exactly when the coupon will end) on Lulu for free shipping on all orders over $19.95.

Review: Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski

Warning: some plot spoilers are included, though I’m not purposely giving away the plot’s twists and turns.

This is an outstanding example of modern noir, though, oddly, it’s also a time travel novel. Our protagonist Mickey Wade is a laid-off journalist living in Philadelphia – an old, corrupt, seedy city I‘ve always enjoyed visiting – whose personal situation is rapidly heading from bad to worse. He’s got no job, no real career prospects, no money, and he’s forced to move into his hospitalized grandfather’s ratty old walk-up. The book begins with this dark backdrop as we watch the protagonist descend further into the kind of personal hell that’s become all too common in these troubled financial times. Then he discovers that some pills in his grandfather’s medicine cabinet allow him to travel back to the same location in 1972, the year of his birth. That’s when things really start getting weird. The people he encounters there are all intimately tied in with his father’s murder, which he attempts to solve after learning that the version of the story he had heard isn’t exactly what happened. The more he discovers about the past, the messier things get. As with most time travel thrillers, there are a few dangling plot holes that can’t quite be resolved, but generally the treatment of paradox and causation are handled intelligently.

This is a fast-paced, fun read, despite its inherently dark subject matter, and I had a hard time putting it down. Characterization is smooth and the dialogue flows effortlessly. The sense of place is palpable as we watch what had been a fairly prosperous lower-middle-class Philly neighborhood in 1972 slowly transform into a dangerous rathole in 2010. Swierczynski clearly knows his craft as a writer. Evocative full-page illustrations every few chapters add to the experience.

Highly recommended for those who enjoy noir with a science fiction bent. (Not to worry, even if you have a marked allergy to science fiction as I know many crime fiction readers do, I don’t think you’ll object too much here.) This was the first of Duane Swierczynski’s books I’ve read, but it certainly won’t be the last.

Review copyright 2010 J. Andrew Byers