Bookstore haul

Last night, I went to a good-sized chain bookstore for the first time in quite a while and spent a lot of time pointing out books that I thought she'd enjoy. It was only fair for me to spend a bit of money as well.

Khaled Hosseini -- The Kite Runner (mainstream)
Hope Mirrlees -- Lud-in-the-Mist (sff)
Ellen Raskin -- The Westing Game (children's)
Steven Savile & Alethea Kontis (ed.) -- Elemental: The Tsunami Relief Anthology (sff)
William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White -- The Elements of Style (non-fiction)
James White -- Beginning Operations (sff)
Gene Wolfe -- Shadow & Claw (sff)
Gene Wolfe -- Sword & Citadel (sff)
Gene Wolfe -- The Urth of the New Sun (sff)

The Gene Wolfe books are the really beautiful trade-paperback printings of the Book of the New Sun series. I already own that series (and have read it), but have the old ugly Pocket Timescape mass market versions and wanted to have nicer versions that go with my nicer copies of his other series.

I'm a little wry about paying as much as I did for The Elements of Style, but I don't want an on-line version of a book. I want to be able to hold it in my hand. That's worth $8.

I'm mostly buying Elemental to support the cause, and it's probably going to be a while before I read the short stories in there. I have several other anthologies that I'm more immediately excited about.

The James White makes me very happy. James White was a mid-list SF author from Ireland who wrote a long series of books about alien medicine that are highly regarded as good, readable fun. The last few are still in print, but the first ones have been out of print for quite a while, and I was delighted to see a trade paperback reprint of the first three.