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| work day books (Sunday, January 13, 2008 - 7:42:20 AM) |
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Yesterday was the annual work day for our astronomy club. Mostly we clean up the grounds and burn off the brush & trash. There was a large pile of metal and rotting wood behind Jim's observatory that we cleaned out. Hopfully we can get a member with a truck to carry off the metal scraps. This year's bonfire, though, was HUGE and HOT.
The real treat of the day came earlier. On the way down to the club site, Carolaina and I decided to stop by a small, second-hand bookstore in Beebe that we hadn't been to in a while. I'm so glad we did. I found books that I thought I would never find.
The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series by Fritz Leiber was a major early influence on Dungeons & Dragons. Wizards of the Coast has a really good article about these books on their website. Wikipedia also has some good information about the series. The ones I found are the first 6 collections of the short stories and novel mentioned on the Wikipedia page. I so look forward to reading them, but have so many other books on my to-read pile to get through first.
For the longest time, I've been trying to track down some of the better sci-fi/fantasy books I had read as a kid. One of these was a near-future story about a set of colonies aboard Earth-orbiting space stations who want to gain their independence from the United States. The method they use declare independence is through the space station branch of the US Courts. Memory being what is is, I had thought the name of the book was "The 13th Circuit". It turns out that the name actually is just "Circuit". Also, the back-of-book blurb mentions that it's the 15th Circuit Court and not the 13th. Never trust your memory--like your senses, it can be fooled easily. I not only found this book, but also found out that it was just the first of a trilogy! The store owners pointed out and handed me the final book. Now I'll absolutely have to track down the second one.
The last two other books were the first Zork book and The Forever War. The Zork series is one of those choose-your-path adventure books. As a kid, I had the second or third book (and hope I still have it, somewhere). The Forever War by Joe Haldeman is considered classic sci-fi from the 70s and has been compared on many occasions to John Scalzi's Old Man's War book/series, which I have and love.
So many books, so little time.
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