Books bought and received in the last few days:
A Field Guide to Surreal Botany - Janet Chui and Jason Erik Lundberg (eds.) - Jason Lundberg sent a physical copy to me this week, and I´m still browsing leisurely through it; but how can you not be amazed by plants like Couch Kelp, Baby Cabbage, and Forget-Me-Bastard? Pretty good stuff. My thanks to Mr. Lundberg.
Zöe´s Tale and The Sagan Diary - John Scalzi - The two latest additions to the Old Man´s War universe, these two books can be read as complements. The first one tells us the same events of The Last Colony, but through the eyes of Zöe Boutin Perry, the daughter of the traitor Charles Boutin and now adopted child of John Perry and Jane Sagan. A seventeen-year-old girl now, she must learn to become an adult fast when confronted with all the troubles and dangers she and the rest of the colonists who were supposed to go to Roanoke colony and go instead to an entirely unknown planet, fooled by the Colonial Union. The Sagan Diary, a novella I read in a few hours, just surprised me because of its rather poetic content. I was expecting just the opposite, but in the end I was glad I found it just the way it is. More on that later, in a Mega-Review of the books of the Old Man´s War universe, plus an interview with John Scalzi.
Three Days to Never, Earthquake Weather, and Strange Itineraries - Tim Powers - I haven´t read Tim Powers for a long while now. I just found these pockets in a sale in a bookstore in São Paulo, so I just grabbed them. I also ordered Last Call and Expiration Date, since Earthquake Weather is part of the same universe.
illustration by Fabio Cobiaco
Powers is one of my favorites writers. Last Call is the first book in a kind of trilogy and it's very interesting (Fisher King playing poker with Tarot cards etc.)
Good reading!