Recently in Book stuff Category

The 12th edition of Bookworms Carnival is out now. I participated in the carnival with my entry on Johanna Sinisalo's Troll.

Looks like I share something with one of my favourite authors, Jonathan Carroll:

A library recently asked me to give them the five books that have mattered most to me. I wrote back saying sorry, but I don't keep books I have already read. In one of those "people are divided into two groups" distinctions, I have a feeling readers are divided into two camps on this matter-- those who keep their books, and those who give them away once they're read. Talking to someone about this, they were horrified I didn't at least own copies of books that were especially important to me. I could only shrug and say again 99% of the books I own I haven't read yet.

The quote is from his May 21st blog entry. I'm definitely in the "give them away" camp, and BookMooch has been a blessing for me (funny this came up, as I just read about Bookmooching at Adventures in Reading and wrote a long comment there about the joys of BookMooch).

My library isn't quite 99% unread, but that would be a good state, yes, especially for fiction books.

Iain M. Banks' latest book Matter was published today (Feb 27th in the US). First reviews say it's a good one, but then again, most people who'd bother to review it on Amazon this quick are likely to be fans anyway. Still, I'm intrigued.

There's a Facebook event celebrating the publication of the book. Visit the event, drop a note saying "I love Culture" and you might win a signed copy of the book. If at least thousand people participate, one lucky winner will win signed copies of all the Culture books. That seems unlikely, as there are only 150 participants so far. Well, the odds of me getting signed copy of Matter are higher the less people participate, so...

Anyway, if you're in Facebook and love Culture, go tell them.