New acquisitions

I went to Half Price Books.  I know, but it’s a hard habit to break.  I found some good books, one I was looking for and four I wasn’t; I’ve added them to my TBR list.

1. Banks, Iain M.  Look to Windward.  It’s a UK version of a Culture novel that hasn’t been re-released in the US yet!   True, the back cover says, Not for sale in the US, but I proved that wrong, didn’t I?
2. Brockmeier, Kevin.  The Brief History of the Dead.  After having enjoyed The View from the Seventh Layer so much, I wanted Brockmeier’s novel, which is about Limbo and Antarctica, and a global epidemic.  At least as far as I can tell from chapter two.
3. Card, Orson Scott, ed.  Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century.  This collection was positively forced on me by my husband, who wanted to read one of the stories and insisted, therefore, that I should read all of them.  I complained, but not too hard.
4. Moore, Lorrie.  A Gate at the Stairs.  My former graduate school classmates always made much of Lorrie Moore, so for $1.00, I thought I would finally see what they kept going on about.
5. Petterson, Per.  Out Stealing Horses.  This was another $1.00 find, reminiscent of when I worked at a certain no-longer-existent bookstore, where I shelved and sold a whole lot of this novel; since I always feel as though I need to read more books from other countries, more books in translation, I took a chance.

I found some good books, one I was looking for and four I wasn’t.

18. The Company

TBR #18. The Company by K. J. Parker.

First sentence: “The boatman who rowed him from the ship to the quay kept looking at him: first a stare, then a frown.”

They were famous linebreakers during the war, but that was years ago, and now four of the five original members of A Company are trying to live civilian lives in their hometown.  That is, until Kunessin, the fifth man, comes back to town with a lot of money and a plan to colonize an island.  They get supplies, indentured men, and wives, and travel to Sphoe.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t leave the war behind them.

I love tragedies; therefore, I love K. J. Parker novels.  The Company ties with The Folding Knife below the Engineer Trilogy and above the Fencer Trilogy.  We’ll see where Parker’s last stand-alone novel, The Hammer, falls.  (Pun.)