Second-Hand Book Shopping, I love it.

On Saturday I managed to sneak out of the house, while no-one was looking, and off into town for a spot of book shopping on the Charing Cross Road. I love those book shops; 'Any Amount of Books', 'Quinto' and the one in the middle that I can never remember the name of (don't let that put you off, that one is just as good as the other two). They keep the stock pretty fresh so you can go in every few weeks and have new stuff to browse through. Do you want to see what I got this time round? Of course you do?

As a rule, I never go through the 'We're trying to shift this stuff so it's dirt cheap' shelves as there is never anything there that I'd like. The one time I do though... I managed to find a copy of 'Time and Again' for a pound. It's not the right edition but I'm not fussy at all so that's one more book ticked off the Fantasy Masterworks list. I really enjoyed reading 'The Body Snatchers' so am hoping Finney bought a little bit of the same to 'Time and Again'. We'll see.

When I'm not trying to collect Fantasy Masterworks, I'm halfheartedly trying to collect SF Masterworks as well. I say 'halfheartedly', it has to be a title that I actually want to read and it also has to be in the old SF Masterworks jacket (none of that yellow stuff for me!) I've had my eye open for a copy of 'The Demolished Man' for a little while now so when I saw it sat on the shelf I didn't hang around. 'The Demolished Man' won the Hugo in 1953 and with Loncon 3 just round the corner I thought it might be a good time to give the book a go. It might also spur me on to finally read 'The Stars My Destination' (still shamefully unread).

I'll always read Charles de Lint if I come across him and the added bonus here is a cover that wouldn't look out of place on 'Good Show Sir'. A wolf having a pint? Is there nothing they cannot do? Out of the three books on display 'Wolf Moon' will probably be read first, purely because my reading is veering sharply towards fantasy novels with awful covers at the moment ;o) Takes me back to when I was a kid...