On Books

I finally made it to the bookstore. I was only able to get three novels and two manga (obligatory, since I'm collecting the two series that I bought installments from). The novels I bought were: Neil Gaiman's Stardust, Heinlein's Job, and Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Each is a book I've been wanting to read for a long time, if not years. Heinlein's Job has been haunting me ever since I read umm... one of Heinlein's books and saw the ad for Job. That must have been about ten years ago. Starship Troopers always looked interesting, but I never wanted to read it until I saw some discussion on it recently. Of course, being a Gaiman fan since I was about nine, when I read the snippet of Stardust in the back of Smoke and Mirrors (or was it American Gods?), I had to get the book. It's been at least a year since then and I finally got the book. Really, I was looking for Coraline, which I'd picked up back when it was still a hardcover. However, since I think it's been moved to the children's section (on the second floor of the store), I decided to pick up the only Gaiman book on the shelf that I hadn't read. (My first brush with Gaiman's novels was either Neverwhere or Good Omens... most likely it was Good Omens. I don't know, my memory timeline is a bit rusty. Of course, when I found out that Gaiman was also the author of my beloved Sandman series (without which I would not be reading comics/manga/manwha today), I was doubly excited. Neverwhere is still one of my favorite reads and I must confess to owning the miniseries on dvd (and think it quite dull, actually).
Anyway, so I read, no, I devoured Stardust first. Finished at about one or two in the morning, having started at about ten or eleven at night. Wonderfully done, with a great ending. It's a shame there wasn't more and it's a shame that I had basically outlined the entire book in my head during the first section. Is it that Gaiman's predictable or that I'm just good at figuring out what's going to happen?

So, next up is one of the Heinleins. I haven't quite figured which one to read yet. Depends on what my mood is tonight. Of course, if I don't finish it tonight, I won't finish it tomorrow. The reason being that tomorrow I should receive a wonderful little piece of technology and if that is the case, all of my attention will be on that for a while.

While I was at the bookstore, I browsed the Stephen Kings and the William Gibsons. I saw books from each that I wanted to get. Almost bought The Tommyknockers, but due to limiting my budget (still need to save some money for Best Buy), I had to put it down. There was a wonderful book on King's universe, but it was too much and I decided that I'd rather read his entire library and try to figure it all out first. On the Gibson side, the collection was quite lacking and there were only two books that I had not read. However, they were in the format I most detest, that of paperback that is taller than normal paperbacks. Of course, they charge twice as much for these paperbacks. Last time I ordered a book from King's Dark Tower series (The Drawing of the Three) from Amazon.com, I ordered in paperback and got one of those tall ones with illustrations. It didn't help that the illustrations were some of the ugliest I'd ever seen. That and the font was larger and took up more space on the page. I like my books unblemished. However, the last three of the series I received in Hardcover as a gift and I love them to death, so I'll buy the books I have in paperback in Hardcover, just so they display better. Normally, I like books that are easy to carry around.
So, I didn't get any Gibson or King, even though I wanted to. In all my browsing, I completely forgot that one of my goals was to buy some Nero Wolfe and Poirot. I suppose that this means a special trip out to the mystery book shop out past the mall.

Well, I certaintly feel more alive now that I've gotten some books.