I popped into a secondhand bookshop over the weekend: a little place that looked small and cramped and miserable . . . and turned out to go back for miles. I picked up:

Flowers of the Field.Rev. CA. Jones (1911) --> pretty flower book!

British Wild Flowers In Their Natural Colours and Forms. Professor Henslow (1910) --> pretty flower book. ('cuz I really need more pretty flower books.)

The Eye of the Heron -- antho, ed. Virginia Kidd (1977) --> anthology by female SF writers, including Ursula Le Guin.

Four For Tomorrow -- antho, Roger Zelazny, (1973) --> four Zelazny shorts.

Merchanter's Luck -- C.J. Cherryh (1982) -- > early Alliance/Union universe novel.


That last one -- Merchanter's Luck -- is the one I'm most thrilled about. I remember reading it when I was 12-ish, loving it, then promptly losing it. Coming back to it after so long is like discovering an old friend. . . a vaguely cliché phrase that happens to be absolutely true.


My complete and irrational love of this little battered paperback is complete and irrational!


I'm only a little way into the 'The Eye of the Heron' anthology. Two word description: weirdly dated. The introduction muses, "Will the year 2000 free women to reclaim the earth and explore space? Or will it bind them more tightly in unending oppression by the unrighteous?"


Half a story in and I already want to slap the sissy, whining, conflicted, pseudo-future protagonist and tell her to stop pretending she's not a doormat when she obviously is.


The Family left not long ago, so I should have time to sample my new book-friends.