New York is warm, sultry and I do rather suspect that brain is melting out my ears and evaporating.  It is 11pm (4am) and I am playing the jetlag defeating game "How Late Can I Remain Awake &  Lucid?"

If I start making burbling noises, pleae do not be alarmed.

My cross-Atlantic journey proved boring and uneventful (ie. very pleasant; I do not want things getting exciting at 24,000ft) and I've spent the last two days teak-oiling my parents deck furniture, ripping up ivy, and making a list of everything I accidentally left in London.  (One of the things I discovered that I didn't leave behind was sharp-edged and metal and in my hand luggage . . . and has been for at least three other transatlantic/transpacific flights.  Consider me coloured a pale shade of concerned.)

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Have acquired copies of Baker's "Gods & Pawns", CJ Cherryh's "Collected Short Fiction" and Bear's "New Amsterdam", none of which I will have time to read before I set off at 7am tomorrow morning. 

Have not acquired "Red Seas Under Red Skies" by Lynch (UK release 21 June). Am mildly peeved. May be good thing, however, as "Lies of Loch Lamora" rocked my socks off to such an extent that I may wear nothing but sandals for the rest of my life. If the sequel is as good, what will I do for footwear?  

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. . . . right,  time for sleep.

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.