This is a list of books I have an eye on. I will never buy most of them, but it’s good to have titles in mind when browsing second hand book shops. This topic is updated regularly. The review/comment quotes are taken from mostly from Locus (http://www.locusmag.com), with a few from librarything, books without borders, sf site , sfreader, independent for books and amazon reviews. I try to keep the reference when i “snap” them for my reading list

Recently Added:

Moby Jack and Other Tall Tales (PS Publishing), by Garry Kilworth - from Locus: “Ever since reading Garry Kilworth’s collection The Songbirds of Pain in the 1980s, one of my favorite short-story collections ever, I’ve been a devoted fan of his short fiction. It was with great anticipation that I read the author’s first major collection in many years, Moby Jack and Other Tall Tales. I was not disappointed. Kilworth’s versatile skill at navigating between genres, his outré imagination, his deft and evocative handling of the exotic, his keen insights into human behavior, his affecting ability to inhabit and communicate an impressive breadth of perspectives across cultural and gender spectrums, and, finally but certainly not least, his deliciously elegant prose, all combine to present a selection of stories whose diversity, originality, and poignancy leave me breathless with awe. Moby Jack and Other Tall Tales stands as my favorite book of 2006.”

Mark Budz, Idolon (Bantam Spectra Aug 2006) - A police murder investigation merges with an amateur sleuth’s search for his missing cousin in this SF mystery set in a near-future San Francisco in a world where the masses are impoverished, while the decadent rich play with biodigital technology and nanoscopic e-skin that let them look like celebrities of the past.

Unimagined: A Muslim Boy Meets the West by Imran Ahmad (Aurum Press). from the independent books-for-christmas supplement “Unimagined is beautifully written, funny and endearing, and in its own quiet way, important.”

In Babylon - Marcel Möring, (Independent: It’s been a while since a Continental star of fiction shone over here in the Kundera or Eco style. Möring stakes a strong claim to that role with this quite magnificent novel. In the snowbound Dutch countryside, Uncle Nathan tells the fabulous tale of his eccentric clan: Jewish clockmakers-turned-thinkers, who drifted westwards from Lithuania to New York. Rich, Dickensian storytelling, warm and wise humour, a sweeping sense of history: a world-class performance from the new Dutch master. ) got it

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (Sort of Books, trade paper, 160 pages) - Creator of the marvelous Moonin series of books and comics for children, Jansson also wrote adult fiction. In this slim collection of stories about a grandmother and granddaughter living on an island off of Finland, Jansson conveys so much deep characterization that the book resonates long after you read it. Lovely vignettes about building miniature cities and the interweaving of folktale and tall tale give much of The Summer Book a fantastical feel.

And there’s loads more!

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