Cheap books from Amazon almost make up for lost used book stores my friends and I used to haunt. It took me several years to find a copy of K. W. Jeter's
Morlock Night in a real store. Now, one-click and it's mine.
The downside of not having physical book stores anymore is I don't just chance upon something and buy it because the blurb on the back makes it sound great or the cover calls out tome.
Books at the now-closed Book Pit in Red Bank, NJ went for under $2. I always walked out with a bag of books at least half by people I had never read before. It was great when there were a dozen different stores I could visit regularly with similar results.
Even with Amazon Prime, the cheapest a book at Amazon costs me is $4. At that price, if I'm going to buy something by an author I'm not familiar with I need to know a little about a book from reviews or recommendations before I spend my cash.
This I bought because Bill Ward recommended it. I'd been curious about Brust but never bought it. Now I have.
I read "Bones for Dulath", the first Ki and Vandien story in
Amazons! and really liked it. This $.01 omnibus (plus $3.99 S/H) gets me the original trilogy.
Read some good things about this someplace I can't remember and that was good enough for me.
Bill Ward reminded me about first volume,
The Oblivion Hand, which reminded me I never got these. So I did.
Finally, the
Deep Down Genre Hound himself sent me some of his latest collections. I've already read the three Shan and Bao stories and they're a blast. Further proof of the ongoing S&S renaissance. Note the very cool colophon.
