Reviews for The Jack Vance Treasury are starting to flow in. Following a solid review from PW and a very good review from Booklist, this last week has seen excellent reviews from Matthew Hughes at SF Site and Paul Di Filippo at Scifi.com.

The nice folk over at Australian Specif in Focus have generously invited me to be part of their ‘Focus on Editors‘ series of discussion forums. Starting tomorrow sometime, I’ll be over there ready to talk about whatever interests anyone: editing, anthologies, science fiction, heritage vegetables, the merits of Sufjan Stevens. Whatever appeals. I’ll post here when it’s live. Drop by and say hi.

Some random thoughts on a Tuesday morning:

• The Mogwai soundtrack to Zidane is, after a few listens, a damn cool thing. Kinda dark and brooding at times, but well worth a listen.
• British magazine The Word remains my favorite magazine of any kind in the world. They make it look easy to put together a magazine about pop culture.
• Still stumbling around Pitchfork. There’s some interesting stuff, some bad writing, and just enough to make it clear than I’m not their target audience.
• Although Marianne and I completely missed it on first release, we’ve been watching Coupling on DVD, and it’s just about the funniest thing in the world.
• I was saying on an email list yesterday that I find it really easy to not read something, or to avoid reading it. Now, Justine talks about things that stop her reading. I don’t have the same problems exactly, but bad readings, bad meetings, bad covers, or just boredom and ennui can stop me reading.
• Oh, and my favorite short story of the month (at least in terms of pub date) is Charlie Stross’s “Trunk and Disorderly” in Asimov’s. Wodehousian space opera, wot! What’s not to like?

Ok. Time to start a little fresh, I think. The Ashes are safely back where they belong, we’re moving into the tonk-a-pom phase of the cricket season, and projects are bubbling along, so let’s try for optimism as a keynote.

The first thing I thought I’d try is to ask you all what you’re looking forward to reading in 2007. I know the readers of Coode Street either are eager readers or are work in publishing, so I’m sure there are books you can’t wait to see. What are they? Are their ones I’m likely to overlook or pre-judge that you’d like to tell me about? I want to know about great upcoming SF, fantasy, YA, whatever.

In the spirit of fair play, at the moment I’m looking forward to Bill Gibson’s Spook Country,  Ellen & Terri’s The Coyote Road, and a bunch of other stuff. I’ve already read a great book by Ysabeau Wilce this year (Flora Segunda, check it out!), a good one by China Mieville, and have a bunch on my to read shelf.

I’m actually thinking that if I can discipline myself (hah!), I might start blogging about what I’ve read this week, mostly for myself, but also for you faithful readers who’ve had such a rubbish six months or so of posts.

The SF Book Club will publish an edition of The Jack Vance Treasury shortly after Subterranean Press publishes the first edition in January. This is wonderful news! The whole point of editing the Treasury was to get as many readers for Vance’s work as possible. I encourage everyone, of course, to grab the Subterranean edition, but if that’s not possible, the Book Club edition is a fine thing in itself. Now, for the project to be completely successful, we only need a mass market edition and a UK edition (hi Gollancz Masterworks people!), and then I’ll rest easy.