I love Planet Books, but I also am coming to pretty much adore bookdepository.co.uk, which is the cheapest book outlet I know.  I was over at Planet on Sunday and bought a copy of Lou Ander’s Masked. I have a PDF of it somewhere, but I really can’t be bothered reading that and (a) I really wanted to support Lou and (b) I really wanted to read Ian McDonald’s story in the book.  So, nice new book sitting on the couch beside me as I type for the win!

I also stopped at the post office this afternoon and there were packages from bookdepository.co.uk. Since I stopped reviewing in 2002 the number of ARCs etc I receive has dropped and dropped to the point where, even for the year’s best, I pretty much have to buy a book if I want to read it (which is understandable I guess, if a bit disappointing). Still, today brought my copies of Gwyneth Jones’ essay collection, Imagination/Space, and Eleanor Arnason’s Mammoths of the Great Plains. Jones has become one of my very favorite critics in the field, and picking up this book from Aqueduct seemed a great way to both get some wonderful reading and support a terrific press. Arnason, on the other hand, is one of the genuinely undervalued writers in our field, so I’m eager to catch up on this novella (which Gardner just said great things about).  So, post office for the win too!

What else? Well, this morning I listened to my first episode of Grant Watson’s Bad Film Diaries podcast. I’d meant to listen to it before, but then I’d always meant to get to the convention panels he was doing and somehow never had because I was in the bar drinking with friends, so it really was time I stopped and listened. It was a terrific decision. In the podcast I downloaded  Grant discusses Alien 3 and is just incredibly interesting and informed. I’m hooked and am not exaggerating when I say that if the rest of the series matches up to this he’s got my vote for the Hugo next year, definitely. One of the best genre podcasts going.