The Library at Home Expands

I had ideas for informative posts [I'm contemplating on a very interesting POV model I've spotted in anime recently], but I'm severely underslept at the moment, so today is devoted to my pretties, which I love, love, love. I am talking about books and the latest debutantes to arrive at the househould.

It's a bittersweet moment for me, because on one hand I go 'BOOKS!' and on the other hand I go 'OMG! No time to read them!'

#1 "Unseen Academicals" by Terry Pratchett

The wizards at Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University are renowned for many things—wisdom, magic, and their love of teatime—but athletics is most assuredly not on the list. And so when Lord Ventinari, the city's benevolent tyrant, strongly suggests to Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully that the university revive an erstwhile tradition and once again put forth a football team composed of faculty, students, and staff, the wizards of UU find themselves in a quandary. To begin with, they have to figure out just what it is that makes this sport—soccer with a bit of rugby thrown in—so popular with Ankh-Morporkians of all ages and social strata. Then they have to learn how to play it. Oh, and on top of that, they must win a football match without using magic.

Meanwhile, Trev (a handsome street urchin and a right good kicker) falls hard for kitchen maid Juliet (beautiful, dim, and perhaps the greatest fashion model there ever was), and Juliet's best pal, UU night cook Glenda (homely, sensible, and a baker of jolly good pies) befriends the mysterious Mr. Nutt (about whom no one knows very much, including Mr. Nutt, which is worrisome . . .). As the big match approaches, these four lives are entangled and changed forever. Because the thing about football—the most important thing about football­—is that it is never just about football.

#2 "New Ceres Nights" edited by Alisa Krasnostein & Tehani Wessely

New Ceres, a planet in the outer colonies, embraced the Age of Enlightenment nearly two hundred years ago and refused to let go. Refugees and opportunists come to New Ceres in search of new lives, escaping the conflicts of the interstellar war that has already destroyed Earth.

New Ceres Nights presents thirteen exciting stories of rebellion, debauchery, decadence, subterfuge and murder set against the backdrop of powdered wigs, coffee houses, duels and balls that is the shared world of New Ceres.

#3 "Letters to Claudia" by Jorge Bucay

This book compiles the writings that Jorge Bucay dedicated to his patients for over three years of therapeutic work. With time, the patients themselves began to share and to distribute these letters, until, one day, due to the success that they were having, they suggested that Bucay publish them. In this imaginary correspondence, Claudia, the author's very loved friend, is the recipient of a revealing letter that will clear many of her doubts about self-knowledge, love, the beauty of life and the secrets of psychology. The book has already become a self-help classic.

#4 "Heart-Shaped Box" by Joe Hill

'Buy my stepfather’s ghost, read the email.’ So Jude did.

When Jude Coyne heard someone was selling a ghost on the internet, there was no question what he was going to do. It was perfect for his collection of the macabre and the grotesque: the cannibal’s cookbook, the witch’s confession, the authentic snuff movie. As an aging death-metal-rock-god, buying a ghost almost qualifies as a business expense.

Besides, Jude thinks he knows all about ghosts. Jude has been haunted for years… by the spirits of bandmates dead and gone, the spectre of the abusive father he fled as a child, and the memory of the girl he abandoned, who killed herself. But this ghost is different. Delivered to his doorstep in a black heart-shaped box, the latest edition to Jude’s collection makes the house feel cold. It makes the dogs bark. And it means to chase Jude from his home and make him run for his life…

#5 "Unpleasant Tales" by Brendan Connell

From the comic to the shocking, from the refined to the visceral, and blurring the boundaries between all four – Unpleasant Tales is a remarkable new collection of some of Brendan Connell’s darkest stories. Drenched in gluttony and decadence and with a scope stretching from the depravity of rulers in ancient Greece and Renaissance Spain, to phantasmagorical body alteration in Zürich and New York, these are supremely refined and elegant, creepily intelligent and, of course, exquisitely unpleasant stories that pack a tremendous punch, both individually and collectively. Stories that will not easily be forgotten.