Waffle

Here's the next batch of books readers of the blog can pick through before I sell them! The previous giveaway found new homes for the Stainless Steel Rat omnibus and the three Vlad Taltos collections, but the others are still available if you either live in Groningen or are willing to pay shipping.

The next batch is a bit more diverse and contains some non-fiction and some comics, but we'll start off with some more science fiction & fantasy:

Douglas A. Anderson, editor: Tales Before Narnia, an anthology of fantasy stories that inspired, or in some cases may have inspired, C.S. Lewis and includes stories and poems by Robert Louis Stephenson, G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott and others. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, editors: The Hard SF Renaissance. A range of hard SF stories by a wide range of older and younger writers. Few of the stories left any impression on me but I recall that "Bicycle Repairman" by David Brin delivered the goods. In any case, it's almost 1,000 pages so there should be something for everyone in there. Diana Wynne Jones: The Tough Guide to Fantasy Land. A classic guide to fantasy clichés that's well worth a read and won't suck up your time as much as TV Tropes will. Aloys Winterling: Caligula: Een Biografie, Dutch, translated from German. What it says on the tin: a somewhat contrarian biography of the Roman emperor, attempting to sort the truth from the accumulated legends and giving an overview of the kind of political landscape in which someone might want to appoint a horse as a senator. Anonymous (Michael Scheuer): Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. I bought this before I realized that Scheuer was nuts. At the time I thought the analysis, especially of Osama Bin Laden's motivations and of political and intelligence-related errors in the War on Terror was strong, but re-reading the preface now for a recap of what's in the rest of the book, it looks absolutely hysterical. Nevertheless, it was an important book in its day and still has some worthwhile analysis in it from a former CIA insider.

Christopher Hitchens: The Trial of Henry Kissinger. An overview of the case that might be made against Henry Kissinger if he was ever charged before the International Criminal Court.

Thomas von der Dunk: De Vader, de Zoon en de Geest van Pim: Nederland in het Rampjaar 2002 (Dutch, obviously). A collection of newspaper columns by von der Dunk, written in what was really quite a turbulent year for the Netherlands.

Eric S. Raymond: The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary. It must have seemed interesting at the time... I expect in another ten years, it will be again as a piece of social history of the geek movement. Kamagurka: Bezige Bert, De Zanger is Ziek Vandaag: two latter-day collections from the Belgian absurdist cartoonist, in Dutch. Jakob Nielsen: Functioneel Webdesign (Dutch, translated from the English). I used this in a previous iteration of the ROCR.net site. Unfortunately, web design and development bore me to tears and designing for usability is no exception, so it hasn't helped me all that much; the big takeaway I got from this was that for someone like me, following the herd works, especially when combined with simplicity. I still try to keep the number of design elements low and use labels that people recognise from other webcomics, but beyond that, I simply don't spend enough time on design to benefit from this book. Still, Nielsen's insights usually hold up well over a long period and if you are interested in usability design, this is still good despite its age. Steve Krug: Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. See above, mostly. Ian McEwan: The Child In Time. Egads, I read this for school before I went to University. Honestly, I don't remember if this is any good or not.

Bernard Malamud: The Assistant. Egads, I read this for University. Bored me to tears, it did!

Momir Stosic Moki, editor: Signed By War. International benefit anthology for independent comics artists in the then-war-torn republics of the Former Yugoslavia. Black and White. Contributions by Enki Bilal, Marcel Ruijters, Lian Ong, Zoran Janjetov, Sasa Rakezic, Edmond Baudoin, Peter Kuper, Lorenzo Mattotti and others.

Scott Adams: Dogbert's Clues for the Clueless. A collection of Dilbert strips featuring Dogbert. Breathed, Berkeley: Tales too Ticklish To Tell. A Bloom County collection. Breathed, Berkeley: Politically, Fashionably and Aerodynamically Incorrect, His Kisses Are Dreamy... But Those Hairballs Down My Cleavage...!. Two Outland collections. I liked those at the time but they now leave me cold. If you want any of those books, drop me a line in the next few weeks. If you live outside of Groningen, the Netherlands, I'll need you to pay shipping; if you live in Groningen, I can hand them over in person or just drop them in your mailbox.

Tags: Book giveaway.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 10:25 pm and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.