Library sale Sunday

I ended up in the city for the $1/book day of the Friends of the San Francisco Library Sale, whoo! The sale was HUGE; it was the third day and there were still tons of books. It's probably five or six times the size of my local library sale. Next year, I may be insane and attempt to go two days, but only if there are friends driving like this year.

The best part was standing at the SF/F table scanning titles, looking up, and seeing coniraya right next to me! I think we'd both been there for about a minute before we even realized!

The worst part was that there was no table out for romance. People! Stop shafting romance readers! I say this not just because I am one, but because you have tables out for SF/F and mystery and all the thrillers are out there, and if you're going to be snobby about genre, be freaking snobby about all of them and not, say, just the one specifically targeted to women! I am so annoyed by this. I'm so sick of walking into used bookstores and finding they have no romance section either (not specialty bookstores, but general ones that have sections for everything). When I worked at a used bookstore, people there were so snobby about the romances -- they were snobby about bestsellers in general, but romances always got that special dose of scorn. And I am very tired of it. Also, it makes no sense from a financial point of view! Argh!

People! Pander to me! I will throw money at you for books, really!

Book loot:

• Elizabeth A. Lynn's Watchtower, The Dancers of Arun, and The Northern Girl, for the Joanna Russ blurb and because Mely recced a short story collection of Lynn's to me


• CJ Cherryh, Exile's Gate, so I don't keep borrowing it from the library and not reading it and then returning it, because I know I will want to read this eventually. Morgaine! Cold immortal not-really-assassin-but-still-kickass woman! I sicced the omnibus of the original trilogy on coniraya.


• Ellen Kushner, The Privilege of the Sword. I didn't like it as much as most people, but I still liked it, and definitely worth getting for a dollar.


• Nalo Hopkinson, Midnight Robber. Another book I bought so I don't keep borrowing it from the library and not reading it even though I know eventually I will want to read it.


• Julia Ross, Games of Pleasure. Courtesan! Also, I hadn't realized Ross has been putting out books after The Wicked Lover; I should find her others. Except my local library does very poorly with the romance. ARGH.


• Robin McKinley, The Hero and the Crown, because I wanted the trade paper version with the prettier cover.


• Nancy Farmer, A Girl Name Disaster. Nancy Farmer!


• Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett, Point of Dreams. I vaguely remember oracne writing this (or another book by the authors) up and saying it was Elizabethan fantasy! It's not the first in the series, but the back says I don't have to read the other first to read this.


• Megan Lindholm, Harpy's Flight. WHOO! My find of the day. I was scared I already owned this; I basically buy all Megan Lindholm books I ever see in hopes of getting the entire Ki and Vandien series. Thankfully, I do not own this! So I am one book closer to the whole thing! And this is the first one, and I checked and found I have the second one, and I can finally read this! WHOO! (I have been hunting for these for a couple years now.)


• Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters. I vaguely remember her being pimped. Also, my shelves are too white (this reason will apply to a lot of the books below, as I don't usually read much non-SF/F, non-YA fiction, so I use library sales to get interesting-looking books for cheap to hopefully expand reading horizons).


• Fumiko Enchi, The Waiting Years, because Mely recs her.


• Larissa Lai, When Fox Is a Thousand. Chinese foxes! Intertwined stories of three different periods including a Chinese woman poet!


• Bapsi Sidhwa, Cracking India. Again with the "my shelves are too white!" Also, I liked the Washington Post blurb: "[S]he has concocted a girlishly romantic love story which is driven by the most militant feminism."


• Jessica Hagedorn, Dogeaters. I was really not sure about this, given the title, but the author blurb said she was born and raised in the Philippines, and the review blurbs and the cover blurbs and scanning the book make me feel as though the title's ironic and will be looking at things critically.


• Zhu Hong, ed. and trans., The Serenity of Whiteness. Stories by and about women in contemporary China. Because I am woefully undereducated, and I am sick of reading secondary works on Asian women and not reading things by Asian women.


• Asian Women United of California, ed., Making Waves. Anthology of writing by and about Asian-American women, because I am woefully undereducated (this is going to be a refrain) and should know about writers who are not Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston.


• Ann Allen Shockley, ed., Afro-American Women Writers 1746-1933, which includes historical and critical introductions to different periods, bought because I am woefully undereducated.


• Mari Evans, ed., Black Women Writers 1950-1980, which has selected short pieces by writers accompanied by critical essays, yay! Again, bought because I am woefully undereducated.

I swear, I culled from my stack too! I didn't let myself get any hardcovers, and I made myself prioritize stuff I couldn't get at the library and stuff by women of color. And, um, stuff I could get at the library but wanted anyway. And stuff I already had but wanted a nicer version of. But I did cull! And I shoved The Secret Country and The Hidden Land next to each other because SOMEONE should buy them even though I shouldn't because I already have them. I probably should have tried siccing China Mountain Zhang on a friend as well (coniraya already had it).

I feel if I can't buy the book (or, uh, already own it), someone should!

Yazawa Ai - Nana, vol. 12-14 (orig. Jap.)

( Spoilers )

Pfeffer, Susan Beth - Life as We Knew It

Fifteen-year-old Miranda's living her normal life until one day, a meteor hits the moon. Instead of just being a spectacular astronomical event as predicted, the meteor knocks the moon out of place, affecting the tides, the climate, and other things. Post-apocalypse YA!

Miranda doesn't really believe that things will be that bad at first, even after learning about how most of the East and West Coast are dead, and she mentally rolls her eyes when her mom buys them thermal underwear and months and months worth of cat food and canned food. But then, gas prices go to $10/gallon, the electricity begins to fail, and then they lose the radio.

What I liked the most was how realistic this felt. All the big events happen elsewhere, and we get nothing like the focus on giant walls of water or the fall of the Chrysler Building, as we do in movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon. Instead, it's things like people moving away, it's the school closing early because they can't provide lunches, it's the family friend coming in with news of West Nile. And gradually, Miranda's world closes in on her until there are no real choices left.

I'm not usually an post-apocalypse fan, just because I generally suspect I would be one of the first people to die, and also because I don't like how a lot of post-apocalyptic scenarios end up with antiquated gender roles and the rejection of altruism. And I'm not sure if I enjoyed this book, per se; it's hard to enjoy a read like this. But it hit me hard, and I found myself walking home in the cool California night air and freaking out at the cold (volcanic ash in the air OMG will never see sun again!) and at all the cars (gas is nonexistant) and things like "What if my glasses break? I won't be able to get new ones and I will die because I cannot see!"

It's not completely bleak, as there are moments of hope and happiness, but, um. It's a pretty terrifying book.

( Spoilers )

It's a really good book, just possibly not for everyone. I am still terrified and immensely grateful for electricity and my computer, but most of all for food, lots of food.

Links:
- rachelmanija's review (link to day-view so the spoilers are behind a cut because Rachel's write-up is ten times better than mine)
- buymeaclue's review
- janni's review