May 09, 2018

Upcoming Events

Tamora Pierce, TEMPESTS AND SLAUGHTER (Random House, Hardcover, $18.99) Wednesday, May 23rd at 5:00 pm

SF in SF with authors Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Meg Elison, and Ellen Klages, moderated by Terry Bisson (at the American Bookbinders Museum, 355 Clementina Street, San Francisco) Sunday, June 10th at 6:30 pm

Jacqueline Carey, STARLESS (Tor Books, Hardcover, $25.99) Wednesday, June 13th at 6:00 pm

Coming up in the summer: B. Catling at the bookstore, Hannu Rajaniemi at The Interval at Long Now, George R.R. Martin in conversation with WorldCon artist GOH John Picacio at The Fox Theatre, and many, many more exciting events!

May Building News

by Alan Beatts

Whew.  The past couple weeks have been kind of a blur.  We've finished the west and south walls -- all patched and painted (well, primed actually).  They came out really well and it makes a huge difference to how the place looks.  We've also torn up all the horrible carpet which has made another huge improvement.  It turns out that, when the carpet was installed, they did a proper job and nailed down plywood to glue the carpet to.  That's a great thing for two reasons; first, I'm not going to have a sand off the carpet glue when I refinish the floors and, second, the plywood has probably protected the floors since the 1970s.  I'm sure that they're going to be pretty worn when I get down to them but, it's better than it would be if they hadn't been protected for forty-plus years.

Along with working on the electrical (more about that in a moment), I've been working on the fences in the back yard (with a lot of help from the volunteer crew).  Today I just did the final work on the south fence.  It was the trickiest because it's (mostly) straight, so getting it level along a 25' run was a challenge. But, it all worked out and it looks wonderful.  The east fence is about half-finished and the west has yet to be started.  Big thanks go out to everyone who helped with that -- Jim, Z'ev, Maddy, Salem, Aliza, Carl, David, Melinda, Russ and Zach.  Despite my sudden inability to measure anything accurately (or do fractional arithmetic in my head), Zach, Russ and David were very patient with me (thanks and sorry, guys.)

April Bestsellers

Hardcovers
1) Tough Mothers by Jason Porath
2) Noir by Christopher Moore
3) Head On by John Scalzi
4) Rejected Princesses by Jason Porath
5) Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
6) The Power by Naomi Alderman
7) Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
8) Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
9) In Calabria by Peter S. Beagle
10) Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel

Trade Paperbacks
1) The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, trans. by Ken Liu
2) Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
3) Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
4) The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
5) All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
6) Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
7) The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
8) Overneath by Peter S. Beagle
9) Robots vs. Fairies edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe
10) Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 12 edited by Jonathan Strahan

Mass Market Paperbacks
1) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
2) Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
3) Who Fears Death? by Nnedi Okorafor
4) Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn
5) Vanguard by Jack Campbell
6) Tricks for Free by Seanan McGuire
7) Old Man's War by John Scalzi
8) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
9) The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt
10) Besieged by Kevin Hearne

May News

* Overheard in the Store:

"It will probably be an artisanal bag shop. We're in the Artisanal Bag Shop District, you know."

"This man approached me [at a convention] & introduced himself as 'a pre-published author', meaning it, I think, in the same way that I am 'pre-dead'."

"I don't believe that! How on Earth did you get THE MYSTIC ARTS OF ERASING ALL SIGNS OF DEATH [by Charlie Huston] from 'It had a yellow cover & it's about people who clean crime scenes.'!?"

"It was really saccharine; it said 'A year from now, what will you wish you had done today?', and I immediately thought 'Not have disrupted the space-time continuum, duh!'"

"You have not lived until you've heard Christopher Lee in the acoustics of a men's room." - Peter S. Beagle

"Nice to meet you; I need wear your bra for a sec.”

* Get ready for another book about Westeros, but not WINDS OF WINTER -- instead we are getting FIRE AND BLOOD, a history of the infighting that almost wiped out the Targaryen line. More info here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/25/george-rr-martin-winds-winter-not-coming-2018-sixth-volume-game-thrones-targaryen