Managed to pick up all the books on my wish-list, apart from one, and a few more besides, and my latest Amazon order came in this morning. I am now officially not buying any more books for the next few months weeks. The full roll-call is:
Don Quixote, Cervantes; The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald; Little Women, Alcott; Crime and Punishment, Достоевский; Way Station, Simak; The Demolished Man, Bester; City, Simak (couldn’t find it in London); The Door into Summer, Heinlein; Cyteen, Cherryh; 21st Year’s Best SF, Dozois; Felaheen, Grimwood; The Summer Book, Tove Jansson; The Year of Our War, Swainston; Empire, Niall Ferguson; JRR Tolkien: Author of the Century, Shippey; Maus, Spiegelman. Plus a couple of videos for the kids, and two books by Magnus Mills and also the latest Foreign Affairs for Anne.
Don Quixote, The Great Gatsby, Little Women and Crime and Punishment are all from the various lists of 100 Best Books and seemed to be the most cited ones I hadn’t read.
Similarly Way Station, The Demolished Man, City, The Door into Summer and Cyteen come off lists of 100 great sf books, Hugo winners, etc and seemed to be the most prominent ones I hadn’t already read.
21st Year’s Best SF and Felaheen were both on my “buy on sight of a paperback edition” list, as previous books in the respective series were absolutely superb (in different ways).
I’d seen decent reviews of The Summer Book (and of course am intrigued to try Jansson’s adult fiction anyway) and wildly enthusiastic reviews of The Year of Our War. I bought Empire because I heard the author summarise it at a conference we both spoke at last year. JRR Tolkien: Author of the Century will feed my general interest in the man (and be a useful contrast with the Lin Carter book). And Maus is the one frequently cited classic graphic novel that I was most embarrassed by not havign read. (I fixed that on the Eurostar last night; will do review this evening or tomorrow).
Add my infinity plus list, with the ones I have read crossed out, and I’m looking forward to relaxing in Ireland next month and reading them all: The Holy Machine, Beckett</s>; River of Gods, McDonald (nearly finished); Newton’s Wake, MacLeod</s>; Jupiter: Ganymede</b>; The Human Abstract, Mann</s>; Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings, Carter</s>; Beyond Infinity, Gregory Benford; and Cartomancy, Gentle. Though I shall make a start this weekend (which begins this evening).
Well, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus (both parts, under current arrangements, though this is likely to change in the event of a federal settlement), Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Serbia, Sweden, Turkey and Ukraine all manage perfectly well as unicameral states. Indeed, Sweden (in 1970) and Croatia (in 2001) actually abolished their upper chambers as part of a programme of democratisation. Both have larger populations than Ireland.
I think it’s a slightly different matter if you have pretensions to federalism, but Ireland doesn’t!