Knights & Knaves Alehouse

I love Jack Vance's The Dying Earth.

I thought The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga were funny but forgettable.

I disliked Rhialto the Marvellous.

Thus, I've read The Dying Earth several times, while I've read the others only once.

Here is my favorite passage from Vance, the opening paragraph of "Mazirian the Magician" in The Dying Earth:

""Deep in thought, Mazirian the Magician walked his garden. Trees fruited with many intoxications overhung his path, and flowers bowed obsequiously as he passed. An inch above the ground, dull as agates, the eyes of mandrakes followed the tread of his black-slippered feet. Such was Mazirian's garden--three terraces growing with strange and wonderful vegetations. Certain plants swam with changing iridescences; others held up blooms pulsing like sea-anemones, purple, green, lilac, pink, yellow. Here grew trees like feather parasols, trees with transparent trunks threaded with red and yellow veins, trees with foliage like metal foil, each leaf a different metal--copper, silver, blue tantalum, bronze, green iridium. Here blooms like bubbles tugged gently upward from glazed green leaves, there a shrub bore a thousand pipe-shaped blossoms, each whistling softly to make music of the ancient Earth, of the ruby-red sunlight, water seeping through black soil, the languid winds. And beyond the roqual hedge the trees of the forest made a tall wall of mystery. In this waning hour of Earth's life no man could count himself familiar with the glens, the glades, the dells and deeps, the secluded clearings, the ruined pavilions, the sun-dappled pleasaunces, the gullys and heights, the various brooks, freshets, ponds, the meadows, thickets, brakes and rocky outcrops."

Recently finished reading "The Savage Sword of Conan" which is a collection of the early Conan magazines (issues 1 thru 5) put out by marvel comics. Now I'm reading through a number of the Palladium Fantasy World books.

I'm re-reading Martin's Song of Ice and Fire in the dim hopes that the 5th book will be close to being out by the time I'm done.

Why? Because I'm a moron, that's why.

<sigh>

rogatny wrote:I'm re-reading Martin's Song of Ice and Fire in the dim hopes that the 5th book will be close to being out by the time I'm done.

Why? Because I'm a moron, that's why.

<sigh>

I've got some property east of Pointe a la Hache that may interest you.

TheRedPriest wrote:I've got some property east of Pointe a la Hache that may interest you.

ROFLMAO!

rogatny wrote:I'm re-reading Martin's Song of Ice and Fire in the dim hopes that the 5th book will be close to being out by the time I'm done.

Why? Because I'm a moron, that's why.

<sigh>

Guilty pleasure for me too. The first couple weren't too bad, but too many characters and subplots seem to have slowed the pace to a crawl in the later ones. Maybe the HBO series will be decent.

TheRedPriest wrote:

rogatny wrote:I'm re-reading Martin's Song of Ice and Fire in the dim hopes that the 5th book will be close to being out by the time I'm done.

Why? Because I'm a moron, that's why.

<sigh>

I've got some property east of Pointe a la Hache that may interest you.

Yeah. In addition to the wearisome 11 year wait for any of the further adventures of Jon, Tyrion, and Daenerys (you know, the main characters who aren't dead [yet]) and the perplexing fourth volume that largely focused on a number of secondary characters which opened more plot threads than it resolved, I am finding that a number of the chapters are more tedious than enjoyable. Particularly the Cat chapters. Maybe it's because I know, "You and pretty much everyone else in this chapter are going to be dead by the end of the book, so why should I care?"

God, he's such a frustrating author!

Just started a collection of W. Somerset Maugham's Ashenden stories. In the last couple years Maugham has become one of my favorite authors, and I haven't even read what are generally considered to be his best books (Of Human Bondage and The Razor's Edge) yet.

I'm in the middle of reading:

The Three Musketeers (yes, still, it was so long that I paused to read other books)
Le Morte Darthur
The Magic May Return

In other personal literature news, I've officially started working on my first edition Dunsany collection:

I've had an old hardcover Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley sitting around for quite some time, and I recently dropped a few bucks on Tales of War. There is a copy of Tales of Three Hemispheres at my local bookstore, and considering the eBay prices, I'll probably buy it soon.

(It'll be a good little sub-hobby as the books are hard to find outside of libraries, other than POS-quality paperback reprints.)

Random wrote:In other personal literature news, I've officially started working on my first edition Dunsany collection:

I've had an old hardcover Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley sitting around for quite some time, and I recently dropped a few bucks on Tales of War. There is a copy of Tales of Three Hemispheres at my local bookstore, and considering the eBay prices, I'll probably buy it soon.

(It'll be a good little sub-hobby as the books are hard to find outside of libraries, other than POS-quality paperback reprints.)

That's pretty cool. I'm not a very good collector (I don't have either the money or the patience, plus if I do end up with something collectible I always want to use it and destroy its value) so I've made due with those "POS-quality paperback reprints" -- and even tracking down those isn't all that easy, considering all the small-press versions and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy versions that have themselves been oop for ~40 years).

Well, I have the advantage of living a couple of miles from one of the most well-stocked used bookstores in the country (or so I have heard, but I believe it; the place is massive). I can usually find some nifty obscure volumes, and the prices are generally reasonable (i.e., less than online prices).

Oh, and I was mostly refering to the multitude of more recent reprints. They aren't even trying; the typeface is "blah" (for lack of a better term) and makes the books hard to read.

Anyone know a really good used bookstore in or near Chicago? There’s got to be one...

TheRedPriest wrote:

rogatny wrote:I'm re-reading Martin's Song of Ice and Fire in the dim hopes that the 5th book will be close to being out by the time I'm done.

Why? Because I'm a moron, that's why.

<sigh>

I've got some property east of Pointe a la Hache that may interest you.

LOL

Luke Rhinehart's "The Dice Man". Not fantasy, but many here might appreciate the idea of actually living by random tables...

Falconer wrote:Anyone know a really good used bookstore in or near Chicago? There’s got to be one...

Well, there are five or six Half Price Books in the Chicago-land area. I usually hit a few when I am there. Product varies wildly.