You Can Never Have Too Many Books

Here's a picture of the haul from the World Fantasy Convention:

(We got two of the bright blue bags with the odd aspect ratio, but I only put one in the picture.)

The small pile on the left is a collection of samplers and free magazine issues (if I read them all, I'll have a really good idea of whether I should subscribe to F&SF). The pile in the middle is stuff from the bag of free books that you get for attending WFC. The pile on the right is stuff we bought in the Dealer's Room.

We may need to reinforce the office floor one of these days...

Contents of the piles, for those who care. Free books first:

• The First Betrayal (The Chronicles of Josan, Book 1) by Patricia Bray (2006)
• The Curse of the Raven Mocker by Marly Youmans (2006)
• Undertow by Elizabeth Bear (2007)
• Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller (2004) (two copies)
• The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm (2006)
• 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill (2007)
• Wizardry and Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy by Michael Moorcock (2004)
• Things That Never Were: Fantasies, Lunacies & Entertaining Lies by Matthew Rossi (2003)
• The Leopard Mask (The Guin Saga, Book 1) by Kaoru Kurimoto (2003) (two copies)
• The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld, complied by Stephen Briggs
• Trial of Flowers by Jay Lake
• The Electric Church by Jeff Somers

Purchases:

• A Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear
• Cauldron by Jack McDevitt
• Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon
• Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy by Ekaterina Sedia, ed.
• The Eternal Rose by Gail Dayton
• Howard Who? by Howard Waldrop
• Discarded Science: Ideas that seemed good at the time... and Corrupted Science: Fraud, ideology, and politics in science by John Grant
• The Cracked Throne by Joshua Palmatier
• The Quartered Sea by Tanya Huff

Only one of those is a purchase made because of meeting somebody at the con, and that's the Palmatier book. I spent a while chatting with him at the Zombies Need Brains party, and he's a nice guy who lives in the Binghamton area, so I figured I'd give his book a try, and support the SF scene in the Southern Tier. Paper Cities is a borderline case, because we saw the editor on a panel just before buying it, and spent a little while talking with her afterwards, but I was toying with buying it anyway.

I looked at a couple of books by Manly Wade Wellman, a somewhat obscure fantasist who wrote a bunch of great stories and novels about Appalachia. I really enjoy the Silver John books, and would like to try his other stuff, but the only copies they had were collector's items-- signed first editions and the like. Much as I would like to pick up the only one of the Silver John books that I don't already have (Voice of the Mountain), I can't see paying $80 for it, and the broader collections were all over $100.

Comments on the people and panels will follow later, but right now, I need to stop typing before my neck locks up completely.