The Little Dog Laughed

In the course of reading Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority, of which more anon, I ran across a reference to Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt. And it occurred to me that it might be an interesting book to read. Especially as it was, apparently, controversial when it first appeared.

Therefore, I decided to order a copy and so wandered off to The Hive, which delivers purchases to my local bookshop and gives them a share of the purchase price, too. With luck I will have it shortly.

While ordering, I decided I might buy a book from the Mistressworks list as well, as part of my, ahem, ongoing attempt to read those books. But the first one I found, Angel at Apogee, was a POD book costing £9.99. Considering that fiction in paperback usually costs £7.99--even for big fat books like Divergent--this was something of a stumbling block. Eventually I may end up having to pay it, but I wasn't prepared to pay it today. Although I have paid far more ridiculous prices to complete my PKD collection. Not however prices of the order of ~£130, which is what I'd have to pay to get Margaret St. Clair's Agent of the Unknown, it seems. In paperback, too. And not, so far as I could see, gold-plated. Not going there today either. Nope.

I went over to good old Awesome Books and had a look at what they might have secondhand from the MWorks list. There, I picked up three for under £8 from their Bargain Bin, with free delivery. Awesome indeed.

So, in addition to the Eichmann, I'm expecting the following:

Benefits by Zoe Fairbairns;
Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller
and
Catseye by Andre Norton.

Some time last year, one of our cats, who shall remain nameless, ruined several of my books in a way that won't be discussed. As we* have now agreed the source of the funding to replace them, these books are on their way to me:

Incredible Visual Illusions by Al Seckel;
Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass;
Longbow: A Social and Military History by Robert Hardy;
Captain Bligh** and Mr Christian: The Men and the Mutiny by Richard Hough;
Scourging Angel: The Black Death in the British Isles by Benedict Gummer;
War and Medicine from Black Dog Publishing;
Cannae: Hannibal's Greatest Victory by Adrian Golsworthy
and
The Fall of Carthage by Mr Goldsworthy again.

Another book that I thought was ruined proved to be salvageable at the cost of its dust jacket. Well, I guess that's what dust jackets are FOR.

*Where 'we' does not mean 'the cat and I'.
**All day I've been spelling Bligh as Blight.

Email from The Hive telling me my order is waiting to be picked up at my local independent bookshop. No confirmation email from The Book People despite site claiming one would be sent. Not in the spam filter. Maybe it got filtered out before it even reached there? Or wasn't sent? Or or or or...?

Gah.

Status on website is 'In Progress' so maybe that's okay. Don't want a rerun of the Alibris experience where the books ended up arriving months after the birthday they were ordered for, one was damaged in transit, and I got a refund for it without even asking because the service had been so crap. A refund is nice and almost but not quite makes up for weeks of irritation with people who don't answer emails and only ship the books at all when you complain.

Maybe there were good reasons. I don't know because at no time did the bookshop ever contact me to explain.

I do like to get a confirmation email, though. It's a handy record of what I ordered when. Whereas keeping the confirmation page open is...annoying. And writing anything down futile in an environment where anything I write down (and anything not nailed down) mysteriously disappears. Like my Benadryl.

This used to be a shelf I had on Goodreads that I kept to remind myself of books I'd ordered so I'd notice if they didn't arrive. Books have to arrive!

My aunt asked me to try to get hold of a copy of a book called Twister by Jack M. Bickham. Apparently it's such a favourite with her that her copy is falling apart. I found a few copies on Alibris but most of them are so absurdly cheap that the price of postage looms large. What I usually do in this situation is search the seller to see if they've got any books that are on my wishlist, so that I can consolidate the shipping and feel slightly less bad about it. Emphasis on 'slightly'.

What I have en route therefore is Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey and a book by James Tiptree, Jr that I didn't even know existed: Brightness Falls From the Air. Although better known for her short stories, Tiptree did I believe write a couple of novels. One more for the girl cooties shelf therefore.

There's several books by Joanna Russ that I'm still trying to get hold of but which never seem to turn up during these consolidated shipping searches. Meh. Time and again I find the ones I already have.

Am still looking for somewhere to host my wishlist. Monissaw suggested Wishpot but it keeps telling me the server returned an error. Not very user-friendly.