The accessions department has a three-week backlog, so I figure I’ll clear that down rather than, y’know, doing my public angst and panic thing¹.

(And I’ve just noticed WordPress presenting me with a “generate image with AI” option, so fuck you very much Automattic, I really need to hurry up and get rid of Jetpack, don’t I?)

• North’s Last Song of Penelope because in this house we believe that Claire North is one of the very best writers working in the English language today, and that with this particular series she has done a great deal to restore faith in the notion of the “feminist retelling” so damaged by what can seem an endless torrent of poorly disguised novel-length axe-grinding paraphrases of Judith Butler. Or, more plainly: I find myself much more appreciative of people telling me What Men Are Really Like when they seem to actually know What Men Are Really Like, and—crucially—to understand how we might have gotten that way.
• Macleod’s Beyond the Hallowed Sky because I’m way behind on Ken’s recent sustained burst of productivity, and I’ve never read a book of his I didn’t like (though I have of course liked some more than others).

(Both of these have actually been read already; the North I started immediately on getting it home in late August and finished in about three days, and the Macleod I finished last night before bed.)

• Klein’s Doppelganger because it’s the latest pick for the bookclub I go to, and while I’ve seen it used as the foil for an illuminating critique, it seems generally to be rated pretty highly, and perhaps as Klein’s best book.
• Utopia on the Tabletop came courtesy of its seemingly tireless editor Jo Lindsay Walton, and was also the subject of my recent diatribe against Postnord’s enthusiasm for shameless highway robbery.

Finally, a comfort-purchase batch from yesterday afternoon.

• Boorman’s Zardoz because, well, I think I saw the movie once, but was sufficiently refreshed with some substance or another that I don’t recall any but the most superficial markers (e.g. a pistol-toting Sean Connery in a red suede jockstrap), all of which I might just as likely have picked up by cultural osmosis… but all I know of it suggests that a novelisation by its notoriously eccentric director should be well worth the price of entry.
• Reeves and Miéville’s The Book of Elsewhere because, look, it’s been a good long while since the last Miéville novel, and while this isn’t quite what I would have asked for on that front, I have to admit I’m curious, even though the reviews are decidedly mixed.
• Green’s Extremophile because eyecatching cover and great title, plus climate-angst-driven biopunk set in London? Gotta be worth a swing, hasn’t it.

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1. Sorry about that, but also not sorry. You may well have been thinking “jeez, Paul, go for a beer with a friend and just offload that stuff”, but writing about it here is not only more effective, it’s also cheaper. ↩︎