Four New, Three Used

Today I went to Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore in its new, post-fire location at 2716 E. 31st Street in Minneapolis. It wasn't the first time I've been there, but one of the first few times.

I had recently asked the store to order a copy of Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon, which is the first book in her Temeraire series. A friend has the other seven books in the series, but he loaned the first book to someone who never returned it, so I thought would get him a copy of the first book (and read it first), then borrow the rest of his books.

I've enjoyed all of Novik's more recent books, and Cory Doctorow recently wrote a post praising the Temeraire as well.

Going into Uncle Hugo's is dangerous, however. While I was at the store to pick up that book, I also saw and brought home:

• Starlings, a collection of short stories by Jo Walton, one of my all-times favorites. I didn't know about this collection.
• The City & The City by China Miéville, a book that I always see mentioned as fantastic in science fiction circles, so why not? (I have used copies of some of his other books, which I've never managed to start...that may answer why not.)
• The Spare Man, the newest book by Mary Robinette Kowal. I've loved her other books so that seems like a good bet.

After a quick run through the new books, I got out my "list of books to get," which I keep in my phone, and wandered back to the used book area. In the order I found them:

• Shikasta by Doris Lessing. I've had the last three books in her series for years, but I've never gotten ahold of the first book, so now it's complete. I remember when these books came out and resenting them, because Lessing insisted they weren't science fiction. Nonetheless, I've always meant to read them.
• On the shelf right across the aisle from Lessing I found a very obscure book called The Watch by Dennis Danvers. I'm not sure how I even came to add it into my phone. I think I saw it on a list of the best time-travel novels. This copy is an uncorrected proof, so it doesn't have the cover art.
• A first edition of Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, which I think was also on that list of best time-travel novels.
  

Now I have even more books to read. More escapism.

This is probably a good thing.