h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yeah Donaldson's a little weird. The Gap series is a masterpiece though. I've read both Covenant trilogies as well and Reave the Just but not the others.

Feist is firmly into Fantasy while McCaffrey has a few Scifi novels as well which aren't too bad. The Problem with her though is that the books don't get any better. Nor worse for that matter. They are just the same standard right the way through. That's a little unusual for most of the authors I read.

I was disappointed by the ending of the Second Covenant trilogy, but apart from that have enjoyed his work. As for the Gap series, I literally read the last book non-stop. It was the first, and so far only, time that I literally could not put a book down - I read all through the night 'til about 7am as I so needed to know how it ended. I wonder what he's up to now?
The first thing I read of his was "The Mirror Of Her Dreams"/"A Man Rides Through It" Mordant series - which is very similar to Thomas Covenant in style, but definately enjoyable.
At the moment I'm about to experiment with Julian May - I'll let you know what I think.
Do Feist and McCaffrey write books in series, or single books? One thing that really annoys me is reading a book that is one of a series, but not having the rest to read! To avoid frustration, I try and collect as much of the books in a row as I can before reading them, which with authors like C.J. Cherryh is quite difficult!

<BB<

Feist does series based on a world called Midkemia. He's got four or so of them written (3-4 books per series) and is working on another (three books in). The first book is called Magician.

McCaffrey has written something like 40-50 books or something stupid like that and most of them are part of one series or another. Most of them concentrate on a worlds called Pern and on Dragons that are used to defend it from an alien life form that eats carbon. I think it starts with Dragonflight.

What was really annoying about reading Donaldson and McCaffrey in particular was the absence of the full series in any shops I went to. I've had to order half of the books by McCaffrey and really struggled to find the first two books of the Gap series when I started looking for them. All the shops seem to stock the second half of the series, not realising that people might want to read them from the beginning.

I had things the other way round - as I buy all my books second hand, I find the first few books in a series really easy to get copies of, but the latest ones, as they haven't had a chance to be read and re-sold, are almost impossible. I normally have to wait at least 5 years after it's been published. But it makes buying a whole set quite hard, as it's more a case of seeing what you can find - you never know what you're going to get, unlike a bookshop.

<BB<

I should do that because I spend far too much on books... Though getting booktokens for my birthday was good because I was able to get 8 books at once (it was the reason I started with Anne McCaffrey )

I enjoy second-hand book buying as half the time it's buying from charity shops, so you're not only getting a book, but helping to raise money to find a cure for cancer, help the elderly, third world etc. It's also a lot more interesting as I think you get a much more unique atmosphere in each shop, and as they tend to be smaller than bookshops, get to know the people who run the shops a little - and they look out for books that they know you'd like. Plus there's the thrill of the hunt - you never know what you'll find.

And the fact it's cheaper helps.

<BB<

Because I'm concentrating on getting books by specific authors, I find using bookshops more useful. I also find that the second hand stuff tends to be overfilled with romance and fifth rate thrillers.

It's true - if I had 1p for every Mills & Boon book I saw in a second-hand book shop I'd be a multi-millionaire
But you do get second-hand book shops with layouts more user-friendly than normal book shops. It all depends on where you are and which one you're at. Afterall, no 2 shops are the same. It depends if you go to a charity shop or a specific second-hand paperback exchange. At an exchange they're fussy over what books they'll buy as they want to have things which are sellable - which is where knowing the owner of the shop helps, so he'll look out for stuff for you, whereas charity shops fill up with any old rubbish.

<BB<

I've seen a couple of good second hand books shops, private shops that happen to buy in a few extra books but the charity shops seem hardly ever worth it for whay I'm looking for. Might keep it in mind if I'm looking for another new author

Well, you never know what you might find in them - you tend to get older books, copies of things that haven't been published in the last 10 years, as private shops only get books with (fairly) immaculate covers, so nothing that is out-of-print (unless you ask them to). It's an art form, though, finding the decent books amongst the chaff.

<BB<

Provided you've not walked into a chaff silo in the first place

Ah yes... Provided that.

<BB<

I see you've signed up for the meetup then. Is there anyone who's been to all of them now?

I don't really know...
Possibly someone like Abi or Peta. I've been to all except the "Unofficial Official" one in the summer of 1999, but the three London ones since then. Shazz has been to all of those as well, so she may have attended them all.
You'll have to find out who attended the first.

<BB<

I think Shazz made it to that first one but at the second Hyde park meetup (my only one to date) I'm fairly sure someone said that there were only a couple of researchers that had made it to those three...

The only people I remember having attended the first two I attended were Mark, Peta, Abi, Menza, Shazz, TowelMaster and Pastey - so I guess that it would probably be some of them.
Strange to think that I met Abi when she was just someone working for the National Lottery, and not H2G2

<BB<

How weird would it have been for people attending the first one meeting Peta then