In my daily trolling of the web, I ran across a pretty cool deal that John Scalzi has up on his page: Humble eBook Bundle

If you have an e-book reader and like SFF (or have always thought about trying it out), you can get the following books for whatever price you’re willing to pay.

• Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow, an intense story of youthful techno-defiance
• Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, a hard-hitting collection of 11 impactful stories
• Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, an alternate Earth mystical science fiction tale
• Invasion: The Secret World Chronicle by Mercedes Lackey, Steve Libby, Dennis Lee, and Cody Martin, a modern military superhero saga packed with bonus content
• Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link, a delightful fantasy collection of 11 stories
• Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link, the cross-genre follow-up to Stranger Things Happen

And, if you go over the average price (which would mean paying about $12.50, at least as of ten minutes ago), you also get:

• Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, a science fiction war epic
• Signal to Noise by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, an ethereal graphic novel of a man’s last days

I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy of Old Man’s War for a while now.  And Neil Gaiman and Cory Doctorow have been on my list of authors to check out for quite some time.  So, it seemed worth it to me.  Plus, I’d been boycotting e-books ever since they doubled the prices on them overnight in the country where I was at the time, so this is a good excuse to get some new books added to my e-reader.

Of course, the last thing I needed to buy was more books.  Two weeks ago I met my mom for lunch at the B&N and ended up buying two books.  Then I was running early for dinner one night and stopped and bought another book.  And then I decided to swing by this cool indie book store that was at the writing conference I was at and ended up buying three more books.  That on top of all the other books I already had to read.  (I currently have one of those long plastic shoe containers in my storage unit that is full of books I need to read.)

Ah well.  At least my addictions expand my mind…(and now I can call them research.)

BTW, random book recommendation.  I just finished Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone by Carol Berg.  Took me a little to get into the first one and I was a little frustrated once or twice that certain characters didn’t see things earlier, but overall really excellent books and quick reads.

And, since I promised pictures this week:

I had a really nice hike yesterday, which included going up this lovely little “staircase” and scrambling over rocks along the base of a canyon.  Not a hike I would recommend if there were any sort of rain anticipated in the forecast.  I kept thinking, “I sure wouldn’t want to be here during a flash flood…”  But definitely a nice hike to do this time of year.  (Even if the waterfall at the end was more a wet rock face…)

I wish I had better pictures to show, but for some reason pictures of this area come out looking very…dry.  Stunning it is.  New Zealand it is not.