I’ve gotten really bad at writing these on time, I’m afraid. I want to blame the heat and workload at my jobs, which definitely are factors, but lately I’ve just lacked the motivation, and I’m sorry for that. At any rate, I acquired some nice new books in July, some of which I’d been looking for for a while.

Let’s see what I a managed to pick up.

New Books

This first pair of books I picked up during a visit home to Toronto. After spending time with a friend downtown, I wandered off to one of my favourite used bookstores to sell off some books I didn’t want anymore. With the crisp $20 I got in return, I picked up The Dead Zone by Stephen King and Come Closer by Sara Gran.

I’d been meaning to buy the mass market paperback of King’s book for a while to get it to match a bunch of the others I have, so I was pleased to come across this copy. Gran’s book caught my attention fairly recently (I believe it was a “Novel Discovery” in late 2023), so I was thrilled to find a copy, especially since it’s fairly short. I’ll probably read it this October. I was actually scrambling to find something at the store when I came across it and didn’t want to grab just any old guff, so this was an especially pleasing find.

Both of these books were purchased at my favourite local bookshop, though at different times. Greatest Hits by Harlan Ellison is a book I’ve been looking out for ever since I learned about it, as it finally allowed me to buy a “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” in print form. For some reason, I didn’t want to just order it, however, so finding it i the wild was an exciting turn of a events and I couldn’t resist picking it up.

Strange Pictures by Uketsu I picked up while browsing the store with a friend from out of town. I had already picked up Strange Houses, but this book was the one that first brought Uketsu to my attention, so I decided to commemorate our little visit with a book purchase (such contrived reasons I make). I just read Strange Houses and was a little underwhelmed by it, unfortunately, but I’m still hopeful about Strange Pictures.

Novel Discoveries

Internet Crusader by George Wylesol is the only book that sort of counts on this list. I added it to my TBR in July, but I actually learned about it months ago. I didn’t want to leave this section blank if I could help it, though, so here we are. Unfortunately, I couldn’t convince my library to order a copy of this book, but I’d still really like to read it. Curses was a bit disappointing because it was more surreal and abstract than I was expecting, but with this book promising a singular narrative told through collages of art inspired by 90s chat windows and computer games, I’m hopeful that this one will captivate me in a way similar to how the brilliant 2120 did.

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Until next time, thank you for reading!