Procrastinated this too long once again, which is strange because I believe this to have been another rather singular month where I didn’t pick up much. I’m worried there’s something or other I’m forgetting, but I really don’t think that’s the case. Though I am prone to my impulses, I am considering cost and space a lot more, so I’m trying to get things from the library more often. A big case in point is how many books I read last month from the library compared to books I own.

Let’s see what I did pick up, despite always being restrained.

New Books

The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, The Bloody Crown of Conan, and The Conquering Sword of Conan by Robert E. Howard are three illustrated collections of stories about titular Conan the Barbarian. I’ve been meaning to read Howard’s work on and off for many years, and by chance I came across these three books at a local bookstore. Initially, I held back and didn’t pick them up, but every so often a book I’ve come across worms its way into my brain and I don’t stop thinking about picking it up (or them up, in this case). I proceeded to look these books up online to see how readily available they are and found that they’re not exactly plentiful at their typical sale price. Maybe I just didn’t look well enough, but I took this as a motivator to just pick them up. I like that they’re split into three volumes, so it’s less of a daunting task to read them all together, and they also won’t all count as one book on reading challenges this way. Plus, it has illustrations. They’re not deluxe and colourful or anything, but I’d rather have them than not.

Novel Discoveries

Ghostlore: Unveiling 50 Phantoms that have Haunted History by Icy Sedgwick and Mabel Esteban García caught my eye because of the cross-section of my love for horror, mythology, and the paranormal (as a curiosity rather than a belief). I believe I came across this book at the same bookstore I did the Conan books. I’ll probably try to track this down at a library or something, but it looks like a lot of fun as a lighter sort of read.

I was made aware of A Distant Soil: The Gather by Colleen Doran after reading Chivalry last month, which is a graphic novel adaptation of a Neil Gaiman short story by Doran. If I recall, she mentions it during the afterward. I’m not sure if I’ll actually check this out, especially as I think it’s an older book that may not be widely in print, but I love her illustration work enough that I didn’t want to forget about it.

The Encyclopedia of Early Earth by Isabel Greenberg I learned about after reading the author’s graphic novel Glass Town about the Juvenilia of the Brontë sisters (and their brother). I quite liked that graphic novel and looked into more of the author’s work. I can’t recall if I came across this book on Goodreads or the library, but either way my library has this one as well, so I’ll likely read it relatively soon. I don’t recall much of what it’s supposed to be about, but the title has drawn me in enough.

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Until next time, thank you for reading!