From the Boekenmarkt Spui:

  • Hugo Claus, “Het Verdriet van België” (“The Sorrow of Belgium”). A classic, apparently, recommended by Marijn. At a hefty 774 pages, this should keep me going for a while.
  • “Sometime, Never: 3 Outstanding Tales of Science and Fantasy”. I can hear my mother sighing deeply… but this is good stuff! It’s William Golding (“Lord of the Flies”), John Wyndham (“The Kraken Wakes”, “The Day of the Triffids”) and Mervyn Peake (the Gormenghast trilogy): three giants of British sf and fantasy. The Wyndham is “Consider Her Ways”, a classic of sf as social comment; Peake’s “Boy in darkness” is the source of the stilt-walker’s play performed for Titus over the lake on his birthday (the Hyena, the Goat and the Lamb as terrible figures). I don’t know Golding’s “Envoy extraordinary” –in fact I only know him from “Lord of the Flies”– so I don’t know what to expect there.

And from Amazon (shame on me…), Hal Duncan’s Ink, the sequel to Vellum. It’s extraordinary, even more so than Vellum (and that was surely extraordinary). I’m going to have to re-read it, but the first take already blew me away. (Only downside: the paper quality is terrible, I might even consider getting the hardcover at some point.)

Also from somewhere online (AbeBooks? maybe?), Jeff VanderMeer’s City of Saints and Madmen. Review coming at some point, the short version: disappointing, take Miéville’s New Crobuzon novels instead.

From the BooksPrice.com advertising giveaway, Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red.