Kraken in handen
China Miéville’s Kraken isn’t out in the US until June. (His The City & The City recently won the Clarke award.) Today something reminded me that the European release date might be different — and indeed, the American Book Center listed it as released in May… but weren’t letting on when in May. Since it’s a beautiful sunny day, I took a wander into town on the off-chance. It wasn’t on the shelves and the bloke at the ABC didn’t know any more than me (he looked it up on a fancy internal website, with no more information than the external one). “Supposed to be out in May,” he said, “but we don’t have it. I suggest you wait for June. Brits are often late.”
Still, it couldn’t hurt to pop in to Waterstones and make sure, right?1 And, score one for British punctuality, there it was.
Now I need to cancel all engagements for 72 hours or so (it’s quite chunky, 481 pages) so I can read it.
Notes:
Comments
Amsterdam is wonderful for browsing, but actually not usually so handy for getting what you already know you want. Everything is quite specialised, so usually there will be one or maybe two places that might stock it, and if they don't have it: bad luck.
Pricing is also not so encouraging: Amazon lists Kraken at just over half the price I paid for it (ex. shipping). That's how much of an impulse-buy fan I am.
(First impressions so far: unless I'm missing something, needed a slightly more awake editor. Frequent minor, but annoying, glitches that might eventually add up to something weird but might just be ... glitches.)
That's what I envy people living in big cities in continental Europe: bookshops. Here in Bergen getting a book in English is a problem. Of course there are bookshops which sell those, but if the biggest one -- Narli -- doesn't have Miéville's books at all, then a chance for any other bookshop to have it is very low. And there aren't actually too many bookshops either. The situation here is worse than in Leuven (which is almost 4 times smaller) and much, much worse than in Warsaw (which is 4 times bigger, agreed, but is also in a former communist country). Oh and not to mention that a paperback novel in English bought in Bergen will be approximately twice as expensive as bought online. That's why I have to order everything from amazon, and the sad part is I really miss sitting in a bookshop browsing books.