Da Comrade

[threemonkeys]

Another collection of short stories. The little pile of novels that I have started and couldn't get into may point to the reason. Short story collections aren't that easy to come by these days. The local booksellers are very careful about how many they get in as they just don't sell well enough to justify having many on their shelves. I've talked to a number of the buyers from these shops and they would all like to have more short story volumes on their shelves but they can't justify it. Luckily Matt at Arty Bees keeps a box of some secondhand short story titles out in the back room for those few customers who he knows are interested. Unfortunately for me littenz had picked through the current offering a few days before I did so all I came away with was Path Into the Unknown - The Best of Soviet S.F. that was published in 1966.

There isn't much to say about these stories. They are really rather ordinary. The strange alien Russia that I saw in Night Watch and Day Watch is missing. I don't ascribe this to the authors though. I think this is a result of the translators. It really seems to me that the language of the originals has been massaged in order to make them more acceptable to western tastes. At least I think so. Without reference to the originals it is hard to tell. Conversely, they could just be ordinary.

Comments

[littenz.livejournal.com]

And good pickings it was too. I came away with eight volumes: two of which filled in a gap in the Isaac Asimov's Hugo Award Winners series and two more of the Aldiss and Harrison Year's Best series I am collecting, and four others (shelf metrage counts).

I have a volume of Soviet SF at home - if it is different you may borrow the book.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the offer, but my moratorium on book borrowing is still in place while I struggle with the backlog.

[littenz.livejournal.com]

A moratorium on borrowing?
I instituted one on buying (well a controlled buying plan really), which I may now have to resurrect, as the hidden store is getting hard to shut - and I am finding it difficult to reach the top of the stacks. But never on borrowing! Too many people thrust books on me for that to happen.

You are a better man than me...

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Its easy to push back on offers of books - I just think of the extra hassle involved in keeping track of who lent it to me and the responsibility of getting it back in some sort of reasonable timeframe and condition.

Actually, it isn't really a moratorium on borrowing, its a moratorium on obtaining any books that aren't core purchases of things I know I must have Since borrowing can't by definition be a core purchase (not being a purchase at all) then it gets exluded from the set of books to obtain.

Why yes, of course cheap collections of older short form work qualifies as a core purchase. It is a complex internal calculation which cannot easily be explained.