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An Early Christmas

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Several years back one of the many wonderful things about blogging came into fruition: The Blogger Secret Santa. The process has become honed to perfection over the years, with a system in place to match you up according to where you are willing to ship, a couple of different price points, a required package tracking system and a sign up process that allows you the opportunity to get good gift ideas for the person you are assigned as well as to help them with gift ideas for you. I look forward to it every year. My blogger secret Santa gift arrived a couple of days ago which meant a little early Christmas for me!

And would it surprise you at all that my gift included books? 😉

My blogger secret Santa was Holly at Book Harbinger. Holly did a wonderful job picking fun things and it is needless to say that I was thrilled.

One of the gifts I received was the above pictured Baen trade paperback of Heinlein’s book Farnham’s Freehold. I was perusing it in the bookstore not long ago and it sounded like another interesting Heinlein novel. Kudos to Baen for keeping so many of Heinlein’s works in print. I’m loving the trade size, will be fun to read.

The second book she got me is the latest Kris Longknife book from Mike Shepard. I saw Scott Grimando‘s cover art for this a long time ago and though I haven’t read the others in the series I really wanted this paperback for the cover. I know, not a surprise at all, is it? It was a book I just couldn’t justify buying for myself which makes it an extra thrill that I got it for a Christmas gift.

Holly also bought me these cool Celtic magnetic bookmarks. I have always wanted to try these things. And given all my Lord of the Rings reading recently, the look and feel of these is perfect!

Thank you so very much Holly for the wonderful Christmas gifts. I hope your secret Santa did as well by you as you did by me and I wish you and yours the very merriest of Christmases!!!
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I also had a birthday recently, November 21st (my 43rd) and I got a few books for my birthday that I wanted to share as well.

Jeff and I had been talking about picking up copies of this when Borders went out of business but my local Borders only had one really warped copy. This has been on my radar since then and I was thrilled that he picked up this pristine copy for me. I’ve read a few things by Dozois and have heard good things about this collection. I’ll be cracking into this one during the upcoming SF Experience!

For the past 5 years or so I’ve been collecting Robert McGinnis book covers, and Jeff got me these two wonderful ones. Both of the ones I have are in much better shape than these pictured. It always amazes me when these older books survive so well.

And finally he picked me up a copy of The Art of Star Wars that covers my favorite of the films, The Empire Strikes Back. It features art by Ralph McQuarrie whose designs for the films are legendary and oh so cool.

Thank you Jeff! Great gifts that I will certainly enjoy!

And last but not least my sister and brother-in-law (and my darling niece) bought a Barnes and Noble gift card for me which I used to pick up this anthology covering the entire first year of the stories for the online magazine Lightspeed. I’ve enjoyed editor John Joseph Adams’ work over at Night Shade Books and this book looks to be chock full of great authors. The book is composed of new fiction and reprints from a cast of talented authors. It really was a no brainer for me when I saw it in the store.

Thank you Abby and Mike and Madelyn for the lovely gift!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful December.

27 thoughts on “An Early Christmas”

    1. Yes, and I have been meaning to send you an email of thanks. I appreciate it!

    2. Me too, although I am in no hurry. Want to savor the month. And get some reading done!!!

    1. I know, I just remembered that. I was thinking about it after I got all the other pics up and then forget again. I’ll have to correct that when I get home tonight.

  4. nice!

    that quote on the cover of ‘when the great days come’ caught my attention. and that anthology looks brilliant.

    1. It is, isn’t it? I’m looking forward to staring the book and seeing if I agree.

  5. oh look! there’s an Anne McCaffrey story in Light Speed.. I hope you like her writing..it might spur you on to read “some other books by her” heh..

      1. unfortunately you wouldn’t know by me LOL.. the twenty some odd Pern books kept me firmly into those. But I have a friend and she loves Anne books that are strictly sci-fi and not Pern! it’s beyond me that anyone could “not” like Pern!

  6. What wonderful surprises! I’m curious to see what you think of Farnham’s Freehold, it’s on the strange side.

    that volume of Lightspeed looks great! I didn’t know they did print editions of their online stories. . . I think I will be on the look out for that!

    1. I think because they had some award nominated stories and the magazine itself they decided to collect the entire years’ worth of stories in one volume. Which works well when you have an editor with a history of getting books published. I’m very excited about cracking into both short story collections.

    1. I had forgotten about it and got in on it the last day. Next year I’ll try to be more on the ball and will actually post about it to help get the word out. It is such a pleasure to buy books for someone and I don’t have a ton of readers in my immediate circle of people I give gifts to, so I love being a part of this every year.

  8. Carl, I love you and your blog. I love the Christmas pics you’re posting. Having been able to get much in the spirit since my children are so far away (and grandchildren), but your pictures and posts are lifting me today! Thanks for all you do to make my holidays so happy throughout the year, though I don’t always leave you notes to tell you so. You are just the best! :]
    Deborah

    1. Awww, thank you so much! Very wonderful to hear, especially on a Friday. I imagine it is hard to get in the spirit without family close by. I’m not looking forward to that part of my daughter moving on, especially if for some reason she ends up out of the area. You are very, very welcome and thank you. Hope the spirit catches you here before long. 🙂

  9. AllI can say is shame on you for opening Christmas presents before December 25. Tsk, tsk. I’ve reported this to Santa, There are penalties for this behavior, you know. So if he skips you on Christmas Eve, you have no one to blame but yourself. I did happen to mention to him that he could deliver your presents here to me, but I thought that was a pretty selfless solution to the whole mess.

    Really, you should not be opening Christmas presents before Christmas ! ! ! ! !

    1. The only excuse I can give is that it all came in an Amazon box and nothing was wrapped, so I didn’t know when I opened it that it wasn’t one of many things I’ve ordered for gifts this year.

      How’s that for an excuse?

      But just to be completely honest, I opened a “to Carl from Santa” gift last night, Super 8, so that we could watch it with a friend of ours who hadn’t seen it.

      Nice of you to be looking out for me that way. 😉

  10. Hey, I got the package you sent me for the Holiday Swap! Thank you!!! I love the art, but I’m waiting to open the presents — which I’m assuming to be books, but which ones?? 😀 — on Christmas. I’m a lucky girl. 🙂

    1. Look at you and your self control! My gifts weren’t wrapped and I was expecting a package from Amazon of stuff I ordered so I didn’t have that opportunity to wait…and I wouldn’t have anyway! LOL! Now of course I’ll be thinking about it next year and if the opportunity presents itself I’ll have to see if I have any self control.

  12. Good times! Gotta love an early Christmas, and I just posted about the Book Blogger Holiday Swap today as well. They really have worked out a perfectly wonderful system. 🙂

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