(Romanian jaws, and detail work from an original Svankmajer we bought at the famous Gamba Gallery.)

For some reason we took more photographs of Romanian books but wound up buying a lot of books by Czech authors in translation. We also encountered intriguing Czech editions of Milos Urban in Prague bookstores, and were delighted to be told by a bookstore employee at the famous Anagram Bookstore that an English edition, through a Finnish publisher (?!), of one of his books would be available this year. Urban’s work, from what we saw, appears to be relatively unique, in a slipstream, pseudo-Gothic vein. Note also this free poster we got, created especially for Anagram:

At the same time, we also bought some books in the Zurich and Budapest airports, which we wound up getting a chance to read. (I’d brought Mo Hayder’s Pig Island with me from the US, which I can sum up thusly: 1st 200 pages excellent with creepy Wickerman atmosphere; 2nd 150 pages waffling but setting up any number of possibilities; last 75 pages banal, predictable, rushed, and disappointing. I love Hayder’s work, but felt she let me down this time.)

Here’s a link to all of our photos of books from Romania, including Horia Ursu’s excellent library, and photos from book launches, etc.

And below find comments on what we bought and brought back.

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When I was a kid, my parents had a few couples of friends with whom they used to play cards on Saturday evenings. Whether it was bridge night or canasta night, we almost always had someone over for dinner on Saturday. This led me to believe that having guests was somewhat a fatality for my poor parents. At about the age my daughter Stefana has now, one of these visiting couples made the mistake to ask me what I wanted to become when I’ll grow up. I answered without hesitation: “I wanna be a guest!”. They laughed politely and my mom, knowing me, tried to move on with the conversation, but the lady who had asked me in the first place wanted to know more: “Why a guest?” And the answer silenced her (and sent my dad to the bathroom, where from we almost instantly heard him laughing histerically): “Yes, a guest, because guests always come when the house is cleaned, the food is ready and there’s only fun left to be had”.

I remembered this anecdote (one that my dad used to bring up whenever there were not so welcomed guests around) today, thinking that I have finally achieved my childhood dream. I am a guest, and a guest-blogger at that: the blog is here, the audience ready-built and eager for my words. In consequence, it’s time to have fun!

No, no more letters from my lawyer this time. Fun has become a peculiar notion for me, the almost forty-year-old publisher and reviewer (I do the occasional book reviews on my blog or for Nautilus, a webzine hosted by my fiercest rival in Romanian publishing but edited by my friend, writer Michael Haulică) who spends most of his time reading and writing about books. Fun is NOT reading books for review or publishing consideration purposes. Fun is spending time with my girls and doing carpentry work at the country house I bought this spring. And fun is also reading books for my own pleasure. I might end up reviewing them or even publishing them, but the initial impulse is, ALWAYS, aimed at having fun. I buy them from Amazon.com or B&N (they finally lifted the ban from Romanian ordering) or in the local bookstores or at bookfairs. Sometimes friends send them, sometimes I find them (on this blog, sometimes). I read them in days or merely hours. And these are the books I always end up recommending to others, even if I’m not their publisher, even if my best interest would be to push my own books. These are the ones that get pictured in my now regular bookporn blog posts, with their covers displayed to be seen by all, with sometimes even their first page being offered, scribbled with an autograph, to the salacious eyes of voyeur readers.

And, since being a guest is about having fun, I thought I’d show you some of the books I’ve had fun with this year, so far. (more…)

While Jeff is at the Shared Worlds Camp, I have had the pleasure of checking the mail each day (btw - he’s having a blast at camp and just spent the last few days with guest writer/lecturer Ekaterina Sedia).  Here is a photo of all books received this week - above - some for review and others just because…

And I also am excited to present the working cover for Best American Fantasy.  ARCs will be out very shortly and the actual book is scheduled for a  November release.  Here’s the cover:

In other news, the next issue of Weird Tales is about to hit newsstands any day now.   Lots of good stuff in there, including fiction from Norman Spinrad, Karen Heuler, Nick Mamatas, Kelly Barnhill and others as well as an interview with Mike Mignola by Elizabeth Genco, Lost in Lovecraft and other Weirdisms.  Check it out.

More photos after the cut and a bit of help from Jackson….

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Ann here, just posting briefly to say thanks to Michelle Richmond for such great guest blogging. Next week, Fabio Fernandes!

I also wanted show off the cover of the Czech edition of The New Weird, pictured above. The first foreign edition of anything with my name on it. I’m very excited. Laser Books (Martin Sust, editor) is the publisher. And, here is the cover art for the pirates antho, design still forthcoming:

Also note that the International Horror Guild Award finalists have been announced. I’m a judge and can tell you we worked very hard in coming up with this list.

In other news, Shared Worlds is happy to announce that Will Hindmarch will be joining the guest lecturers (including Tobias Buckell and Ekaterina Sedia). For those readers not familiar with Will, he is a Chicago-born freelance writer and designer with experience on more than fifty books as an author, developer, or graphic designer. In 2007, Will co-founded the gameplay-and-story outfit, Gameplaywright.net, with Jeff Tidball. He is also a proud contributor to the book, Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, available from MIT Press. Will’s writing has appeared in The Escapist, Atlanta magazine, Everywhere magazine and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. In 2007, he was a judge for the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Competition. In 2004, he and his wife moved to Atlanta, sight-unseen, like carpetbaggers, so he could become a professional lunatic for White Wolf Game Studio, serving as the developer of the flagship World of Darkness Storytelling Game, Vampire: The Requiem.

In connection with Shared Worlds, workshop director Jeremy Jones interviewed Jeff, mostly about Steampunk.

Finally, just so you know Jeff’s still alive, here are some photos he took recently to chronicle his recent activities. (He heads off to Shared Worlds Saturday and I get some well-earned peace…Remember that he and Buckell are reading at Malaprops on July 31.) Some of these photos may be cryptic. I’m happy to provide context if you have questions… (Also, thanks to Matt Staggs for many, many things.)

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(John Twelve Hawks [?] letter makes my Bulletin Board of the Miscellaneous)

Well, actually, I write now not to damn John Twelve Hawks, but to praise him. Some amongst you may remember that this past week I down-graded John Twelve Hawks to Eleven Turkeys and then, eventually One Sparrow–because of his reluctance to shed his pen name and come forth into the light.

Now, I have received the following missive, supposedly from John Twelve Hawks, and I find that, assuming the letter is indeed from him, I must praise him unreservedly for having a great and devious sense of humor.

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Many books to talk about in what will be my last books received piece for at least a week or two. First off, the Meg Gardiner novels pictured above. I really love this series, and so I bought the mass markets in the bookstore even though I have advance reader copies. Very nice packaging, too.

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For a couple of years now Kate Bernheimer, in addition to all of the other wonderful editing and writing she does, has been working on Fairy Tale Review, which she founded and now helms. Contributors have included Donna Tartt, Marina Warner, Rikki Ducornet, Stacey Levine, and many more. It’s a elegant production and always thought-provoking. I have to admit that I go through phases where I get tired of folklore and re-told folktales, but each issue of The Fairy Tale Review has been near perfect, and I read each one from cover to cover.

Very impressed with Valley of Day-Glo.

Excerpt:
Absurdist fictions tread a fine line. If they try too hard to present three-dimensional characters, they lose the pacing and quickness needed to pull off such a difficult task. If they, on the other hand, make too much fun of their characters or present characters that are too flat, the absurdity isn’t grounded in anything real. As important, good absurdism must be self-deprecating in a sense and must treat every human institution with similar suspicion. Finally, a great absurdist novel relies on fresh, uncliched images and should be, at times, biting rather than comfortable.

I loved all three of these books, as should be clear from the feature. Swamps, caves, and shorelines–how the heck can you go wrong?! I’m adding all three to my rec list on the right.

Excerpt:
But, for me at least, there’s another pleasure that comes from reading Walking the Wrack Line, and it’s selfishly personal. I’m one of those readers who also likes mucking about in tidal pools and searching the beach for seaweed, driftwood, and exotic creatures washed up far from home. On that level, Hurd’s book also has great appeal. Because nothing in Walking the Wrack Line seems false; instead, it’s as if someone had had the same experience, and knew the best way to get it down in prose.

Other than listing someone other than Ann VanderMeer as the fiction editor, a great review by Sam Taimano of the 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales at the SF Revue. “Creature” is, as noted, an exceptional first published story.

Excerpt:
The fiction begin with a beautiful, lyric tale from Tanith Lee, “The Heart of Ice”. Nirsen is thrown out of his town, falsely accused of rape. He awakens to find himself out on the cold and snow but finds his way to the palace of the Ice Maiden. He spends the winter there and emerges deeply changed. Next we have the first published story by Ramsey Shehadeh, “Creature”. An amorphous beast with psychic powers approaches a town. He encounters a poor, little girl who is looking for her mother. There are those that would harm the girl and he becomes her protector. Shehadeh has written a touching, very compassionate story and I will be looking forward to more from him.