From Ballard to Moers: Books Received, Bought, and Stolen...

(Two of my favorite authors, Walter Moers and Brian Evenson, have new books out...)Shared Worlds and deadlines have put paid to my ability to post about books received, but here are just a few choice selections for now...***From Zeising Books, I picked up Mervyn Peake's selected poems. Peake is an underrated poet, one of my favorites. I also got Derek Raymond's memoirs/thoughts on dark fiction. Very much looking forward to both.My contributor copy of Songs of the Dying Earth, along with the (finally!) U.S. version of J.G. Ballard's The Complete Stories. One is basically fan fic and the other an exhaustive selection of fiction from one man's visionary brain, but they'll both contain a myriad of pleasures I'm sure.Mercury Station is a review copy, and thus far it's one of the bravest, most original SF novels of this or possibly any other year. The Delany is a reprint (with awesome Matt Cheney intro) of one of my favorite nonfiction books, The Jewel-Hinged Jaw.Ed Champion recommended Wonderful World, so I went ahead and ordered it from Ziesing--and Jonathan Strahan's best-of is now out. I don't know if this is a review copy or a contributor copy, but "Fixing Hanover" is one of the stories therein. Elizabeth Bear's "Shuggoths," which just won the Hugo, looks pretty interesting, among others.Coffeehouse Press kicks some serious butt, and these new selections by Laird Hunt and Sam Savage look great. I had a lot of problems with Fermin, about a talking rat, Savage's last one, but it looks like this new one will be more to my taste.