For The Love Of Liu

There is really only one New Year sale which I am interested in, and that is the New Year English Book Sale at Books Kinokuniya. To be honest, it wasn't very good this year. There was just an across the board discount of 20% on all English language books with nothing new on the shelves. Usually they discount up to 70% and add hundreds of new English books to the shelves for the duration of the sale. 

I was hoping to buy the sequel to Ken Liu's The Grace Of Kings which I am currently reading. No luck. I was also hoping to buy the sequel to Deborah Harkness' A Discovery Of Witches. Again, no luck. I did buy, however, Ken Liu's short story collection, The Paper Menagerie, and Cixin Liu's The Supernova Era. The Grace Of Kings is an absolutely stonking good read. I picked it up in our school's drop and swap and I really hope whoever dropped it off will also drop off the sequel, The Wall Of Storms. The third book will be released early this year and, I hear, all three books are to be made into films. I can't wait! 

The best S.F. novel I have read in many years was the Three Body Problem trilogy by Cixin Liu, so I had to snap up The Supernova Era. Seriously, China is taking the S.F. and Fantasy literature world by storm. This could be because for many years S.F. literature was banned in China. The ban was lifted when Chinese government researchers discovered that many of the top developers at companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft and N.A.S.A. are S.F. fans. Like Einstein said, "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will get you everywhere."

After recently reading Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym, I was reminded of just how much I love a good, classic maritime adventure yarn. That is why I have decided to have another attempt at reading Moby Dick. This will be my third attempt, and I think I will be able to stay the course this time.