Start the week @ RD/KA! : Meanwhile...

Unable to rest satisfied with a pile of kitchen appliances during Saturday's jaunt into town- however lovely these much-needed and highly useful items actually are- I hied me to Waterstones, there to find books. I can still remember the thrill of discovering my first Waterstone's in Edinburgh back in the mid-80's. Appearing to my eyes as less a bookstore than a library, this new style of bookselling filled me with wonder so great I was unable to go properly beyond that condition to the stage of simple delight. Unless my memory fails me I was at least able to buy myself a couple of books:

• Roger Scruton's (wiki) A Short History of Modern Philosophy: from Descartes to Wittgenstein
• Marshal McLuhan's (wiki) seminal Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Both of these books blew my mind. Sold off in a later bout of poverty, these books have been missed often, when I've wanted to return to them to check what the authors had said. I bought the new edition of Scruton a couple of years ago only to find to my disappointment that it had dispensed with the Preface which had had such an impact all those years ago (or maybe my memory was failing me?).

Meanwhile, Saturday's trip to Waterstone's netted me the following 3 volumes:

• Of Fire and Night, Book 5 of Kevin J. Anderson The Saga of Seven Suns
• Edward Marston The Excursion Train, in his Detective Inspector Colbeck series
• After the Armistice Ball, a Dandy Gilver murder mystery by Scots writer Catriona McPherson

Of these I'm familiar only with Anderson's Saga of the Seven Suns. I picked up a free copy of the TPB of book 1 at the 2004 Blackpool Eastercon. It is classic space opera, with all the parts of the curate's egg so entailed, but I'm happily snapping up each new volume as they appear because it's a rattling good read. And the other 2? Well, murder mysteries set in the Victorian era and in the Roaring 20's? For this fan of crime fiction, what's to loose? ;)