Today I bought three DVDs and two books. There was a DVD stall on campus, and I bought Anita and me, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Finding Neverland. Then I went into Waterstone's and picked up Virtual Light by William Gibson, which is the next book on the list of the SF Reading Group I have set up. Then I saw they had a compilation volume of three Ursula Le Guin novels, Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions, so I had to get that as well. Had a good blether with Steve about SF.
Last week I bought The Fatal Eggs by Mikhail Bulgakov. I've started reading it but it's a bit depressing. I really like his The Master and Margarita (a classic).
I also bought Anima by M John Harrison, which has 2 of his non-SF novels in one volume. I've read the first one, The Course of the Heart. His writing style is wonderful, very precise and lots of original imagery, but some of it is very dark and depressing. There's a very good bit in it where one of the characters is writing a fictitious travel memoir called Beautiful Swimmers. The style of the excerpts from this fictional memoir is somewhat reminiscent of Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose stuff I really like, so I enjoyed these bits very much. The concept of the Coeur and its relationship with the Pleroma and the world is very good. I wonder how many readers of the book will be familiar with the concept of the Pleroma, or with Jung's Seven Sermons to the Dead / Die sieben Belehrungen der Toten, which is the only other place I've ever seen it mentioned?
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