Ever since I got a PDA I stopped reading fiction in its treeware format and have switched to reading ebooks instead. However, a few days back (December 25) our family went to Market! Market! before going to the yearly Christmas lunch/dinner in Tipas with our relatives by affinity on the father side (okay, that sounded so law school-ey) and iI found a good bargain that broke my digital reading lifestyle: near the main entrance was a Booksale booth selling books at 99 a piece. In addition to this you get another book for free. How good could that be? So we rummaged through two piles of books and finally decided to buy the ff:

Chocolate Lizards (Cole Thompson)

From Kirkus Reviews
A debut novel recounting a young mans sudden initiation into the real world via the oil fields of central Texas. Erwin Vanderveer, like many northeasterners, believes that America is made up of two coasts with nothing terribly interesting in between. A recent Harvard grad who wants to be an actor, Erwin has just spent a profitless year in Hollywood trying to break into the movies. Now hes given up and decided to return home to Boston. Lacking the cash for a plane ticket, he decides to cross the country by buswhich is how he discovers Texas. Unfortunately for Erwin, however, one of his fellow passengers is a card shark who quickly fleeces him of his last dime, stranding him in a rest stop in Abilene. There, he meets Merle Lusky, an oil man who happens to need an extra hand to roughneck on one of his rigs. Merle is like no one Erwin has ever met: Profane and sentimental by turns, he swills whiskey for breakfast and thinks nothing of driving a hundred miles an hour in broad daylight merely to elude the cops. Now, though, the drop in oil prices have hit Merle pretty hard, and the banks are calling in his loans. He stands to lose all six of his rigs unless he can conjure up payback money fast. Merle concocts a scheme to save his skin, but it requires a low profile thats hard to maintain in Abilenes tight-knit oil community. Thats where Erwin comes in. As an outsider, he manages to steal confidential information about oil deposits, and soon Merle has staked a claim to a new field that gushes just in time to satisfy the bank. Erwin heads home as planned but notas he had fearedas a loser. Affable and fun: Thompsons portrayal of an innocent gone (very) far abroad proves irresistibly readable. — Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

 

Alastor (Jack Vance)

Trullion: Alastor 2262 / Marune: Alastor 933 / Wyst: Alastor 1716
The Alastor Cluster: A sprawling system of thirty thousand live stars and three thousand inhabited planets, the cluster is ruled by the mysterious Connatic. He sees all and knows all, but with five trillion people contained within such far-flung boundaries, sooner or later something is bound to give.
Trullion: Alastor 2262: An idyllic world where food is bountiful, the oceans are clear, and no one is ever wanting, World 2262 of the Alastor Cluster is in for a rude awakening. The Trill, a once-peaceful race populating the waters of Trullion, are now gambling their lives away on the planet-wide game hussade. What reward could be worth such risks?
Marune: Alastor 933: Though the Connatic knows all, there is one man of whom he knows nothing, one man who knows nothing of himself. Pardero is determined to find out who he is and what cruel enemy forced him to forget his own life. But when he finally returns home to Marune, World 933 of the Alastor Cluster, the mystery only deepens.
Wyst: Alastor 1716: On Wyst, World 1716 of the Alastor Cluster, millions of people live together in harmony, work only a few hours each week, and share the fruits of their labor equally. Wyst seems a utopia. But the Connatic, knowing better than to take utopia at face value, one day decides to investigate-a decision that may cost him his life

 

Moongate (William Proctor and David Weldon)

Book Description
A historic international space mission explodes with crimes and crises after scientists, engaged in a moon-mining expedition, receive information from outer space about how to reverse the aging process. Corporate espionage, murders, political assassinations, and finally, the threat of a new Cold War follow a revolutionary message on the human genome from mysterious and possibly demonic beings from another dimension. U.S. Representative Scott Andrews begins to doubt the motives of these “benign” messengers and suspects that they harbor designs of biblical proportions against the entire earth. This political/sci-fi/spiritual thriller pulls the reader onto a roller-coaster plot, with twists and turns through cutting-edge space and energy technology, genetic manipulation, back-room political machinations, and international intrigue on the highest levels.

The Furthest Horizon: SF Adventures to the Far Future (by Gardner Dozois (Editor))

The most important and influential SF-magazine editor in the world.”-Interzone

It is the essence of science fiction to chart the possibilities of the future, but it takes the hand of a master to capture the farthest reaches of time–futures almost unimaginably distant. The Furthest Horizon collects seventeen of the most inventive and audacious visions of the future by many acclaimed writers, including:
* Brian Aldiss * Poul Anderson * Avram Davidson * Joe Haldeman * Alexander Jablokov * Paul J. McAuley * Ian McDonald * Michael Moorcock * Frederik Pohl * Robert Reed * Keith Roberts * Robert Silverberg * Cordwainer Smith * James Tiptree, Jr. * Jack Vance * Walter Jon Williams * Gene Wolfe

“Dozois is to the 1980s and 1990s what John W. Campbell, Jr., was to the 1940s and 1950s-the finest editor in the world of short SF.”-Publishers Weekly

“Dozois is arguably the most accomplished editor in the field of modern genre short fiction.”-SF Site

I hope these are good reads. I’ll post reviews as soon as I finish reading each book and if I’m not too lazy to bother to do so:)