I am currently building a home library which is taking over my living room. I have over 700 catalogued books - sorted by LCC (Library of Congress Classification).
Of those 700, over 100 of them are Library of America volumes. Library of America is a non-profit publisher that began in the early 80s from funding from endowments and grants. Their mission is to keep the greatest American writing in print in cost-effective, but well-designed and well-constructed volumes. What I truly love about the LoA is that they embody the spirit of inclusivity and publish the broad spectrum of great American writing - from wood-cut graphic novels to plays and poetry to stories by Lovecraft and Philip K Dick. Their volumes are considered the definitive edition of just about every story they publish.
My subscription is on an about once-a-month cadence. My previous volume was the 2nd volume in their American Science Fiction of the 1960s series, which is in fact their 4th volume on anthologized science fiction (they also have a two-part series on the 1950s). So now I have 4 volumes of Science Fiction from the 1950s-1960s that I am eager to bite into.
The latest volume that they have sent me is the second volume on American Speeches. Which goes from Abraham Lincoln to Bill Clinton. They had originally sent me the first volume of that series - Revolutionary times to the Civil War near the beginning of my LoA subscription journey, so I waited a long time to complete the set and I had to chuckle when I saw that the volume they sent me was a 1st edition - meaning they still have a mountain of these things to give away.
I have a spreadsheet to keep track of the whole thing - they have 359 volumes in the series - not counting their special publications - so I still have only 31.39% of the series. Their current publishing schedule suggests I will never catch up or will do so very slowly. Oddly, the only volume I have from their 2021 books is the recent Ray Bradbury volume which I thought was extremely generous of them to put on my subscription seeing as how popular that one would be. I was very pleased with whomever made that decision.
As for my current reading - I always have my finger in about 1000 pies, but my most recent obsession is a novel called Mordew by Alex Pheby. I was struck by the cover art at Barnes and Noble and knew exactly nothing about it. After reading the inside flap, I was drawn to it's ultra grim-dark narrative and aesthetic. It is very imaginative and original and I am really digging the way it reads. It's a child protagonist story that reads like it is written for adults. It appears to be the beginning of a trilogy and I have no doubts that I will get the other two novels whenever they are published. I love discovering these hidden gems that nobody is talking about.
Here is an excerpt from a review of the book from The Guardian....
"Vast numbers of such novels are in print today. I’m one of the judges for the 2020 World Fantasy award and over the last few months I’ve read literally hundreds of fantasy titles, some good, some bad, most mediocre. I might easily have groaned at yet another entry into this overcrowded mode. But Mordew is a darkly brilliant novel, extraordinary, absorbing and dream-haunting. That it succeeds as well as it does speaks to Pheby’s determination not to passively inhabit his Gormenghastly idiom but instead to lead it to its most extreme iteration, to force inventiveness and grotesqueness into every crevice of his work. It seems that one way to take an apparently exhausted idiom and make it new is just to push through, with enough imaginative energy to refresh the tired old tropes. Mordew is so crammed with grotesque inventiveness that it overwhelms the reader’s resistance."
Here is the inside flap text that drew my attention:
"God is dead, his corpse hidden in the catacombs beneath Mordew.
In the slums of the sea-battered city, a young boy called Nathan Treeves lives with his parents, eking out a meagre existence by picking treasures from the Living Mud and the half-formed, short-lived creatures it spawns. Until one day his desperate mother sells him to the mysterious Master of Mordew.
The Master derives his magical power from feeding on the corpse of God. But Nathan, despite his fear and lowly station, has his own strength—and it is greater than the Master has ever known. Great enough to destroy everything the Master has built. If only Nathan can discover how to use it.
So it is that the Master begins to scheme against him—and Nathan has to fight his way through the betrayals, secrets, and vendettas of the city where God was murdered, and darkness reigns."
