020320b

Last year, for the holidays (which include our mid-winter birthdays), my wife and I bought each other books. Actually, I bought them all, so I only bought authors we both like. This was not difficult. I bought murder mysteries by Elly Griffiths, Colin Cotterill, and several others. This year, we decided to do it separately. She was too busy to tell me what she wanted, except that she wanted a Kindle, so I picked some safe options. I bought her the new novel by Jamie Lee Moyer, "Brightfall," which is a retelling of the myth about Robin Hood and Maid Marian. I also bought her two books by Becky Chambers. We had read one by her last year, an entertaining science fiction novel called something like "a visit to a small and angry planet," so this year, I bought the two sequels: "a closed and common orbit" and "something of a spaceborn few." Of course, the first of these didn't show up, so she couldn't read the second one either. I emailed the bookseller about the missing book and they blew me off. Why do you put somebody like that in customer service? (I realize that it is probably a family business, and that was most likely the bad-tempered spouse.) Anyway I emailed back to say how displeased I was, and another person refunded my money. So I didn't put their store on my blacklist, and I won't tell you who they are. I ordered another copy from someone else. Which is still not here yet. She got me a collection by Algernon Blackwood, a recent novel by Tim Powers, and one by Gene Wolfe. And I get to borrow her Kindle.