2015年2月27日金曜日 - 
Tony : Winter Reading
It might be that February
is the best month for books, and it is certainly my favorite month for reading.
The damp and overcast weather lends itself to staying home with a good book. Most publishers and writers try to get new
books into the stores before Christmas, and now that the holiday season has
passed there is time to read what's available and even perhaps get some overstocked items at a significant discount.
For 2015, my interests are mostly in
short fiction. I've recently begun collecting modern first editions of genre anthologies.
When I was teenager, I gobbled up the science fiction stories of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert
A. Heinlein, Roger Zelazny, Damon Knight, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and
dozens of others. These authors wrote some great novels, but I first discovered
them through their short stories. Writing
for magazines has long been popular for writers of
imaginative fiction, and the market really started growing in the 1930 with the
popularity of “Weird Tales”. Through the forties and into the fifties, there were countless colorful
magazines printed on cheap paper (pulp) containing every kind of story that you might imagine, set in locations from the
graveyard to the bottom of the
ocean and back up again, through mad scientists'
laboratories all the way to the stars.
Starting in the late forties, a type of book began
to be published which collected some of the best examples from the pulp
magazines of the past and collected them into anthologies, usually conforming to the tastes of the
editor, or a little later, being organized according to distinct themes such as invaders
from space or intelligent machines. It is these anthologies that catch my
interest as a reader and collector. I love that there are beautifully produced
hardcover anthologies of stories that first were published in trashy magazines seventy years ago
and that I can buy them online and have them delivered to my door.
Books are special and this cold and wet
February I'm looking forward to reading a few great ones.
Damp：しめった
Overcast：どんよりした
lends itself to：~するのに適している
overstocked：売れ残った
significant：かなりの
genre anthologies：ジャンルごとに作品を集めた選集
gobbled up：がぶ飲みする（ように読んだ）
imaginative：想像力にとんだ
Weird Tales：1923年に創刊されたアメリカのパルプ雑誌
Pulp：品質の悪い紙に印刷された安い雑誌
all the way to：～まで
conforming to：~に適合する
according to：～に照らして
distinct：異なる
trashy：安っぽい