Search andrewspong's books

About meTen years an academic, ten years a publisher, four years a social business developer focused on health communications, and a reader for as long as I've been able to.

The missus and myself moved back to the UK in June 2008 after having lived for two years in New York, NY on 66th and Riverside. We are still rediscovering our UK libraries. Of course, we also acquired a US library (some 600 books all told) whilst in America as well, and will therefore now remain in winnowing-mode. In principle, of course. Binging book acquisitions remain a monthly indulgence, so I'm not sure how far we will get with such a virtuous endeavour. Follow me on Foursquare to see just how many bookshops we cut a swathe through.

A lot of my academic books won't make the cut, so expect a slew of early modern secondary texts to disappear from my catalogue as I am never likely to read them again. The primary materials will stay, of course. You never know when I might feel a burning urge to reread The Shoemaker's Holiday.

I am currently reading (and reviewing) the Millennium Science Fiction and Fantasy Masterworks series as a long term project, and cutting in a grab-bag of novels, philosophy and Graeco-Roman literature in the middle, as well as anything else that catches my eye. Which tends to be rather a lot. Gollancz's launch of its SF Gateway means the acquisition of a dedicated e-reader was an inevitability [UPDATE 11/12: not only do I have an ereader, but @SFGateway is now a client :)], and whether this LT list will become more of a legacy thing, I'm not sure at this stage. Incidentally, whilst Goodreads is clearly the more socially-driven platform and should logically be the one I use, and the LT UX/UI is (let's face it) rather eccentric, LT nevertheless wins out for me on the basis that I adopted it first, and GR just never really grabbed me. Had an account; deleted it.

I judiciously divide my leisure time between cat tickling, craft beer appreciation, bourbon & whisky savouring, Rabelasian cookery, black/death/doom/grindcore/sludge metal & Baroque opera/Wagner/chamber music listening, wave watching and gull-bothering, miring myself in musickal miasmas, rural and coastal tramping, gaming (unplugged), loafing on licensed premises, and - almost forgot - reading.

Writing is more of a pain than a pleasure, and not to be included in the above list. I'll keep it down here where it belongs: as a monkey on my back.

About my libraryPhilosophy (especially the historical materialist and phenomenological traditions), early modern literature, Loebs, original black-spined Penguin Classics and orange-spined Penguin English Library, the Millennium SF and Fantasy Masterworks series, the Gollancz SF Collectors' Edition, the Gollancz SF Gateway ebook collection, OUP VSIs, WWI aviation, Dr. Who NAs, MAs, EDAs, PDAs and Targets, Michael Moorcock hardbacks, the Mandarin Dickens edition, Vonnegut, Pynchon, O'Brien, Beckett, Brecht any amount of award-winning SF