Found this book at Goodwill. I read these back in the 70s/80s, and loved them. Zelazny is a great writer with a lot of style, and always a pleasure to read. Get it on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Great-Book-Amber-Complete-Chronicles/dp/0380809060

A storyteller without peer. He created worlds as colorful and exotic and memorable as any our genre has ever seen.” —George R.R. Martin

One of the most revered names in sf and fantasy, the incomparable Roger Zelazny was honored with numerous prizes—including six Hugo and three Nebula Awards—over the course of his legendary career. Among his more than fifty books, arguably Zelazny’s most popular literary creations were his extraordinary Amber novels. The Great Book of Amber is a collection of the complete Amber chronicles—featuring volumes one through ten—a treasure trove of the ingenious imagination and phenomenal storytelling that inspired a generation of fantasists, from Neil Gaiman to George R.R. Martin.

Or Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-great-book-of-amber-roger-zelazny/1103272283?ean=9780380809066

Or use my affiliate link to Bookshop, and help me, and a local bookstore out: https://bookshop.org/a/99799/9780380809066

Been a slow week for me, and that’s about all I’ve got for today. Read books, they’re good for you, and fun.

Why you should read everyday

Because it actively engages your brain, reading is one of the healthiest hobbies for your mind. Not only is reading educational and informative, which is beneficial in itself, but it also rewires the connections in your brain, leading to many benefits.

1. Stress reduction. Studies show that reading can help relax your body by lowering your heart rate and easing the tension in your muscles, with a reduction in stress of up to 68% in people when silently reading a literary work for only six minutes.
2. Mental stimulation. Research suggests that reading can slow the progress of Alzheirmer’s disease and dementia by keeping your brain active and engaged, especially when reading out loud.
3. Memory improvement. Reading has been shown to slow the rate of memory deterioration and even improve your memory and thinking skills.
4. Vocabulary expansion. Reading is one of the best ways to learn new words. That’s why many researchers advocate for more reading experience in schools.
5. Better focus. Researchers have found that, compared to using social media, reading helps improve concentration by increasing the capacity for longer attention spans.
6. Improved brain connectivity. Studies have revealed that reading a narrative improves the connections inside the left temporal cortex of the brain—the area which is associated with language reception. The increased connectivity lasts for a few days after a reading session.
7. Stronger analytical skills. When reading fiction, your brain takes notes of all of the details and gets into critical thinking mode to try to figure out what happens next, a practice that is useful not just when reading but in day-to-day life and work.

As playwright and novelist Somerset Maugham put it, “to acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” And yet… So many distractions, so many series to watch, so many podcasts to listen to. Finding the time or the motivation to read can be hard.

This is what it looks like out there this morning.

Here’s some books for you.

Fiction. Sharply strange and eerily familiar. Absurdly funny and terrifyingly serious. Surreal, fantastic, gritty, real. The stories in Matthew Cheney’s Hudson Prize-winning debut collection range across various styles, modes, genres, and tones as they explore the worlds of family, love, memory, and loss. BLOOD: STORIES reprints work originally published in such different venues as One Story and Weird Tales, and it includes four new stories that travel from contemporary New Hampshire to historical Prague to might-have-been Mexico to a future world where no reality stays real for long. Reality flows through these stories, even at their most surreal and lyrical, because reality is more than just what is or even what might be: reality is whatever gets beneath our skin and into our blood. The pages of BLOOD: STORIES not only take an axe to the frozen sea within us–they make a course for the heart.

Started reading this book of short stories, loving it so far. Not only is he a short story writer, but he has written introductions to several of one of my favorite writer’s books, including:

Which is a book of SF criticism.

Samuel R. Delany’s The Jewel-Hinged Jaw appeared originally in 1977, and is now long out of print and hard to find. The impact of its demonstration that science fiction was a special language, rather than just gadgets and green-skinned aliens, began reverberations still felt in science fiction criticism. This edition includes two new essays, one written at the time and one written about those times, as well as an introduction by writer and teacher Matthew Cheney, placing Delany’s work in historical context. Close textual analyses of Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, and Joanna Russ read as brilliantly today as when they first appeared. Essays such as “About 5,750 Words” and “To Read The Dispossessed” first made the book a classic; they assure it will remain one.

That’s it for this Monday. Have a great week.