I gen­er­ally tend to ask people for book or cd tokens for my birth­days and Christ­mas. It’s easier some­times than try­ing to sug­gest a spe­cific item that I would like. At time like that I seem to only be able to think of ter­ribly expens­ive or obscure things that I want. So, hav­ing got some tokens for my birth­day last week, and hav­ing some left over from Christ­mas, I finally got round to going shop­ping today. And what a lot I got!

I had £95 worth of tokens to spend. Some were for Bor­ders, some were for HMV and some were for Water­stones. Hav­ing looked around for the last couple of weeks at some of the things I might buy, I finally got round all three shops this morn­ing and spent all but £2 worth of tokens. Here are the things I bought:

Three Brian Jaques Red­wall books: Triss, Loam­hedge, and Rakkety Tam. I’d got behind with the Red­wall series. These will bring me up to date. Three Terry Good­kind books from the The Sword of Truth series which I only star­ted last year: Blood of the Fold , Temple of the Winds, and Soul of the Fire. Two Neal Steph­en­son books: Quick­sil­ver and The Con­fu­sion. These are the first two of the Baroque cycle which I have been wait­ing to read. The third, The Sys­tem of the World, is still only avail­able in hard­back so I’ll wait to get that one.

The last two books I got were Black Cof­fee Blues by Henry Rollins: I love his music, but I’ve not read him before; and O’Reilly’s Extreme Pro­gram­ming Pocket Guide (I had to get one com­puter book didn’t I!)

I also bought some music CDs: Michael Nyman — The Piano, the Begin­ners Guide to Bol­ly­wood which is a 3CD set for a budget price, and Serge Gainsbourgs’s Ini­tials Sg which is a great com­pil­a­tion of his work through the dec­ades. Quite a mixed bunch that lot. I’m cur­rently listen­ing to the first of the Bol­ly­wood CD’s real vin­tage stuff from the 60’s and 70’s. I don’t under­stand a word if it, but it’s great!

Finally, I bought a couple of DVDs (I set out to get more, but I can get three books for the price of a DVD!)Akira — The Ulti­mate Col­lec­tion. Jan had already bought me the second Akira graphic novel for my birth­day. I also got Sioux­sie and the Ban­shees Best of: Deluxe Sound and Vis­ion which has a double audio CD with a DVD. I real­ised the other week that I no longer owned any Ban­shees stuff so I’m glad to get this even though it’s only a best of.

So, I’ve got a lot to enter­tain me for the next few weeks. I’ll try to review them as I get through them. I’ve missed doing reviews for the last 18 months.