Random Cover Art Saturday (and a giveaway that isn’t the regular kind of giveaway...)!

There’s no way round it, while I’m lucky enough to be sent books on a regular basis there’s no way that I’m ever going to be able to read them all and the vast majority end up in a massive pile either waiting to be read or just plain ignored. The pile was starting to teeter once more (it’s a bit of a health and safety thing actually) so the last few days have seen me carefully pruning the reading pile, here and there, to get rid of the books that I’m just blatantly never going to get round to reading. If you were wondering, the pile is still HUGE but looking a lot more manageable... well, I don’t know about that last bit... we’ll see ;o)

What I love about going through the reading pile (of course) is finding all those books that have unfortunately found themselves hidden away by the relentless encroachment of more books on top and all around. Some of these books have been hidden away for years and have forgotten what natural light looks like... Going through the pile is like a treasure hunt in this respect as I know that I’ll find something cool, especially after the last year when a large number of ‘must reads’ went by the wayside because of more pressing priorities. That was certainly the case this time round and I might just have to radically re-jig my reading order yet again to incorporate some of these reads. I would tell you what these books are but the thing is, you know what they are already. Think of an amazing new fantasy release from the past couple of years... Yep, that was in the pile. So was that one. And that one too. I’ve got my work cut out for me here! ;o) What was the last book you found in your reading pile that you completely forgot you owned?

Some really nice pieces of cover art leapt out at me, while I was trimming the pile down to size, and in any other post I’d include all of them. Not this time though as the rest pretty much paled into insignificance when this cover came to the fore. Check it out...

 

There’s a reason why people like Charles Vess’ work so much and it’s all over that cover. Just look at it. Now look at it again, there’s no way you caught all the detail first time round. Isn’t that just lovely? If that wasn’t enough for you the inside of the book is crammed full of all the best stuff that Charles de Lint has ever written. I really mustn’t let this book get away from me again...

Now, looking at the title of this post, I’m pretty sure that a number of you are reading this and wondering if I’ll ever get round to talking about this giveaway that isn’t a giveaway. This next bit is just for you guys... :o)

This little clearout of mine has meant that another pile of books has built up far too rapidly for me to comfortably get them all to the charity shops like I normally do. I haven’t counted these books but we’re looking at two boxes and a large plastic bag full of the critters as well as all the loose ones (and I’m adding to this pile all the time, 45 loose books at the last count...) Who wants to take this little lot off my hands?

There’s a couple of conditions that you need to fulfil as this is the only giveaway I’ll ever run here where I intend to be the winner :o) I can’t afford to post this lot out so you’re going to have to come and get them yourself. If you’re worried about going round some strange internet guy’s house then bear in mind that I’m just as worried about having a stranger off the internet turn up on my doorstep ;o) Don’t worry about it, I’m sure we’ll get on fine. If you do come though, bring a car. Seriously, there are a lot of books.

The other condition is that this load of books goes as a single job lot or not at all. I want to get rid of them quickly and make the house look tidy again. With this in mind, I’m not limiting this to people from London but Londoners are going to have a shorter distance to travel...

If you meet those two conditions, drop me an email (address at the top right hand side of the screen) and we’ll see if we can sort something out...