Richard Jones' Log: Spoilt for choice

Just a sampling of what I've read in the last few weeks:

• Orb issue 6. A collection of Australian short speculative fiction. Some pretty cool stuff in there, some so-so. Dance schools were already weird enough, thankyou :)
• Marvel 1602 -- Neil Gaiman, Andy Kubert and Richard Isanove. A very cool adaptation of the characters from Marvel's super-hero universe, transposing them into England in 1602.
• Ministry Of Space -- Warren Ellis, Chris Weston, Laura Martin. What if the Brits had gotten to space first? What needed to happen for Dan Dare to be real?
• Assassin's Apprentice -- Robin Hobb. Dark and interesting fantasy story. Starts out a bit awkward, but builds up steam and is ultimately quite satisfying in the end.

Currently I'm reading The Algebraist and Marvels, with the first trade issue of Alias sitting off to the side. And another compilation of Aussie speculative fiction. And then there's a bunch of other books on the shelves that are on my list to read...

What's quite cool is that 1602 and Marvels both came from the local library. Both are hard-cover and 1602 in particular is printed on beautiful paper which really shows off the artwork. I really hope this doesn't happen to our libraries.