There are some Genre books that are perfect. Absolutely pitch perfect. Like listening to Chopin, it is the most beautiful thing in the world to read the book, experience the book. By absorbing this work into your memories, you can realize then that you are absorbing something immaculate, something transubstatiative, something that causes a metousiosis.
Delany’s Nova is like this, as well as Crowley’s Little, Big, Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and Ford’s The Shadow Year. These books transcend genre, transcend everything and create something so touching, so interesting, that it changes the mental landscape of the reader. The Stress of Her Regard is such a book. I read it for the first time about 10 years ago, and so far have been unable to find a decent copy anywhere. Used bookstores were bad- for a book like this you don’t want the ghost of other hands perverting its cover and the thoughts from the page stolen by foreign eyes.
So, lucky for me and lucky for the rest of the world that Tachyon books is reprinting it. And doing a magnificent job. This is beautiful. And it matches the interior, the content, so perfectly.
I’m going to have to pick up a copy, thanks for the heads up. I bought a copy of the Subterranean Press printing of On Stranger Tides for the reason you cite about used bookstore copies. Though I couldn’t even find OST in a used bookstore.
Yeah, OST is another one that is hard to find, esp in decent condition. There was a copy at the used bookstore by my house, but it was ripped.