Phoenix Comicon 2014: The Haul

Hi all! Just here with a quick post about all the books that came to live with me in wake of this year’s comicon, to pass the time while I’m working away on the final panel report. I exhibited a fair amount of restraint with regards to book-buying, and lucky for me, even with that restraint I came home with lots and lots of reading material thanks to all the publisher giveaways and swag! Have a look:

These are the books I ponied up some cash and bought. The top four in the pile were acquired at a steep discount at the Angry Robot booth after I attended their panel. What can I say, cheap books are hard to turn down! I also couldn’t say no to the Rogues anthology when I saw that it was on sale early at a booth which shall not be named, especially considering the added opportunity of having three of the featured authors present at PHXCC to sign it! Nor could I pass up the chance to meet the author of a graphic novel I really liked last year, Monster on the Hill, and get him to sign/doodle a copy of it for me. Seriously y’all, you may not be convinced, but this stack was me being the very soul of restraint!

These are the books I already owned by authors attending the con, and I schlepped them around during the weekend to get them all autographed. (Am I crazy? When I read that typed out, I feel like I sound crazy. Like a book zealot of some sort.) Luckily we had a rolly suitcase to lighten the load. To anyone else in a situation where you need to haul books around for many hours, this is my advice to you: GET A ROLLY SUITCASE. You will not be sorry.

And THESE, my dears, are the free books I ended up with! Quite a tower, eh? My thanks go out to Del Rey and Tor for so graciously offering them to all book-nerd types in attendance at the con. So far I’ve read three of them (well, technically I read a library e-copy of Locke Lamora before the con, but I say that still counts), and look forward to trying out the rest!

Here are a couple samplers I got from the Del Rey booth. The big one has short snippets from books by many different Del Rey authors, and the smaller one is a nice-sized chunk of Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, coming in June of next year.

Lastly, we have all the assorted swag accumulated over the weekend. There’s a Hellboy anniversary window cling from Dark Horse, along with various buttons and posters from them, some bags from Tor, some trading cards from the Monster on the Hill graphic novel, a keychain for John Scalzi’s upcoming novel Lock In, other posters, art from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer graphic novels signed by Amber Benson…all kinds of cool stuff. I think my favorites are the Tor.com tote and the monster trading cards.

All in all, it was a weekend that ended up contributing to the ever-shrinking state of available real estate in my room for books and other things. I’m excited to read new books by authors I was heretofore unfamiliar with, and to catch up on the series of authors I already know and love.

Any of these books catch your eye? Any recommendations on where to start in my foray into the piles? Let me know down below!