Saturday, January 15, 2011

Who Reads My Books: Todd Sanders.


Hi Neal,


I thought I'd take a few minutes to send over my library photos and a brief bio for your blog. It's hard to stand back far enough in my library to take full photos of each wall so excuse the slightly pieced together shots. My modest library has a little over 3000 books in it at this time. It is a mix of about half science fiction/fantasy with the other half comprising French literature and poetry (original and in translation), other fiction/literature and poetry from around the world, a library of books on ancient board games and a large collection of research books on surrealism. I also have a large collection of first edition French works of literature in translation and maintain several sites about French writing.

westwall.jpg - my collection of french first editions and other rare books in barrister shelves.

eastwall.jpg - most of my science fiction collection including a complete edition of ace 'doubles' science fiction paperbacks from the 50's to 80's [all the ones with the blue and white striped covers]. William Burroughs first book 'Junkie' was actually a detective ace double. Your books are sandwiched there between Poul Anderson and Issac Asimov.

southwall.jpg - most of the fiction/literature/poetry in my collection as well as my surrealism reference books and books on ancient board games.

asher1.jpg and asher2.jpg show the ubiquitous asher titles in paperback and hardcover

The brief bio:

I live in pittsburgh, here in the US, where I wear many work hats. Originally I trained as an architect, but I am now a graphic designer, book publisher, artist and furniture designer. I have a small press - http://www.aanpress.com/ - which publishes my translations of surrealist poetry along with other one of a kind artist books I create. My furniture can be found over at http://www.locusgraphic.com/woodworking.

I've recently started designing board and card games, often with steampunk themes, influenced by Neal's writing as well as Karl Schroeder, Steph Swainston, Alastair Reynolds and Benjamin Rosenbaum.

I have been reading and collecting books of all sorts all my life. My love for science fiction started at age 10 when I read 'Star Boy' by Andre Norton. I tend to prefer hardcovers and would never buy an e-reader unless really really forced to. I have an excellent bookdealer here in the city who finds me many of the gems I now own.

I've begun in the last few years creating artist books using the short stories of such authors as mary Robinette Kowal, Ben Rosenbaum, Ted Chiang and others, creating the book as an artifact of the world of the stories, and I am currently looking for a good Neal Asher one to use.

And yes, I've read every book in my library.

Thanks as always for the books you write.

Todd Sanders
 




8 comments:

Disco Stu said...

Now THATS a collection.
Permission to drool sir...

Fader209 said...

Damn that's impressive!
I sent my bio to Neal yesterday with a photo of my bookshelf...my single bookshelf which will have to follow this library haha.

You also have the most varied collection of Asher book covers I have seen so far. That one for Cowl looks quite different.

Neal Asher said...

A mixtue of British and American covers there. The Cowl was the American version.

Anonymous said...

That's quite a library!

I have to say I like this 'who reads my books' feature - a stroke of genius.

vaudeviewgalor raandisisraisins said...

what games have you designed? want to run em' past the game people i know.

todd said...

thanks all for the comments. i end up buying a lot of british editions these days because they come out before the american printings and are often of better quality.

i've been designing a series of games in an alternate steampunk world i've created, influenced by a host of authors. if you want to check them out:

Aether Captains

Compass and Empire

this one is the newest and is currently in playtesting mode, so for now you can following the design discussion thread
Aether Captains: Pirates and Traders

i also have a dice based game of aztec culture (read blood sacrifice)

Nahua

all of these are PnP style games

todd said...

totally self-promoting link here but my blog, for those interested, is here

Spencer said...

That is a collection! Damn! But then i guess you have a few years over me :) Awesome