Here are the books I've read recently, in reverse chronological order.
Title: The Cambridge Star Atlas (second edition)
Author: Wil Tirion
Publisher: DAW
ISBN: 0-521-56098-5
Format: hardcover
Price: CAD $30.99 in 1996 at the late lamented Britnell's Bookshop
Copyright: 1996
Finished Reading: ongoing
My Rating: 10/10
This is a "desert island" book for me. It goes with me (along with a copy of the RASC's Observer's Handbook) whenever I travel anywhere where I am likely to be able to see the night sky. Great star charts and good back support in my knapsack.
Title: Otherland Volume Two: River of Blue Fire
Author: Tad Williams
Publisher: DAW
ISBN: 0-88677-844-1
Format: paperback
Price: gift (SRP CAD 10.99/USD 7.99)
Copyright: 1999
Finished Reading: 2000-05-07
My Rating: ?/10 (pending volumes 3 and 4)
Tad Williams sure can write. It must be hard to get him to stop writing: Otherland looks like it's going to be a 3,000-page epic split into four convenient hernia-inducing volumes, and it's nothing if not ambitious. Given that the first volume was perhaps three quarters of a prologue and the plot is just barely getting underway after the second volume, it's too soon to say whether or not I'm going to like this. I do enjoy the quality of the writing, world-building and characeterization; I find it a little wearying to keep track of several plotlines and points of view for so long, but that's just laziness. I'm still waiting for an explanation of the premise of the story (people trapped in super-VR) before I decide what to do with my ponderously suspended disbelief.
Title: Isaac Asimov's Solar System
Editors: Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams
Publisher: ACE
ISBN: 0-441-00698-1
Format: paperback
Price: gift (SRP CAD 9.99/USD 6.50)
Copyright: 1999
Finished Reading: 2000-04
My Rating: 8/10
A much better than average anthology from IASFM.