A few years ago, after reading everything in the Hainish Cycle, I decided I'd try and get the whole thing in print. I'm not a serious collector, not necessarily after first editions or otherwise rare editions; but I did want hard covers, and I wanted editions that had dust jackets with all that funky scifi art of the 60's/70's/80's. So far the Hainish books have been good to me in the sense that none of it has been really rare and it's mostly under the 100 usd/eur point as long as you're not looking for signed stuff.

Unfortunately it gets a little weird with The Word for World Is Forest: The only good looking hard cover happens to be on one of the earlier editions and while I doubt it's truly rare, it's rare enough people start asking a lot for it. I finally got lucky and some kind bookshop on ebay put it up for less than 100, dust jacket and all, and I finally get to add it to the shelf.

It's not my favorite of the Hainish Cycle, but it's an easy recommend (I recommend everything and anything from Le Guin). I know it's a favorite for a lot of folks. Anyways, if you're just getting into collecting print scifi, bookfinder.com is fantastic for what it is (aggregator for the inventories of the big used book operations), and I guess every once in a while ebay can work out.

Sharing my first bonsai-to-be projects. My goal right now is just to get these happy in pots without any more fuss after getting them situated. The oaks just passed the 1 year mark in pots, taken from a mess of sprouts under the parent tree. I'm guessing these are common oaks. The pine saplings (probably Pinus sylvestris) were taken a few months ago from the seaside. The evergreen seedlings are who-knows-what until they mature; these were potted up after finding them growing around the property where there are a few varieties of conifers kicking around.

I'm not thrilled about the pines getting bunched up in one pot, even for basic acclimatization, but I didn't have any standard nursery pots on hand, and then a week passed, and then another. So since they weren't looking too stressed I figured it's best to kick that problem over to next year.