My husband and I have been very, very good to the publishing and book selling industries in the past month and a half. First, we visited our favorite used bookstore to see what we could find, and we found a pretty nice haul.

I suppose this gives you an idea of the catholic nature of our tastes: mainstream fiction, horror, science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, poetry, philosophical fiction, academic satire -- all in six books.

Shortly after that, I achieved a personal goal for which I'd promised myself a reward: five signed first editions. Fortunately, four of them were retail price (support your local independent bookstore!) because they are contemporary novels recently signed. Exciting stuff, really, every single one of them. And as long as I was there, I picked up a couple of paperbacks because -- well, why not, really? I had the credit card out of my purse, after all.

I'd already read Jack O'Connell's The Resurrectionist, but I liked it so much that I wanted to have a signed first in my collection. It's not a perfect book, but it is exceptionally strange and wonderful. I hope to have a full review for you soon, because I want to persuade you to read it -- it's a treat for those with warped minds, like mine.

I'm really looking forward to reading Drood: A Novel, but I want to read Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood and some of Wilkie Collins's work, especially The Woman in White, first. That's one thing about Dan Simmons: the guy seems to know everything about literature, and there are always heavy references in his work that make you want to know more before you even attempt to read his novels. I loved Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion because they made me learn so much about John Keats and, ultimately, the Romantic poets (Tim Powers didn't hurt in that quest, either, with his wonderful The Stress of Her Regard -- if you've never read that book, it's just been reprinted; go out and grab a copy and read it, quick, it's the weirdest combination of vampires and Romanticism you'll ever read, just a terrific book).

And here's a funny thing -- I bought the two books by Andrew Taylor, which are the first and third in his Roth Trilogy, but the bookstore could not find the middle book, The Judgement of Strangers, no matter how hard just about everyone in the store looked. Just one of those things: it had gone missing despite a complete and ordinary looking inventory report. A mystery about a mystery.

A small trip to Barnes & Noble to scare away the rainy winter blues netted me three paperbacks and a remainder to fill a couple of gaps in my collection.

ABE Books, one of my favorite on-line purveyors of used books, offered me $4 off a purchase of $40. Hey, I'm easy -- and it seems to be almost the only way to get books by Zoran Zivkovic, a Serbian fantasist who has become one of my new favorites of late. So I snatched up a copy of PS Publishing's signed limited edition ofThe Last Book. It seems to be about a bookstore and a dead body -- at least, that's how it starts -- and I can't wait to see where it goes from there.

I read a great many graphic novels in my quest to read 28 short novels during February, and it made me long to get back to one of my favorites, Hellblazer. I haven't been following John Constantine's adventures for the last two years, and I've missed him. So I contacted my favorite comics shop online (http://www.mycomicshop.com) and ordered everything back to where I left off. Some of the things I wanted were collections, and one wasn't even about Hellblazer (funny how that happens; I'm so easily led astray).

You'll be reading about House of Mystery Vol. 01: Room and Boredom soon in another entry in the February Short Novels series. Short review: I liked it.

My husband and I have a tradition of watching a science fiction television show on DVD for an hour before dozing off at night, and we've been working our way through Star Trek: Voyager of late. We just ran out of Season 5, so it was time to order Season 6 from Amazon. As you might expect, I didn't think it was worth ordering merely a single set of DVDs, so I added in a few paperbacks.

Finally, even a minor blogger like me occasionally gets a book from a publisher to review. I've received some good stuff that you'll be hearing about in the coming months.

Now, isn't this quite the treasure trove? Perhaps the funniest part of this embarrassment of riches is that I'm more likely to be reading from this pile of library books next, because they have due dates!

So tell me: what would you read next? What cover looks appealing? Anything here that tickles your fancy more than anything else?