Fivemack FAILS at shopping

[fivemack]

Anyone want a brand-new copy of K J Parker's Colours in the Steel ? An unobserved shopping error at Amazon meant that I ordered two copies. Yours for a pint.

His trilogy beginning with Devices and Desires caught me by page three of the first volume when I picked that up at a con a few years back, and was good enough to the end that I bought this earlier trilogy of his sight-unseen.

(I had to check his gender; for some reason initials make me assume a writer is female, and the writing style, possibly by comparison with papersky, struck me as ineffably feminine)

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Sounds good to me -- let me get you a drink when I see you (although you now fail to Carlton, due to more energetic and worthwhile dancingness :))

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

Send it back to Amazon. They'll take it even if the mistake was yours, they are really good that way.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, that too. Seconded (from what I hear).

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I'd have thought envelope + postage + cost of pint would exceed the 4.89 that it cost me, but maybe this is just an unfortunate ebay experience leading me to think that posting single books is always and forever uneconomic.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. Well, second hand books for 1p charge £3.?? for postage (have I got that right?), so if so, it must be slightly to your good. *Do* you have to pay postage, amazon don't cover it?

If so and if no, then you'd probably get a couple of quid back on the deal, so indeed less than the cost of a pint, and also less getting someone else to read it.

Or you could keep it in case the book is a favourite and you want to keep it to give as a present :)

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

Marketplace postage is £2.75 - the same as if you ordered a single book from Amazon themselves, First Class intra-UK delivery, not via Amazon Prime.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Hang on, what? Is that me failing to be a proper girl again?

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I think it's more that a story with both hideous war and some degree of whimsy makes me think of the King's Peace.

[sparrowsion]

That's odd—I've read Colours in the Steel and had likewise got the impression that the author was female. What's going on there?

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

K J Parker's wikipedia page says there is uncertainty about Parker's identity and gender; the front material about the author is deliberately gender-neutral ('married to a solicitor'), various sites claim 'K J Parker' is a pseudonym, but http://www.sffworld.com/interview/85p0.html uses the male pronoun.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Could it be the name? Obviously "K. J. Parker" can be either, but somehow the initials, and the choice to use initials, and the surname, make me guess (with very low certainty, a pure 50% guess) female. I don't know why.