I have always gotten a lot of mail, although that has decreased somewhat in the past decade due to the influx of email instead. But I still get enough mail that it keeps me busy several nights a week sorting through it. Some of it is really good stuff, while other mail is plain junk mail. And then there is the middle ground of fascinating junk mail!

So here’s what I got in the mail the past two days:

> two fanzines. For those of you not familiar with amateur publishing, “fanzines” are amateur fan magazines with small circulations, always money drains, but often fascinating reading. The two I got today were the faithful For the Clerisy, written and edited by Brent Kresovitch, which is devoted to discussions of books of all type; and the irregular As the Crow Flies, which is a fascinating personalzine by Frank Denton. He also has an equally-fascinating blog at http://frankdenton.blogspot.com

> the latest catalog from the Discovery Channel Book Club. This is a club primarily devoted to books in such categories as Science, Natural Science, and History, all areas I enjoy reading. But since my book-buying tends so heavily toward science fiction and historical fiction, I rarely buy any nonfiction–or find time to actually read it. So I joined this club a few months ago (and you might recall from this blog that my four free books included three travel books and the historical novel Pompeii), and now I am planning what will be my three mandatory purchases the rest of this year. But you’ll have to wait until I make my decision to read about it here. ☺

> an unsolicited book catalog–and do the rest of you get as many book catalogs as I do?–called Bas Bleu. It contains a lot of interesting stuff, but overpriced and more “trendy” than really worthwhile. I’ve never bought a single item from that catalog–unlike such more interesting catalogs as Edward Hamilton Books, Daedalus Books, and Dover Publications–so it escapes me why they continue to send it to me.

> Three magazines which I subscribe to–and I only subscribe to six magazines total, so it was somewhat ironic that they all came the same day: Locus, the newsletter of the science fiction field; Historical Novels Review, packed full of interviews and book reviews; and SFWA Bulletin, the newsletter of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

> Lots of bills and bank statements–and you certainly don’t want to know about them!