The latest Oz reading

Let's see what I've just finished this weekend, shall we?

• First was a new picture book edition of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus illustrated by Charles Santore that came out this year. If you want the full story, I really don't recommend getting this, as it is a severe adaptation. Most of the highlights are there, but the Awgwas are left out completely, and it just feels incomplete. But I still recommend it for Santore's illustrations. They are wonderful and charming, and remind me a lot of Maxfield Parrish's work.
  
• The other book I read was Beyond the Stars: Tales of Adventure in Time and Space, a collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories, and excerpts of longer works, from the early '80s. I think we originally bought this for the final story, the opening of the novelization of the Doctor Who story "The Monster of Peladon," but when I discovered that one of the stories was by Rachel Cosgrove Payes, I grabbed it for my Oz collection. Rachel Cosgrove is the most underrepresented Royal Historian in my collection, and that's something I hope to fix soon. Anyway, "Half-Life" sets up an interesting post-apocalyptic city where fifteen-year-olds must kill older people and steal their identity or they will be fair game for the next generation to do the same to them when they turn thirty. Yeah, grisly. So when Benji sets out into the wilderness to find the legendary Old Man of the Hills... well, let's just say he finds more than he bargained for. This book actually looks like a pretty interesting read in general, and maybe I'll go back and read the rest of the stories later. It includes such big name writers as H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Anne McCaffrey, and Robert Silverberg, so it may just well be worth my time.