Sunday Salon: January Shortlist

Welcome to the first Sunday Salon of 2009! I hope everyone had a happy and safe New Year’s, and that 2009 continues to be wonderful and full of fantastic books!

Around here, I’m still trying to play catch-up with writing reviews for several books I finished over the holidays – they’ll be coming up in the next week or two!

My original plan for this year was to do “theme months” for a while – Fatty-Fat Fantasy Novel January, Short Books/Short People/Short Month (YA novels) in February, etc. However, for January at least, I’m somewhat overcommitted in terms of books I “have” to read – ARCs and such – that I may only be able to squeeze in a few fatty-fat fantasy novels.

Here’s what’s on tap for this month:

– Etta by Gerald Kolpan – My LibraryThing Early Reviewer book from the November batch. I didn’t get to it in December, so it gets top priority now.

– Mistress Shakespeare by Karen Harper – ARC; being released 05 Feb 2009. I used to be into Shakespeariana, and this book looked like a good way to dive back in.

– The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Gran – ARC; being released on 24 Feb 2009. This book’s not even out yet, but is apparently already being turned into a movie (starring Brad Pitt!)

– Heroes of the Valley by Jonathan Stroud – ARC; being released 27 Jan 09. I loved The Bartimaeus Trilogy, but was underwhelmed by The Last Siege… but this one looks like it takes more after the former, so I’m hopeful.

– Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling – Must re-read this, so that I can read…

– The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling – It has been *SO* hard sitting on this unread for the past week, even though I *know* I will enjoy it more if Deathly Hallows is fresh in my mind.

– The Absolute Sandman, Vol. 2 by Neil Gaiman – My library bought the big one, even though it already had each of the individual compilations, and I figured I could use the workout from just lifting this monster to read it.

– Inkheart by Cornelia Funke – A re-read before the movie comes out; I didn’t quite get around to this in December, but I’m working on it now.

So that’s what I know I’ll be reading this month. The rest of the time (assuming there *is* any “rest of the time”), I’ll be picking from among the following selection of fatty-fat fantasy novels:

– The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay – Another one from my December Shortlist that just didn’t happen.

– The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold – *Shame!* This was a Christmas present in 2007 that I haven’t gotten around to yet. I loved the first two in this series, so this one should be good… plus my dad’s listening to it at the moment (on my recommendation), so I’d like to read it so I can talk to him about it.

– In the Eye of Heaven by David Keck – I now have two friends that have borrowed and read this one, and want to talk about it, while I’ve barely touched it, so it’s on the list.

– The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld – Okay, so technically it’s fatty-fat sci-fi. Shhh – I won’t tell if you don’t.

– The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
– Song for the Basilisk by Patricia A. McKillip
– The Innocent Mage by Karen Miller
– The Ill-Made Mute by Cecilia Dart-Thornton
– A Scholar of Magics by Caroline Stevermer
– The Innamorati by Midori Snyder
– California Demon: The Secret Life of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom by Julie Kenner
– On Fire’s Wings by Christie Golden – One of my SantaThing books.

What about you, readers? What’s on your plate for January?