TSS: Fall/Winter 2010 Reading Shortlist
Happy Sunday, all!
While I talk about the TBR pile a lot, it’s not actually really ever one pile (unless I purposefully pile it up and make a movie about it). Most of my TBR books are on the shelves, maybe pulled to the front of books that I’ve already read, but otherwise distributed with the rest of my library. But, I do have one pile of TBR books, known as the “on deck” pile – these are books that I want to read next, books that have made the shortlist. And, while my shortlists don’t always get entirely completed, they are helpful in keeping me from being overwhelmed by the choices of what to read next, given the ample selection I’ve accumulated. So, I thought today I’d take y’all on a tour of what’s next up for me.
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Top of the pile – Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. OMGOMGOMG new Wheel of Time! I’m currently ~60% of my way through my re-read of The Gathering Storm in preparation. I’ve quickly flipped through the new book (couldn’t resist), and already squeeed in excitement twice: the epigraph is from Loial’s book, and the prologue starts with Lan. Hooray! Although, it’s a good thing I’ve got a bit of a review backlog built up, since it’s a beast… almost 900 pages. |
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| Review Obligations – Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man’s Quest to Preserve the World’s Great Animals by Jay Kirk, and The Virgin Widow by Anne O’Brien. LibraryThing Early Reviewers books from the past two months. I’m behind. |
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| – Dark Moon of Avalon by Anna Elliott. I was really excited to read this anyways, so when I was contacted and asked to be part of a blog tour, that just bumped it even further up the list. |  |
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Library Books I’ve been pretty good about mostly staying away from the library and reading my own books for the past few months, but Zombies vs. Unicorns was too much for me to pass up. I’m on a bit of anthology-overload after finishing My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, but Z v. U has most of the same authors of Geektastic, which I loved, so I’m hoping for lightning to strike twice. |
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Series to Finish Before I Forget What Happened in the Previous Books – The other two Sharing Knife books, Passage and Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold |
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Other Books I Just Really Want to Read – The House on Durrow Street by Galen Beckett. (This could also go in the previous category, but since it doesn’t finish the series, I put it here.) |
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– The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. This may actually get bumped for a few months, since I don’t know that two Fatty Fat Fantasy Epics in close proximity is the best way to do things. | |||
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– The Likeness by Tana French – Generation Kill by Evan Wright |
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– The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay. I know that this has been on my "I’m going to read this now!" shortlist one or two (or three… or four) times before, but I mean it this time! | |||
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Books That I Will Probably Be Bumping Down the List Due to Similarity with Other Books on the List |
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| – The Starry Rift by Jonathan Strahan. I was so looking forward to this book that I bought it new (gasp!) with my own cash monies (double gasp!), but see above about being sort of ODed on anthologies. |  |
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Books that I Want to Read, but Have Been Avoiding, Because I Know That If I Read Them, I Will Actually Be Adding To Rather Than Subtracting From My TBR Pile, Because I Will Then Have To Go Buy The Sequels – The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness – Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder |
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So that’s the state of things around here. Readers, what books are you excited about on your shortlist for the next few months?
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Loved THE LIKENESS! Put it at the TOP of your pile :)
Lenore – I know, I know, I really need to read it, especially given how much I liked In the Woods. Problem is, I want to put *everything* at the top of my pile! :)
Lots of exciting books. On my reading list that you reminded me to pick up is book 4 of the Wheel of Time… working through re-reading the titles I’ve read and the ones I haven’t yet (book 10 and on). I can’t wait to make it to the new ones!
Amy – Oh, how exciting! Books 4 and 5 are my favorite Wheel of Time books… although The Gathering Storm comes pretty close! We’ll have to see about the newest one, although I’m expecting good things…
(Sorry for the duplicate message – in the last one I was signed in to my not-completely-active WordPress account, so I thought I would repost under a more active persona.)
I really enjoyed “Poison Study,” but just haven’t felt motivated to go beyond the second book. And with Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking series I devoured (and really admired) the first two books, but now am paralyzed fifty pages into the last book. Am I experiencing thirdbookitis?
Ariel – Sounds like an acute case of thirdbookitis to me! I am usually a compulsive finisher of series as well as books, but when I stall out, it’s usually in the middle/end of the second book, particularly in trilogies.
Yeah, you might get supersaturated with two large Sanderson novels close together–The Way of Kings is long. (As in, there are bits I wish could edit, but it is good.)
Omni – Yeah, it’s a chunkster and no mistake. Maybe I’ll give it a few months, to evenly space it between this WoT installment and the next?
I really do need to gather all my separate TBR piles together and find out exactly how many books I have to read before I add any more to the pile. This does not include all the books I have on hold at the library..they don’t count, right?
Kingdom Under Glass looks interesting. I wonder if my library has it? Have a great week!
Gavin – Oh, god, if I counted the books I had on hold at the library, I’d be toast! Whenever I talk about my TBR pile I just mean the books that I actually own that I haven’t read yet.
I have an enormous new pile of birthday books and an enormous pile of library books. Both at the same time! Why do these always arrive in enormous clumps?!
debnance – I know what you mean! I’ll go months without a single one of my wishlisted books coming up on Bookmooch, and then all of a sudden four will be available at the same time.
I haven’t read a single one of those books, but I totally understand why you’d make a movie if you decided to build a TBR pile.
Kathy – That movie’s out of date… eventually I’ll have to make a new one! :)
My mother got Dry Storeroom No. 1, and she found it a bit boring. And she loves the Natural History Museum and she cannot talk about anything else. So I think it makes sense to bump it down the list.
Jenny – Hmmm, if Mumsy recommends a down-bump, then I think that’s a plan. I’d still like to give it a shot on the sooner end of eventually, though.
The Man of the House is currently reading Towers of midnight and is loving it! He said it’s been a while since he’s enjoyed a book of the series this much. I have yet to start reading the series though; it has so many pages, I’m tired just thinking about it!
kay – The Wheel of Time books are definitely a bit daunting for someone just starting out, I’m sure! But what I found was that after I’d read the first two or three, the characters started feeling like family, and I couldn’t *not* keep reading, so I barely even noticed the page count climbing!
I have so many books to read on my TBR pile, it’s not even funny! Some of them are review copies too :( But, I am looking forward to reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy and The Girl who kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson. Finally hoping to put the Millenium trilogy to bed!
Nish – I hope you can get to them soon, and that you enjoy them! The Road was a little bit too bleak for me, but The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest was a really satisfying conclusion to the series.
Your last category looks all too familiar. I’ve done that an awful lot over the past couple of years. I thought I’d be through with it when I moved and left la TBR behind, but I still find myself reluctant to borrow certain library books because I know I’ll have to get the rest of the series right away, and that’ll delay some of the other stuff I want to borrow.
Memory – I just realized I’ve got two very conflicting “rules” about my reading. I really prefer reading series once all of the books are out, but at the same time, I’m hesitant to start series with a lot of books because then I know I will most likely have to read them all which will interfere with other reading.
Your ever-shifting stacks are a lot like mine: I’m always shuffling and re-shuffling, and always feeling anguished because I…just…can’t….get….to them.
I’m not anywhere near my TBR right now (am at work), but stand-outs that come to mind are “The Instructions” by Adam Levin, Kevin Brockmeier’s new book (“The Illumination”? something like that), “Tinkers” by Paul Harding, “Skippy Dies” by Paul Murray, that new big fat book of noir fiction edited by Otto Penzler, and “What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us” by Laura Van den Berg. Oh, and “Lolita.” (but then that’s been a regular guest star on the TBR Show for years)
David – There’s definitely always a sense of “these are all books that I want to be reading right now. all of them. at once. right now.”
I don’t know if you listen to audiobooks, but I thought the audiobook of Lolita was really good. Jeremy Irons is perfect with the narration, and it might help you finally get that one off the pile.
I need to start reading the Wheel of Time Series.