Ok, with @Thraeg and his ambitious 2019 Reading Challenge coming along, I have to go the opposite way and just try to get through the books I have lined up that I bought this year in sales and free giveaways and such.
So here’s mine:
Currently Reading:
News of the World: A Novel - Paulette Jiles
Chronicles of the Black Company - Glen Cook
The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Kings of the Wyld - Nicholas Eames
The ballad of Black Tom - Victor Lavalle
All the Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders
Babylon’s Ashes - James S. A. Corey
A Shadow in Summer - Daniel Abraham
And Another thing - Eoin Colfer (Part 6 of three of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!)
The Last Wish - Andrzej Sapkowski
A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab
Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander Series
The Quantum Thief - Hannu Rajaniemi
Too Like the Lightning - Ada Palmer
The Undoing Project - Michael Lewis
The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson
All Systems Red - Martha Wells
Chasm City - Alastair Reynolds
The Adventures Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (trilogy) - Fritz Leiber
Gardens of the Moon - Steven Erikson
Broken Angels - Richard Morgan
Woken Furies - Richard Morgan
Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan
The Terror - Dan Simmons
The Apex book of World SF 4, 3, 2, 1
Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef - Cassandra Khaw
A Small Charred Face - Kazuki Sakuraba
Prime Meridian - Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Secret History of Moscow - Ekaterina Sedia
Spirits Abroad - Zen Cho
Azanian Bridges - Nick Wood
Castles in Spain - VV.AA.
Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific - Robert Leckie
Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
Uprooted - Naomi Novik
The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in … - Brooke Gladstone
The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch
Frontier Justic - Arthur Bradley
Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie
Deathless - Catherynne Valente
Night Without Stars - Peter Hamilton
The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie
All the other Books of the New Sun after Shadow of the Torturer - Gene Wolfe
Some James Bond books - Ian Fleming
The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
Range of Ghosts - Elizabeth Bear
The Girl with All the Gifts - M. R. Carey
Marvel Comics: The Untold Story - Sean Howe
The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu
The Just City - Jo Walton
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Perdido Street Station - China Mieville
Songs of Kali - Dan Simmons
The King in Yellow - Robert Chambers
The Dresden Files books - Jim Butcher
11/22/63 - Stephen King
Jumper - Steven Gould
Mogworld - Yahtzee Croshaw
The Happiest Days of Our Lives- Wil Wheaton
Earth Abides - George Stewart
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union - Michael Chabon
on Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington Book 1) - David Weber
Videogames: In the Beginning - Ralph Baer
The Making of Prince of Persia Journals 1985-1993 - Jordan Mechner
Pump Six and other Stories - Paolo Bacigalupi
Old Man’s War - John Scalzi
Further down the line when I finish Last Wish:
Sword of Destiny
Season of Storms
The Lady of the Lake
The Tower of Swallows
Baptism of Fire
The Time of Contempt
Blood of Elves
Further down the line when I finish Chronicles of the Black Company, I already got:
Soldiers Live
The Books of the South
She is the Darkness
Water Sleeps
Bleak Seasons
Further down the line when I finish Babylon’s Ashes, I already got:
Persepolis Rising - James S. A. Corey
Rereading, so I can then read a sequel:
A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
Rereading, because it was damned funny the first time:
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency box set - Douglas Adams
Probably not worth starting:
The Eye of the World - Robert Jordan
Ok, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to write this all down. This list is a longer than I was expecting. Lots of great books to read over the next few years though! That’s my Reading Challenge! :)
Wow, the hundred or so I have listed above don’t look that big now. Of course, I tried not to list any that I’d be tempted to re-read except Dirk Gently’s, and that’s only because I don’t remember Dirk Gently at all now, it’s been so long, which is why I bought the box set for myself recently.
Well, it is a fourteen book commitment where the average length is around 900 pages a piece. I think it’s worth it overall but on the other hand, if one were to tackle an epic fantasy series of that kind of scope I’d do Malazan first.
I don’t have my non Kindle books in France with me except for 1.
In progress
Astrophysics for people in a hurry - Neil De Grasse. (currently reading)
Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (I’m periodically reading to try and educate myself on world history.)
Hyperion - Dan Simmons (about 30% done, may abort)
The Eye of the World - Robert Jorden
Black Company - Glen Cook
Heart Shaped Box - Joe Hill
Assassin’s Apprentice - Robin Hobb
A Shadow in Summer - Daniel Abraham
The Ballad of Black Tom - Victor LaValle
The Complete Collection - HP Lovecraft
The Banished of Muirwood - Jeff Wheeler
The children of Huron - JRR Tolkien
Team of Rivals
The red Knight - Cameron
The Book of Joy - The Dalai Lama
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
The Princess Bride - William Goldman
Are any of the above strongly recommended or strongly recommended to avoid?
Heart Shaped Box, Assassin’s Apprentice are both great reads. I really enjoyed The Red Knight but haven’t seen quite as much universal praise for that. (Though I think it may just be less well known.)
I don’t buy that far ahead usually. I do probably have 15-20 books at home right now on my “backlog”. Most of them are either Clive Cussler or Dick Francis novels I bought at a recent charity used book event. I have a couple of Robin Hobb’s books as well.
That’s how I used to be. Most of these I’ve accumulated because of Tor’s giveaways, and various bundles I’ve bought and daily deals on the Kindle store pointed out and recommended in the eBook bargain thread. Hence, for the first time, I’ve got a massive book backlog.
I try and do the same thing. If I include those I also have:
Gardens of the Moon: Book One of The Malazan Book of the Fallen
Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents - Kenneth Davis
Tales of the Dying Earth - Jack Vance
Life in a Medieval Village - Francis Geis
Blindsight (Firefall Book 1) - Peter Watts
The Ember War (The Ember War Saga Book 1) - Richard Fox
Dune - Frank Herbert
I love Hyperion, so I’d say don’t give up on it. It’s always jarring when you switch characters and start reading someone else’s story. But if you can get in the groove again, all the stories are interesting.
The Richard Morgan books on Rock8man’s list prompted me to check whether he’d finally finished with that garbage fantasy series, and gotten back to writing the stuff he’s actually good at. And hell yeah! “An atmospheric tale of corruption and abduction set on Mars” just released two weeks ago.
Generally I only buy books that I intend to read right away. But I guess since I haven’t started with this yet, it’s technically in the backlog.
