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Jan. 4th, 2010 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseI don't ahve anything like a list of books read last year.
Instead, in no particular order, here's a list of the books in my to-read pile I intend to read sometime soon (As in, this is far from the complete list). Those I strike through are ones I finished. Feel free to particularly recommend or anti-recommend anything on here:
Fiction I own:
Sherwood Smith - Wren's War
Sherwood Smith - A Stranger to Command (Okay, this won't show up in the mail for a week or two.)
Elizabeth Bear - All the Windwracked Stars
Tobias S. Buckell - Ragamuffin
Melissa Marr - Wicked Lovely
Susan Cooper - Victory
Frank Beddon - The Looking Glass Wars
Diana Gabaldon - Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
Elizabeth Hoyt - The Raven Prince
M.T. Anderson - The Astonishing life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: the Pox Party
Nalo Hopkinson - The New Moon's Arms
Rafael Sabatini - The Sea Hawk
Robin McKinley - Chalice
Georgette Heyer - The Reluctant Widow
Steven Brust - Jhegaala
Marie Brennan - Midnight Never come
Chris Moriarty - Spin Control
Sandor Marai - Embers
C.S. Forester - Midshipman Hornblower
Samuel Schellebarger - Lord Vanity
eta: And I forgot Tamara Siler Jones - Taleisin told me she's sending me one belatedly for Christmas, (Along with Corambis, which I have read) but it hasn't arrived yet.
Non-Fiction I own:
James Shapiro - 1599: a Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
Roger Spielmann - Anishnaabe World
John Gardner - On Moral Fiction
David Macaulay - Castle
Phillipe Aries - Western Attitudes Towards Death
David Morrell - Lessons from a Life of Writing
Margaret Mead - From the South Seas (Yes, I know some of it's discredited, and more debated.)
Fiction/Nonfiction Muddle:
Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen - The Science of Discworld, the Science of Discworld 3: Darwin's Watch. (The first of these is now my backpack emergency book.)
Online Fiction (The first three of these are ongoing reading, not ones I haven't touched, so they can't really be struck out as done):
Various including Bull, Bear, Bobet, Black, and Monette - Shadow Unit (http://www.shadowunit.org/)
Various Unknown - Harry Potter - Alternity (Moved to Dreamwidth: http://alt-player.dreamwidth.org/read . Alas, this doesn't fix the basic format problem that you can't read more then a few entries back, making it pretty much impossible to either reread or point new people to it, since it's been running for a year and a half.)
Freece - Captive Prince (M/M that starts with a scenario that looks like it will be all bodice-ripperish and cheesy, and rapidly gets more complex and fascinating, and contains a lot more politics than romance or sex. And written to a professional level.) Currently on something of a hiatus as the writer recovers from a back injury
Steven Brust - My Own Kind of Freedom - a Firefly Novel (http://dreamcafe.com/firefly.html) (Yes, that's a fanfic by a professional writer I mostly admire for a fandom I mostly share. Which I haven't sampled yet; am I crazy or what?)
Martha Wells - Pretty much all her online short fiction (Seven stories). I absentmindedly bookmarked the link ages ago then forgot it was there. http://www.marthawells.com/excerpts.htm
Books I don't own but mean to Borrow to read:
Guy Gavriel Kay - Ysabel (from mom. Has actually been sitting in my to-read pile a bit)
Terry Pratchett - Unseen Academicals (From mom)
More Heyer (The next time I feel really in need of fluff. Right now top of my list to look for at the library seem to be Cotillion, A Civil Contract, Sprig Muslin and These Old Shades)
More Carol Berg (I'd just finished Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone, and rather liked even with some reservations. Since then, I read Transformation, Revelation and Restoration, and while I'm mildly glad I read the whole thing to see where she planned to go, those who said read the first and pretend it's a solo work are pretty close to right. A lot of early-author mistakes in the pacing, some weirdnesses in the plot. Transformation is the only one I might ever reread. I also was gifted the Spirit Lens, which I devoured, and think is going somewhere much more interesting in future books.)
Margaret Mahy - Heriot (She wrote one of my favourite YA books, the Tricksters, and a number of others, but Maddigan's Fantasia, the last one I bought, failed to impress me in any serious way.)
Ekaterina Sedia - The Alchemy of Stone
Minister Faust - From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain
Jo Walton - Half a Crown (Actually got from the library and loaned to mom immediately, since my list of to-reads is so long)
And, I forgot the first time, the two books I'm actually in the middle of:
Scott Lynch - Red Seas Under Red Skies (Made more progress, then set aside again, and now physically cannot reach the copy to finish. :)
Tomson Highway - Kiss of the Fur Queen
Books I've read since which weren't on this list, oops.
Maureen McHugh - China Mountain Zhang (I see why it got so much good comment. And also, I believe this is the book with the ongoing deliberate grammatical mistake TNH described herself as removing on her first copyedit pass, putting back in on her second, and going through a third time to trace its usage. If so, I see what she meant.)
Dorothy Sayers - Whose Body?, Murder Must Advertise
Jennifer Crusie - Getting Rid of Bradley (not one of her best, but perfectly satisfactory during a need for fluff)
Stephen Hunt - the Court of the Air (Just started)
Whedon and various - Buffy Season 8 - first 4 collections (Looks like it's going someplace interesting. Either the hiatus or the change of format brought new ideas in. Not that it's without some weird bits, and I've heard a few things about later sections.)
Lucifer - Devil in the Gateway (First collection) (Heard good things about the series. Tried it. Not sure I regret trying it, but even less sure I'd continue.)
Instead, in no particular order, here's a list of the books in my to-read pile I intend to read sometime soon (As in, this is far from the complete list). Those I strike through are ones I finished. Feel free to particularly recommend or anti-recommend anything on here:
Fiction I own:
Sherwood Smith - A Stranger to Command (Okay, this won't show up in the mail for a week or two.)
Elizabeth Bear - All the Windwracked Stars
Tobias S. Buckell - Ragamuffin
Melissa Marr - Wicked Lovely
Susan Cooper - Victory
Frank Beddon - The Looking Glass Wars
Diana Gabaldon - Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
M.T. Anderson - The Astonishing life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: the Pox Party
Nalo Hopkinson - The New Moon's Arms
Rafael Sabatini - The Sea Hawk
Robin McKinley - Chalice
Steven Brust - Jhegaala
Marie Brennan - Midnight Never come
Chris Moriarty - Spin Control
Sandor Marai - Embers
Samuel Schellebarger - Lord Vanity
eta: And I forgot Tamara Siler Jones - Taleisin told me she's sending me one belatedly for Christmas, (Along with Corambis, which I have read) but it hasn't arrived yet.
Non-Fiction I own:
James Shapiro - 1599: a Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
John Gardner - On Moral Fiction
David Macaulay - Castle
Phillipe Aries - Western Attitudes Towards Death
David Morrell - Lessons from a Life of Writing
Margaret Mead - From the South Seas (Yes, I know some of it's discredited, and more debated.)
Fiction/Nonfiction Muddle:
Online Fiction (The first three of these are ongoing reading, not ones I haven't touched, so they can't really be struck out as done):
Various including Bull, Bear, Bobet, Black, and Monette - Shadow Unit (http://www.shadowunit.org/)
Various Unknown - Harry Potter - Alternity (Moved to Dreamwidth: http://alt-player.dreamwidth.org/read . Alas, this doesn't fix the basic format problem that you can't read more then a few entries back, making it pretty much impossible to either reread or point new people to it, since it's been running for a year and a half.)
Freece - Captive Prince (M/M that starts with a scenario that looks like it will be all bodice-ripperish and cheesy, and rapidly gets more complex and fascinating, and contains a lot more politics than romance or sex. And written to a professional level.) Currently on something of a hiatus as the writer recovers from a back injury
Steven Brust - My Own Kind of Freedom - a Firefly Novel (http://dreamcafe.com/firefly.html) (Yes, that's a fanfic by a professional writer I mostly admire for a fandom I mostly share. Which I haven't sampled yet; am I crazy or what?)
Martha Wells - Pretty much all her online short fiction (Seven stories). I absentmindedly bookmarked the link ages ago then forgot it was there. http://www.marthawells.com/excerpts.htm
Books I don't own but mean to Borrow to read:
Terry Pratchett - Unseen Academicals (From mom)
More Heyer (The next time I feel really in need of fluff. Right now top of my list to look for at the library seem to be Cotillion, A Civil Contract, Sprig Muslin and These Old Shades)
Margaret Mahy - Heriot (She wrote one of my favourite YA books, the Tricksters, and a number of others, but Maddigan's Fantasia, the last one I bought, failed to impress me in any serious way.)
Minister Faust - From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain
Jo Walton - Half a Crown (Actually got from the library and loaned to mom immediately, since my list of to-reads is so long)
And, I forgot the first time, the two books I'm actually in the middle of:
Scott Lynch - Red Seas Under Red Skies (Made more progress, then set aside again, and now physically cannot reach the copy to finish. :)
Books I've read since which weren't on this list, oops.
Maureen McHugh - China Mountain Zhang (I see why it got so much good comment. And also, I believe this is the book with the ongoing deliberate grammatical mistake TNH described herself as removing on her first copyedit pass, putting back in on her second, and going through a third time to trace its usage. If so, I see what she meant.)
Dorothy Sayers - Whose Body?, Murder Must Advertise
Jennifer Crusie - Getting Rid of Bradley (not one of her best, but perfectly satisfactory during a need for fluff)
Stephen Hunt - the Court of the Air (Just started)
Whedon and various - Buffy Season 8 - first 4 collections (Looks like it's going someplace interesting. Either the hiatus or the change of format brought new ideas in. Not that it's without some weird bits, and I've heard a few things about later sections.)
Lucifer - Devil in the Gateway (First collection) (Heard good things about the series. Tried it. Not sure I regret trying it, but even less sure I'd continue.)
