Now, I'm not insane -- I don't actually expect I'll be able to hit every single title on this list, but when the number of books in your TBR pile is in the triple digits it sure helps to prioritize. It's always better to have more than to have not enough, that's my motto. This should help organize my reading a little.
So, without further ado, away we go:
Audiobooks, Hardcovers, eBooks, Library Loans
The bread and butter -- those titles I have on hand with me that are sitting at the top of my list of books I'm itching to read. A lot of them, like The Coldest War, Mockingbird, The Isle of Blood, The Blinding Knife, etc. are later installments of series I've really liked and am hoping to finish up or catch up a bit on this summer. Other highlights are Odd Thomas, a book that has been recommended to me by a ton of my friends, and American Gods because it's seriously time to finally lose my Neil Gaiman virginity and read one of his novels. I'm also really hoping I can make time for The Winds of Khalakovo, which came with my pledge tier reward when I supported Bradley P. Beaulieu's Kickstarter for the third book in the trilogy, The Flames of Shadam Khoreh.
Book Club, Events, Reading Challenges
The Drowning Girl is Levar's Rainbow Book Club's read for July and I'm really looking forward to it. This means there will be another added to this list when August rolls around, and between all the great choices up for voting I'm already having a tough choice deciding what I want to read for that month. Glamour in Glass, Songs of the Earth, and Of Blood and Honey will be the books towards my Worlds Without End Women of Genre Fiction reading challenge. And finally, I'm really looking forward to The Masque of the Red Death, which I'll be reading later on in the spirit of Clockwork Summer, a feature my fellow blogger Hannah is planning, so keep an eye out for that. I'm not even sure that book is truly Steampunk, but that's how a lot of people have categorized it and I'm just going to go with that.
Review Editions, Pre-release eARCs and Hard Copies
A couple books have found their way into my mailbox in the last few weeks, and of course there's also the growing NetGalley backlog which I really want to chisel down before I'm tempted to request any more.
Can't Wait Upcoming Releases
These are the highly anticipated books coming out between now and the beginning of September. Let's just say August is going to be great month -- or a bad month if you're my wallet or bank account. Lots of great books are going to come out then, and two that I'm most definitely going to be snatching up on Day One are The Crown Tower and Emperor of Thorns, both expected to come out on August 6th. Seriously, I need those books in my life. August 6th is coincidentally also when Codex Born comes out. I swear, that one single day is going to utterly destroy my book buying budget.
Broken Homes is another book I really want to get my hand on on release day, but unfortunately it probably won't be published in North America until early 2014. If the news about the audiobook is accurate though, I may be able to snag it from Audible.
Blood and Beauty is my one concession to Historical Fiction, because I have a thing for the Borgias. And then come the video game tie-in novels, which are my guilty pleasure. While The Time of Contempt is not technically a game novel, the books and the character are of course what inspired The Witcher games.
Gonna be a summer of great books!
I started replying on Twitter but I have so much rambling!
ReplyDeleteHave heard wonderful things about Lives of Tao, Golem and the Djinni, John Scalzi, Firebrand.. then I get all excited again over Blood of Elves, Neil Gaiman and Brent Weeks.
THEN I SCROLLED DOWN.
Just to warn you, Masque of the Red Death isn't really steampunk, it's more of a gothic dystopian romance with a couple of cogs at one point, I'm not sure who's categorising it as steampunk but I'm fairly sure they don't know what it actually is. But I do love that you're trying the genre! :D Mebbe you'll find something new in Clockwork Summer (now called The Clockwork Carnival).
I neeed to get reading Michael J. Sullivan, Jim Hines, and Ben Aarovitch.. and Mark Lawrence (I JUST bought book two!). Have you seen the UK cover for Bloody and Beauty by the way? LOVE.
Just finished Firebrand and am working on John Scalzi's Human Division and Neil Gaiman now! Lives of Tao, Golem and the Djinni and Brent Weeks are all in the audiobook queue, so they are definitely getting tackled this summer, no buts about it :D
ReplyDeleteAs per our conversation on Twitter, I think a lot of people shelf their books based on content, so even though it has steampunky elements but isn't actually steampunk as a whole, it gets shelved that way. It's bizarre, but whatever helps people organize their library, I suppose! Also, I see Steampunk as one of those genres that aren't very well defined at the moment, so I find it's "anything goes!" in a lot of circles. Masque is probably like that.
And re: Blood and Beauty, I think I have, if it's the one with the red and white silhouettes! Really dramatic! And again adding to my observations that UK covers tend to play on the "dual-color" theme a lot!