Wendy's (Snowy) Spring Reading List

I'm just finishing up the last of my Winter Reading List with The Last Wish. I'd feel guilty about the fact that I'm a few days late with that, but since this is what it looks like outside my window.... While it might not feel like spring in spirit, my daughters are certain that it is and are already making plans. I shall use their positivity to fuel my own spring plans.

First and foremost on my list is The Barrow, for which I claim bragging rights as this copy was personally signed and sent by my friend, Mark Smylie. It dawned on me, as I walked back from the mailbox through the knee deep snow (yes, I'm bitter. Sue me.) that it had been over a decade since we first met at a Detroit comic convention and he introduced me to Artesia. We eventually lost touch, until I stumbled across The Barrow on Goodreads during its early stages. I'm very much looking forward to reading this for so many reasons.

After that, I am still busily working on my promise to work though books I already own and have been meaning to read, and not buying any more books in the mean time (failed on the latter ... see upcoming book haul post). I've been using my many Worlds Without End reading challenges to keep me focused on this goal and am pleased to report that I'm doing reasonably well.

The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin

I'm putting this on here, but I reserve the right to run away from it and cry in a corner. It may be that I can only handle one book in this series per year, and I'm only just getting over The Broken Kingdoms, which was the first book on my Winter Reading List. But now that I've learned that Jemisin's The Fifth Season has been postponed to 2015, perhaps I should consider it a sign that I need to be finished with the Inheritance Trilogy first and then let my emotions settle before diving into a new story.

The New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson

There are several authors whose names I have heard, and know them to be major players within speculative fiction, but I am completely unfamiliar with their work. Nalo Hopkinson is one of them, and as part of both the Speculative Fiction by Author's of Colour Challenge and the the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Challenge, I've selected this book as my introduction to Ms. Hopkinson's work and made a special trip to the local library to grab it.

Other books on the we'll-just-have-to-pretend-it's Spring Reading List continue the theme of catching up. In some cases, even going back to some genre classics... :

Mogsy's Spring 2014 Reading List

It's SPRING! Thank goodness! It has been a long and brutal winter and up until a couple days ago it was still snowing, so let's hope things finally warm up now.

Anyway, making a reading list at the beginning of each season is kind of a tradition of mine. I find it helps focus my attention on books I've been meaning to read for a while, most of them past purchases, and for that reason I've stopped including review copies or upcoming books. This also gives me months and hence plenty of time to work through my list.

From the once again dismal completion rate from my Winter Reading List (only 6 out of 15 books, ack! -- but I did take February off for Review Copy Cleanup month) I've taken a page from Wendy and decided to narrow it down to a handful of titles this time. Okay, maybe two handfuls -- a few of these are short! Certainly, a more manageable number of books.

Here they are (and yes, a couple of them are coming back. Like London Falling, I WILL read you, dammit!) Also some notable new additions like Guards! Guards! because I'm ashamed I've never read a Terry Pratchett book and I think it's high time we rectified that. The City Watch books came highly recommended to me by several bloggers, so that's where I'm going to start. See anything that looks interesting?

Wendy's Winter Reading List

My new year's reading resolution for 2014 includes a half-hearted promise not to buy any more new books next year because I need to focus on my mighty to-be-read pile. There are a number of books that I have sitting right beside my bed or at the top of my ebook list because I keep meaning to read next, but something always hops in the way. Making a list challenges me to stick to it. Oh I'm sure a lot of other things will pop up, such as review requests, book club reads and other challenges, but these books are definitely going to be read this winter.

The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

I'm a bit amazed to look at the calendar and see that it's already been a year since I finished reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms for the second time within two months. I didn't continue with the Inheritance Trilogy at that time because I just wasn't ready for the emotional commitment. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was emotionally exhausting! But a year is ample time to get over that, so here we go...

The Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazny

This was a recommendation that spawned from a discussion about writing magic and mages. And while I'm impatiently awaiting Brandon Sanderson's Words of Radiance, I decided that the beginning of the year is an excellent time to start a new epic fantasy tome. This is a collection of 10 books within the series, but it's a pretty hefty book, so it still counts.

The First Confessor by Terry Goodkind

A few years ago,  my parents took the kids for a week and I had myself a Legend of the Seeker marathon. I really enjoyed the show and have been meaning to read its source material, starting with The Wizard's First Rule. I mulled over this for a while, but decided to go with the newer book, The First Confessor, which is the beginning of a new series that predates The Sword of Truth timeline.

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

As far as gaming goes, I have determined that 2014 will the The Year of The Witcher. This game has been sitting in my Steam library for a while now as a result of the painful original Mass Effect 3 endings. I'm a fan of books based on my favourite video games, but I have not yet read a book that inspired a game.

Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord

Goodreads recommended this book to me, but before I got around to reading it, Lord's second book, The Best of All Possible Worlds, popped up on NetGalley. I loved The Best of All Possible Worlds, and the sequel for it will be out in the spring from Jo Fletcher books, but it's about time I checked out Redemption in Indigo.

Miserere: An Autumn Tale by Teresa Frohock

Pronounced " mee-seh-reh-reh," this is a book that I've been meaning to read since Mogsy's glowing review, but more so now that I've unofficially become one of Ms. Frohock's twitter minions. One of the things I've come to appreciate about the book blogosphere is the opportunity to interact with the authors, and Ms. Frohock is absolutely one of the best of them. She is good, good peeps.

Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells

The moment I finished reading The Cloud Roads, I went and bought a whole bunch of Wells' other books, including this one. I ought to be reading the next book in The Books of the Raksura series, but this one caught my attention first. I really enjoy Wells' world building and, while I do plan to return to the Raksura, I'm curious about the other worlds she's created.

Mogsy's Winter Reading List

At the beginning of each season, I come up with a personal reading list apart from those books to-be-reviewed. I started ever since this summer, when I saw how organized it made me and how efficiently it managed to whittle down my TBR (70%+ completion rate!) Yet I'll admit, I was terrible with following my Fall reading list, just absolutely, pathetically dreadful (33% completion rate).

And I can't even blame NaNoWriMo for a lot of it, though that one month of wild, literary abandon did take a huge bite out of my reading time. More likely though, is that I simply let my leaning tower of books get away from me once again. Seriously, that thing has a mind of its own. Every time I look away, I swear it grows by several more titles.

A lot of the books I didn't get a chance to read last season ones I really wanted to get to, so for Winter, they are coming back, along with some new additions. And this time, I be more realistic with the numbers. Here's my nice and neat metaphorical stack of audiobooks, ebooks and physical books all on hand and ready to go. See anything that looks interesting?

Mogsy's WWReadathon Reading List

As you know, my friends at My Shelf Confessions just kicked off their Wonderfully Wicked Read-A-Thon, and until it ends at the end of this week I'm going to try to get as much reading time in as I can. Good news for me, seeing as I'm currently on vacation and can probably cram in more than usual!

As such, my WWReadathon goals are pretty ambitious. My internet access is going to be quite spotty while I'm traveling, so all I'm going to aim for at the moment is to get through as many of the following books as possible by the time the event is over and write up their reviews. I'm probably not going to be able to finish all of them, but I hope to make a good dent!

 

Wendy's Fall Reading List

I have a huge TBR pile, but these lucky pieces of literature have made it to the top for this season. My list for the fall isn't quite as ambitious as Mogsy's, but making the list definitely helps keep me on track. It's so easy to be distracted by -- oh Amazon is having a sale.....

I have far too many back issues of comics and graphic novels that I also need to catch up on, so, after closing my eyes and randomly poking a finger at the pile, I decided to start on Fables. And for lulz, I will see how it compares to Grimm Fairy Tales.