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January 2012 - New Year, new reads


mashiara

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Happy New Year, everyone! :)

Here's to 2012 being a good year for all of us, and a year filled with good books.

I managed to finish Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood last night so it wrapped up 2011 nicely for me. I enjoyed it but not as much as previous books of hers I've read. Halfway through I realized I should have probably read Oryx and Crake first, and I plan on doing that sometime this year. Good book. I really like Atwood, she's a great writer.

To start off this year I'm going with 11/22/63 by Stephen King. I normally wait until most books are out on paperback but I broke down and bought this one last week as an early birthday present to myself. I've read only good things about it and I hope to enjoy it, no matter how long it takes me to read it.

So, what will you be reading this month and this year? Share it with the rest of the Board. For myself, I just hope to find some time to read... anything, really.

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I started Paul McAuleys The Quiet War, which is quite good so far, and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams, which I had read at some point, it turns out. Its also pretty good, but it's not quite as sparkling as HHGTTG - or maybe i've just grown out of that type of thing a bit. It reamind me a lot of Good Omens too, for some reason. Also an Israeli book called Kfor (Frost) which appears to be an honest to goodness bit of Hebrew SFF, (That isn't a bad YA secondary world fantasy) in line with my attempt to read less english this year. (ie, less than 100%)

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The Crusades: Thomas Asbridge

Holy War: Nigel Cliff

Arguably Essays: Chrisopher Hitchins

Prague Cemetery: Umberto Eco

Fooled by Randomness: Nassim Taleb

The Half-Made World: Felix Gilman

City of Fortune (How Venice Won and Lost and Naval Empire): Roger Crowley - To be honest, this has to be one of my favorite books of the year. The author has a strong voice, painting remarkable events in a light that seem to make them even more so.

As per usual, these are all being read concurrently. I take and choose as the mood suits me, but in actually writing them down i need to prune them down a little. I am nearly done City of Fortune, but honestly, i have put it off a little because i do not want it to finish. Venice was a remarkable city in its day.

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Have to finish Its Only A Movie by Mark Kermode + The Green Pearl by Jack Vance. After that its a toss up between Books Of Blood By Clive Barker,Avilion by Robert Holdstock,The Hammer by KJ Parker or Daniel Woodrell's The Bayou Trilogy.

Books I'm looking to purchase soonish are The Tigers Wife-Tea Ohbret,The Sisters Brothers-Patrick Dewitt,The Last Werewolf-Glenn Duncan. Heard a lot of mixed things about the latter but I figure it can't be any worse than the Howling novelisations.

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I blew right through God's War and Infidel the last few days, and not sure what is next. May try to manipulate address on Amazon to get Iron Jackal, but more likely I will do the firt Hanover book. Also thinking of getting The Legend of Eli Monpress omnibus. Anyone tried it yet? Looks interesting.

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Reading/reviewing all of Faulkner's published work this year on Fridays, so I'm starting with As I Lay Dying.

Will also be studying Wheeler M. Thackston's An Introduction to Persian, as I want to know how to read in another language and I want to experience Rumi, Hafez, and other Persian poets in the original language.

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I have the following books sitting on my new Kindle just waiting to be read:

- Fevre Dream - George R R Martin (actually reading it now, almost finished!)

- Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy - David Stevenson

- Son of Heaven - David Wingrove

- The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

- The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi

- Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

- The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

- The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

- Dracula - Bram Stoker

- The Worm Ouroboros - ER Eddison

Plus, I have a bunch of other (physical) books still to read:

- Broken Angels - Richard Morgan (I'll finish this when I'm done with Fevre Dream)

- The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffrey

- Vellum - Hal Duncan

- Anathem - Neal Stephenson

- Shadow and Claw - Gene Wolf

Other books I want to read, but don't have yet:

- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John Le Carre

- The Apocalypse Rag - George R R Martin

- The Folding Knife - KJ Parker

I'm sure other stuff will come up as the year goes on, but I hope to finish off or, at least, make a significant dent in this list by 2013.

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Over the christmas vacation I've managed to read The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones and The Dragons of Babel by Michael Swanwick.

The Time of the Ghost was OK, but I would'nt rank it very high among Jones's works. It is quite dark and reminds me a fair bit about the amazing Fire and Hemlock, but it feels less complex and interesting than the latter novel. The most noteworthy thing about the book was the amazingly neglectful parents of the main characters and all the more so if you know that they are closely modelled after Jones's own parents.

The Dragons of Babel is set in the same world as The Iron-Dragon's Daughter and while it may not be quite as good as that one, it might still be the best novel I read last year. It's a shame that it didn't get more attention when it was released a couple of years ago, because I think it's the kind of novel that would appeal to a wide audience. Swanwick is very skilled writer, who writes with a sharp, clear and very readable prose; the book itself is funny, imaginative and dark and if I were to compare it to something I would say that it's a bit like if Martin or Iain Banks had written a Discworld novel.

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I just finished The Night Circus by Morgenstern. I didn't find it quite as "magical" as most people seemed to, but it was still quite good and very well written.

Next up is Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle. I'm also going to try and get back into reading short stories again starting with Jeffrey Ford's collection, The Empire of Ice Cream.

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Reading/reviewing all of Faulkner's published work this year on Fridays, so I'm starting with As I Lay Dying.

Will also be studying Wheeler M. Thackston's An Introduction to Persian, as I want to know how to read in another language and I want to experience Rumi, Hafez, and other Persian poets in the original language.

I do like Faulkner but I think o'Connor is perhaps the best southern American writer ever. "a Rose For Emily" is my favorite Faulkner anything.

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I do like Faulkner but I think o'Connor is perhaps the best southern American writer ever. "a Rose For Emily" is my favorite Faulkner anything.

Well, Twain considered himself to be a Southern writer, so there might be some stiff competition there. Hard for me to choose a favorite, whether it be a Southern writer or even a favorite Faulkner story. I'm just glad my native region is blessed with so many talented and famous writers over the past two centuries.

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Hadn't e even thought of Twain as southern, after all he wrote for several newspapers here (Northern California) but seriously, Wolfe, O'Connor, Caldwell, Welty, Capote, Williams, McCullers, even Lee for that one truly great novel. The southern region has had some of the best and most truly transcendental writers in American letters.

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Just finished Heirs of the blade by Tchaikovsky which was a good read, but different somehow than the stuff before.

Also finished Prince of thorns by Mark Lawrence. Fast and fun read but it somehow seemed comical to me, maybe because of the book format which was small.

Now starting Leviathan Wakes. I am curious to see how this will go, since it has been a while since I read sci-fi stuff.

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