My TBR Stack Today
One of the great things about being on holiday is having the time to catch up on your reading so lately I’ve been visiting all my favourite bricks’n’mortar bookstores, for the sheer delight of browsing amongst shelves of books that I can purchase and take home with me forever when I finally make a selection—which can be difficult. I’ve also been rediscovering the joy of second hand bookshops, where you can often pick up out of print titles.
So I thought I’d give you a sample of what’s made it home with me so far.
You already know I’m reading and enjoying Jo Walton’s “Among Others”, which I shall complete and post on shortly.
Also on the stack are:
Isabel Allende: Of Love and Shadows (Black Swan)
Because it’s been on my “want to read” list for years. So now I shall.
Kate Atkinson: Life After Life (Doubleday)
After When Will There Be Good News and Started Early, Took The Dog, I am a Kate Atkinson fan. Also, the Costa Book Award 2013 , Good Reads Choice Award for Historical Fiction 2013, and The South Bank Show award for Literature 2014…Just sayin’…
Paolo Bacigalupi: The Doubt Factory (Little, Brown)
I am also a huge fan of Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl and Shipbreaker and with a title like The Doubt Factory how could I pass this one by? I didn’t.
*Supplied by the publisher, also my UK/Aus/NZ publisher, at my request.
Patricia Briggs: Cry Wolf (Orbit)
Because everyone I know who is a fan of the Mercy Thompson novels, like me, has assured me that I will like this series (Alpha and Omega) just as much if not more. So I’ve started with the first-in-series.
Jim Butcher: Storm Front (RoC)
I have heard so much about these books I’ve decided it’s time to give them a go.
Guy Gavriel Kay: River Of Stars (HarperCollins)
“Because” Guy Gavriel Kay. That is all. 😉
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Ann Leckie: Ancillary Justice (Orbit)
As with Atkinson’s Life after Life, when a book has caused such a stir among reviewers and on the awards’ circuit, especially in one’s own wider genre, it behooves one to find out for oneself what the buzz is all about…
David Mitchell: Ghostwritten (Sceptre)
I’ve seen Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas widely praised and recommended, but the author avers that he is writing an uber-novel—so I thought I’d better start at the beginning, with the debut novel.
Hannu Rajaniemi: The Causal Angel (Gollancz)
This is the third and final novel (I believe) in the trilogy and I loved the first two books, The Quantum Thief and The Fractal Prince, so I am very keen to see how it all works out.
*Supplied by the publisher, part of the same group as my UK/Aus/NZ publisher, at my request.
Donna Tartt: The Little Friend (Bloomsbury)
Again, an author I have heard a great deal of, but never gotten around to reading, until now. Tartt is a Pulitzer Prize winner so I have high hopes—but then again, we all like different kinds of stories and storytelling, right, so there can be no guarantees.
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Pretty much equal time for gender balance between authors as well. 😉
Ancillary Justice was wonderful and wonderfully NEW! I hope you enjoy it. The GGK is on my TBR list, also. “because” GGK!
I’d be interested to know what made Ancillary Justice wonderfully new for you, Kristen?
The main POV character admits to having difficulties deciphering cultural gender clues, and so defaults to referring to every character as “she.” After reading the second book, I came to realize that gender as a defining characteristic really mattered very little. I could consider each character by name, other prejudices, or places in the story, but gender didn’t matter. It was fascinating and liberating.
Leckie also took some standard tropes in some strange and interesting directions. If you ruled a large portion of the known universe and you could have many, many multiple versions of yourself extant (due to cloning and personality displacement technology), what happens when you come into conflict with yourself? I still find myself thinking about the logic chain that led to this “What If”?
Even though I would classify the Ancillary books as Hard SF that deal with Big Ideas, they are driven by character studies. If you were a “zombie soldier” who fell in love, what happens next? So, big questions wrapped up in immediate, personal emotional choices.
I hope you like them as much as I have. I will admit, Justice takes a little work to invest into the world. It’s worth every moment!
Kristen
That is interesting: thank you for replying so fully, Kristen. I’m especially intrigued at the way in which you say the books transition “beyond gender.”
I also saw an article by Charlie Anders on io9, which looks at “10 Great Novels that Aren’t About What You Heard They’re About” and suggests that Ancillary Justice is also about “…post-colonialism and the nature of personhood.”
Again, intriguing. Just as interestingly, though, I also believe that the “what if” “…you could have many, many multiple versions of yourself extant (due to cloning and personality displacement technology), what happens when you come into conflict with yourself?” is an essential theme playing out through the Hannu Rajaniemi books (The Causal Angel title on my list)—although the medium is via virutal selves/avatars as opposed to cloning, but nonetheless a similar “what if” journey in essence. So I shall be interested to see if that apparent similarity holds true for me when I’ve read Ancillary Justice.
I’m always willing to chat up books. I’ll have to add The Causal Angel to my list.
Me, too, re the first, 😉 Re the second, the first book is The Quantum Thief. Let me know what you think when you’ve chatted it up—even if “one day” in the future.
The summer holidays are when I tackle those big books (big in size, or big in complexity) I don’t have the patience or mental energy once the year really gets rolling. I’ve tackled a big Russian novel (Turgenev’s “Virgin Soil”), a huge fantasy novel (George R. R, Martin’s “A Storm of Swords”) and now I’m tackling the formidably large “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by Thomas Piketty – which, for a book written by an economist, is remarkably readable so far! (Sorry for the implied slur, economists!)
Wow, that’s an impressive list, Tim—all ‘big” books in both senses of the adjectives, whereas I must confess to looking forward to some of the lighter reads in my stack.
I haven’t read “Ghost Written” but have read several other David Mitchell novels. I find I need to buy the big ones, rather than borrowing from the library, otherwise it takes too long to get through them. I haven’t finished “Cloud Atlas” for that reason – but enjoyed “Black Swan Green” -perhaps the most straightforward of his books, “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” (my favourite because it is historical and set in Japan), abd I just finished “The Bone Clocks” which took me a bit of getting into, but turned out to be awesome. (I could lend it to you, if you want).
When I have read Ghostwritten I may indeed wish to borrow The Bone Clocks—although perhaps after I have finished the rest of the stack, d’you think? 😉
I was also thinking about reading the works in order, though, since Mitchell has said he’s writing an “uber-novel” Technically, however, I believe each work is standalone.