It is time for another ARC demolition project! I did one a couple of months ago with great success, and I am due for a repeated because this is how much my pile has increased just this week:
This is insane, although I do not feel particularly bad in this case, as on Monday I reorganized all my giant stacks of books and got rid of three giant boxes of literature that will either never be read or has been read and will not be reread.
We’ll see how it goes this time.
There are times when I start five or so books and then get mired in a seemingly endless, yet completely unsatisfactory, readathon. I get busy and forget about three of those, and the other two turn out to be mediocre, or just not the books I want to read. I read two chapters of one and a few pages of the other. This goes on for days.
And so this is where we are now, with five books stuck in progress. It is clearly time to give up and rebuild the currently reading and TBR piles.
Here are the new candidates:
Reading decision was made for me by Tor with this shiny e-arc (the book is out January 2015)! I did not particularly like My Real Children, but Walton remains one of my favorite writers. Getting my hands on this is a cause for celebration. It involves time-traveling Pallas Athene, Apollo, and Sokrates, among others. Besides, I was just saying a few days ago how much I love deities in my SF.
Next is The Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias. I seem to recall reading good things about this one when it came out.
I think I am in the mood for a first contact story. I also enjoy weird aliens. I’m just a few pages in, and these appear to be crustacean, or at least have pincers.
And so as not to get carried away, I am going to stop at two.
If you work or follow the publishing industry, you quickly learn that Tuesday is the holiest day of the week: release day. Well, at least for some books (those with a strict release date). A whole bunch of stuff also arrives in store throughout the week (which, from my bookselling point of view, is a good thing, otherwise we might as well just build a book fort around the information desk on Tuesdays).*
In any case, I figure I’ll see what’s coming out this or next week, and tell you what books I would really like to get my hands on.
Lovecraft’s Monsters, edited by Ellen Datlow. Technically already out and taunting me from the store shelf. Looks like this anthology continues the tradition started with Lovecraft Unbound, also edited by Datlow. The first collection was quite excellent, as I recall, so I am looking forward to this one.
Hal Duncan, Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions. I don’t always read lit crit, but when I do, I make sure it’s written by the most sardonic of authors. (‘Sardonic’ is the word Brit Mandelo also used to describe the tone in this review of Rhapsody on Tor.com).
Out next week: Afterparty by Daryl Gregory. This hardly needs more buzz, to be honest, but I still have to say it’s probably the next book I’m reading. I’ve read a couple of Gregory’s other novels (loved Pandemonium; thought The Devil’s Alphabet was ok; Raising Stony Mayhall fell off my radar, but is now back), and this one so far has been getting really glowing reviews.
And if you are keeping the score at home, here’s the current reading update: making my way pretty swiftly through Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins. Will be followed by the aforementioned Afterparty, as well as The Quick by Lauren Owen (reading this one for both personal and professional purposes), and Authority by Jeff Vandermeer. My coworker (and kickass illustrator) very kindly loaned me their ARC.
*By the way, why is the release day Tuesday? If you want a really long, inconclusive answer, you can read this. Otherwise, I frankly don’t know.
So here’s a nice TBR stack for August.
Some old releases, some stuff for GMRC, some new releases, and the yet unpublished Culture novel by Iain M. Banks (and I apologize to my fellow bookseller whose ARC I stole, I mean BORROWED, while she is on vacation).
Genre-bending 