Unread

[dxmachina]

There are piles and piles of books in my house. If only I had some bookcases...

Most are in boxes up in the attic or in the back room waiting to be shelved, but there are also a considerable number in piles on the stairs going up to the attic. (When Nutty saw my staircase, she said "You belong to a bookclub, don't you?") Folks have been talking about their unread books today, so I did a quick inventory of what's waiting for me on the stairs that I haven't gotten to yet.

Here's a partial list:

The Weaver and the Factory Maid &mdash Deborah Grabien
(Sitting in the on-deck circle.)

The Subtle Knife &mdash Philip Pullman
The Amber Spyglass &mdash Philip Pullman
The Maltese Falcon &mdash Dashiell Hammett
The Big Sleep &mdash Raymond Chandler

Sharpe's Havok &mdash Bernard Cornwell
Sharpe's Skirmish &mdash Bernard Cornwell
Sharpe's Triumph &mdash Bernard Cornwell
(If Cornwell keeps writing them. I'll keep reading them.)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz &mdash L. Frank Baum
(I read this as a child, but I very much suspect it was an abridged edition.)

American Gods &mdash Neil Gaiman
Starship Titanic &mdash Terry Jones
The Chantry Guild &mdash Gordon R. Dickson
(I started all three of these, and lost interest early on. Will probably try again.)

Rainbow Mars &mdash Larry Niven
Right Ho, Jeeves &mdash P.G. Wodehouse
The Dalemark Quartet (Omnibus Edition) &mdash Diana Wynne Jones
Winter's Tale &mdash Mark Helprin
Mirror World &mdash Tad Williams
The Cryptonomicon &mdash Neal Stephenson

The Thin Red Line &mdash James Jones
(When I was describing the movie version to Tom, he got a pained look on his face, and pressed this into my hands. I really should read it.)

Patriarch's Hope &mdash David Feintuch
(Last book in the Seafort Saga, I really hated the previous one, and now that I think back, I didn't much care for the others, either. What the hell was I thinking about when I bought this?)

Post Captain &mdash Patrick O'Brian
The Hundred Days &mdash Patrick O'Brian
Blue at the Mizzen &mdash Patrick O'Brian
(I didn't much care for Master and Commander, so I may never get to these)

The Head Game &mdash Roger Kahn
Why is the Foul Pole Fair? &mdash Vince Staten
(Baseball books, for a change of pace.)


Twenty-five titles right there. Last year, I read twenty-four books. Sigh. There are also a few other unread paperbacks, graphic novels, woodworking books and other non-fiction reference type books, and oh yeah, sixteen assorted titles accidently ordered from the SF Book Club. (Actually, only getting sixteen accidental books in the four years I've lived here isn't really all that bad. I was much worse about responding to the monthyl offers before SFBC set up an on-line rejection system.) Oh and there's a complete set of Ellis Peters' Cadfael mysteries I inherited from my aunt. Sheesh!

Comments

[mskat.livejournal.com]

There are so many fantastic books on your list. And I keep coming across Ellis Peters. Worth it or not?


My TBR pile is embarrassing and spreading across the entire house at this point. I should be more organized about the whole thing, but I'm very lazy

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the first Peters that I read, and I've seen a number of the Mystery adaptations with Derek Jacoby, and I liked those a lot.

Yeah, "staircase" is sort of a relative area here, with the piles creeping down around my desk and over into the living room, taking over the house. It's almost like they're organized. </Mr. Tweedy>

[cofax7]

I love Ellis Peters. The Cadfael books are sort of cozy mysteries, despite being set in a city caught in the middle of a rather brutal civil war. I really like Peters' prose.

If you're at all interested in historical fiction, Ellis Peters wrote straight historicals as Edith Pargeter (her given name), and I'd particularly recommend The Heaven Tree Trilogy (about art and Wales and love and family and faith and war) and A Bloody Field Near Shrewsbury, which is a retelling of the story of Hotspur and Prince Hal. Pargeter was marvelous.

[fufaraw]

Seconding the Pargeter rec. I don't even want to think about our TBR pile, or the boxes in the attic, some read, some never got around to. I'll cull before we move, but not till then.

[cindyamb.livejournal.com]

I'm not thinking about my TBR pile, either. I culled a lot of books from my library before our move. If I did a TBR pile, I'd be forced to face the fact that there are some left that I'll probably never read. It's too painful. I refuse.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I liked Winter's Tale a lot a lot. I think it was probably more effective in 1996 than now, since it is essentially about the turn of the millennium, but it's also about New York and excitingness and unlikeliness and stuff.

I got a bit bored with the Sharpe novels, I confess, after the 3rd or 4th. I like the descriptions of the battles, and feel like I'm learning something, but the coincidences and the Mary Sueism after a while grate on me. I tried one of his (US) Civil War novels, the first of the series, and liked it well enough.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

Heh, Cornwell's Rebel is one of the unnamed paperbacks waiting to be read. I've read most of the Sharpes, and they haven't worn out for me yet, but I do know the feeling, as it's happened to me with Honor Harrington.

Winter's Tale was a Christmas present from long ago that sat on the bookshelf in the bedroom of my old apartment forever. I ran across it while rumaging through the attic awhile back, and remembered that someone (probably you, it seems) had said good things about it in the Lit thread, so I brought it downstairs.

[cofax7]

Winter's Tale is gorgeous and sprawling and epic. If you're in the mood for that sort of romanticism, it's marvelous.