A while ago I decided my bookshelves need re-organizing. They used to be more or less in order (separate shelves for mystery, fantasy, gardening, and so on), but since the last time I moved house a lot of books have just been shoved into random shelves. SciFi next to non-fiction, French next to English, Aaronovitch next to Young – you get the picture.
As I pushed books around the shelves, I came across a paperback I had bought a while ago but hadn’t gotten round to read. And then another one. And another one. Turns out I’m pretty much good for the rest of the year when it comes to reading material. After scouring my entire house for books I have not yet read, this is my current To-Be-Read pile:
Aaronovitch, Ben – Foxglove Summer
Butcher, Jim – Blood Rites
Butcher, Jim – Death Masks
Chua, Amy – Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
Clarke, Susanna – Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Erikson, Steven – Deadhouse Gates
Gentle, Mary – Ash: A Secret History
Goble, Jeramy – Souls of Astraeus
Godwin, Peter – Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa
Gray, Julia – The Dark Moon
Gray, Julia – The Jasper Forest
Gray, Julia – The Crystal Desert
Gray, Julia – The Red Glacier
Gray, Julia – Alyssa’s Ring
Howard, Robert E. – The Complete Chronicles of Conan
Lee, Harper – To Kill a Mockingbird
Lloyd, Tom – The Stormcaller
Lovegrove, James – The Foreigners
Modesitt, L.E. Jr. – The Magic of Recluce
Parker, K.J. – Shadow
Parker, K.J. – Pattern
Parker, K.J. – Memory
Peake, Mervyn – The Gormenghast Trilogy
Phillips, Marie – Gods Behaving Badly
Pinto, Ricardo – The Chosen
Pratchett, Terry – Raising Steam
Pressfield, Steven – Tides of War
Robillard, Anne – Les Chevaliers d’Émeraude: Le feu dans le ciel
Shea, Robert – The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Stewart, Michael – Birthright
Vardeman, Robert E. – The Jade Demons Quartet
And these are just physical books – I did not count unread ebooks on my Kindle, which include gems like The Count of Monte Christo (by Alexandre Dumas) and almost everything Jules Verne has ever written.
You may notice that I tend to buy whole trilogies or series without reading them – that’s because I hate having to wait for the next book to come out. I’m already waiting five years for J.V. Jones to finish her Sword of Shadows series (fervently hoping she will at all), and Ben Aaronovitch also can’t write as fast as I can read. And we all know the George R.R. Martin debacle.
I try not to start any more ongoing series – there’s enough good stuff out there that’s finished. Wheel of Time, for example. Or Malazan. I think I also skipped a few Discworld novels (not many, though). Exception: The Courts of the Feyre series by Mike Shevdon. I read Sixty-one Nails when it came out in 2009. It’s a good standalone, and I was unaware it would turn into a series. Although I have no clue if it’s finished with the 4 books out, or if there are going to be more.