One of the best parts about finishing my draft of The Tainted City is that I can now READ again. Books! That are not mine! I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. I didn't give up reading entirely during the last few months - that would have been like trying to give up breathing - but I restricted myself to nonfiction and/or books I'd already read; those are easy for me to read in tiny little bits and put down without getting sucked in and losing hours of writing time.
But that was like taking little sips of an energy goo drink while slogging up a mountain, when your body's screaming for a real meal. And now...now at last I can gorge myself on all those lovely books I've been salivating over these last few months. In the last 5 days I've read a book a night, and it's been *wonderful*. Sadly, my reading pace will now have to slow down a touch - it's time to dive back into The Tainted City and start working on my own list of enhancements/cuts/revisions. But this time I don't intend to stop reading new books entirely. So I appeal to you - what books should I make sure to catch up on? Here's what I've got so far....
Since finishing, I've already read:
The Serpent Sea (Martha Wells)
Black Heart (Holly Black)
The Alchemist of Souls (Anne Lyle)
Songs of the Earth (Elsepth Cooper)
The Salt Road (Jane Johnson)
The TBR list, in no particular order:
And Blue Skies From Pain (Stina Leicht)
The Straits of Galahesh (Bradley Beaulieu)
Range of Ghosts (Elizabeth Bear)
Throne of the Crescent Moon (Saladin Ahmed)
Control Point (Myke Cole)
Scourge of the Betrayer (Jeff Salyards)
The Black Opera (Mary Gentle)
Faith (John Love)
When We Were Executioners (J.M. McDermott)
Bitter Seeds (Ian Tregillis)
Servant of the Underworld (Aliette de Bodard)
Osiris (E.J. Swift)
The Killing Moon (N.K. Jemisin)
The Desert of Souls (Howard A. Jones)
Next week I plan to start up my Monday book rec feature again, to highlight those books I particularly enjoyed. So again...what other interesting books have I missed these last months? If you know one, tell me.
Hi Courtney!
ReplyDeleteSome of these books (read and TBR) are ones I've read...)
Some more ones to try (forgive me if you have already)
Heir of Night, Helen Lowe
Cold Fire, Kate Elliott
The Blackdog, KV Johansen
Sword of Fire and Sea, Erin Hoffman
The Fallen Blade, Jon C Grimwood
Thanks, Paul! I've read COLD FIRE and SWORD OF FIRE AND SEA, but haven't yet read the others - so onto the list they go, along with Justin's Twitter suggestion of THE TROUPE. Yay for new books to read!
ReplyDeleteI recommend Myke Cole's Control Point, which I'm currently reading and enjoying. I have, but haven't yet read, Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis, so it's on my list (that's a semi-recommendation).
ReplyDeleteI've heard very good things about Stina Leicht and N.K. Jemisin; I've been curious about those as well as Ahmed's and Jones's books (that's a demi-recommendation).
Kendall - thanks for the recs (full, semi, and demi! :). If you haven't read Stina's first book (OF BLOOD AND HONEY), I highly recommend it - it's wonderfully written, dark, urban/literary fantasy. I'm very excited about reading the sequel (probably will be my first read off the TBR list!). I've read N.K. Jemisin's previous trilogy and enjoyed the books; I didn't love the first one quite as much as everyone else seemed to, but I would still definitely recommend it (and the others) to any fantasy fans.
ReplyDeleteYou have so much on there that I would have recommended or told you is on my TBR pile that I don't have anything to add. But I wanted to comment anyway! I'm catching up on the new-to-me Knife of Never Letting Go trilogy by Patrick Ness. Relentless page changer and interesting different dystopian YA.
ReplyDelete(PS, if I'm coming up as anon, it's nlisa)
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ReplyDeleteNicole - thanks for the rec! I looked up the Ness books, they sound quite interesting - I'll definitely add them to the list!
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