NextRead

Here we go again as I try and catch up with RSS feeds and things that I think you might find interesting.

Future Classics

Torque Control point me at a review of the Future Classics books. Shamefully I have the set minus Fairly Land and have yet to get past the first few pages. Always a dilemma what to read next and at the moment it’s almost impossible. Saying that I’ve just read Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon and I’m now reading Kethani by Eric Brown as I’m having a sci-fi thing at the moment so I really should read a couple of them.

Exciting News

Charles Stross has made a few announcements. The most exciting for me is that there is going to be a sequel to The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue. He’s also showing off the covers to Saturn’s Children (the UK edition is much much better) and it’s already been reviewed by Chris, the book swede. There is also Charle Stross In His Own Words.

More Exciting News

Rob @ Fantasy Book Critc made my month when he posted a press release from Pyr. Mark Chadbourn my favourite fantasy author has sold his Age of Misrule sequence to Pyr. About bloody time too! But not only that we have the announcement that Will Swyft is getting his own series starting with, The Swords of Albion, which is due for both US and UK release. There’s a post about it on Mark’s blog too.

Lists

SF Signal always has great links. Here is one for 20 British SF novels you should read. I’ve read one of them, Take Back Plenty. So 19 to go!

Strange Reactions

Of Blog of the Fallen has some thoughts a very strong reaction in a review of The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Now I’ve not read it but that one story seems to have pushed a lot of buttons. It certainly makes me wonder and want to read the offending story to see what if it deserves the react it has received. From the passages on OF Blog

it does seem to have a point to make and it’s their just because.

Reviews:

Neth Space reviews Already Dead by Charlie Huston, which reminds me that I need to read Half the Blood of Brooklyn after really enjoying both Already Dead and No Dominion.

Blood Ties by Pamela Freeman is one of those I’m not sure books, mostly books that I think I’m not sure that this is a book for me. Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review has a review that didn’t help me decide one way or the other!! LOL.

He’s redeemed himself with a review of Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory. Sounds right up my alley.

Empire in Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky is another I’m not sure. Fantasy Book Critic give it the thumbs up.

Another Fantasy Book Critic review. This one Escapement by Jay Lake seems to suggest that writers can improve He reviews Mindspring, it’s prequel, here.

The Book Swede and his blog reviews Scar Night by Alan Campell.

He also reminds me that The Edge of Reason by Meilinda Snodgrass needs UK release

Realms of Speculative Fiction reminds my I should read something by John Scalzi, Old Man’s War?

The Resurrectionist by James Bradley. Should I? Shouldn’t I?

Write Faster?

Aiden @ A Dribble of Ink points me to a post called Writing at Your Own Pace by David B Coe. Now then how far would writing 10 words a week get me?

Graduated?

Tia @ Fantasy Debut has a great feature called The Debut Gradutes. Though maybe David Bilsborough could have been held back a year? hehe

Tia also has a feature on the opening chapters for The Name of Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, one bit that made me smile was, ‘Patrick Rothfuss backs into his novel like a slow-moving semi tractor trailer’. I bought it on impulse along with another debut called A Good & Happy Child by Justin Evans last week. 722 pages is a lot of reading time and going slow ain’t a good sign though it’s had a excellent reception.

More books?

Fantasy Book Critic has posted his July Round-up of releases. Some that caught my eye are: Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross, The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong, The Midnight Twins by Jacquelyn Mitchard, The Dog of the North by Tim Stretton, Through a Glass, Darkly by Bill Hussey, Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain, especially Sweetheart!

Holy Crap is right

The Fantasy & Sci-Fi Lovin’ Book Review shows off their review pile. I ‘think’ it puts mine to shame.

Sharp Words has a five step plan for book reviewing.

100 Book MeMe

Not that anyone has actually MeMe’d. But that’s not going to stop me crashing the party. He’s my go:

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own so we can try and track down these people who’ve read six and force books upon them.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
(I read this in a really cool course at Rutgers - The Bible as Literature).
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
I hated this novel; I had to read it in an early English course at Rutgers. I still can’t decide if this or Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the book I loathed the most from my English courses
8 Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles– Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca– Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
47 Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From a Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – A.S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Shows something about my lack of taste that does. OF Blog, Mostly Harmless Books and Rob’s Blog have more taste.

I think that’s enough for now.

Tags: links, Round-Up