I’ve been reading books from my TBR for over six months now, and I’m keeping myself accountable by posting periodically what I’ve read. We’re closing in on the end of July now so that seems as good a time as any to bring you all up to date.
Without further ado, here’s the tally since the end of May:
The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Song of the Sycamore - Edward Cox
The Cardinal's Blades - Pierre Pevel
Exit Strategy - Martha Wells
The Wild Remedy - Emma Mitchell
In the Society of Women - Krista D Ball
We Ride the Storm - Devin Madson
A Darker Shade of Magic - VE Schwab
Seraphina's Lament - Sarah Chorn
Ryan's Christmas - LJ Ross
A Hidden Hope - Laura Ambrose
The Bone Season - Samantha Shannon
The Sweet Scent of Blood - Suzanne McLeod
The Gate to Women's Country - Sheri S Tepper
The Ill-Made Knight - Christian Cameron
The Winter King - Bernard Cornwell
As you can see, I have read sixteen TBR books since my last update, but my Goodreads shelf ‘Mount Toberead’ only reduced by eight to 111. Either I have been remiss in keeping it up to date, or I actually have more books waiting to be read than I realised. Oh dear.
Fortunately, last weekend Rob helped me rearrange the bookshelves so that all my unreads are in one place, which has made it much easier to go through them all. I discovered several books I had been gifted and hadn’t added to the list, plus a couple erroneously marked as read which shouldn’t have been. Mount Toberead now numbers 119 again.
On the one hand, yay, more to read! But on the other, ugh, I’m not going to get it cleared this year, which means the TBR will get out of hand again. As a consequence of Project Read the TBR, I have discovered some two dozen new series I had been sleeping on, and now want to continue. The Tower and Knife, Spellcrackers, Eternal Sky, The Divine Cities, Livi Talbot, Rook & Rose, Redwinter et al, I’m looking at you.
Folks who know me know I read fast. I always have done. As a kid, my school called me in for a special reading class – sadly, the moths have been at my memory so I can’t recall whether it was because I demonstrated advanced reading skills, or they couldn’t quite believe that yes, I really was reading adult books when barely into double digits in years, and wanted to see me prove it.
Anyway. Here we are, many (many) years and many hundreds of books later, and I’m back on my reading habit. Rather than buying scads more new books (although I have bought some, because reasons) I have been making steady pace up the south ridge of Mount Toberead. Here’s what I’ve checked off since the end of March:
of Stairs - Robert Jackson Bennett
Sovereign - CJ Sansom
A Natural History of Dragons - Marie Brennan
All Systems Red - Martha Wells
Shades of Milk and Honey - Mary Robinette Kowal
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - NK Jemisin
Artificial Condition - Martha Wells
Rogue Protocol - Martha Wells
In Midnight's Silence - T Frohock
Threading the Labyrith - Tiffani Angus
Three Parts Dead - Max Gladstone
The Once and Future Witches - Alix E Harrow
Planetfall - Emma Newman
I enjoyed all of these reads in their own way; there’s not a duff choice in the lot. Several different takes on the idea of a fantasy novel, from fully-realised secondary worlds like The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms to Los Nefilim‘s historical fiction with a quarter-turn to the fantastic, which subgenre has always been a particular favourite of mine.
Some observations, in no particular order:
City of Stairs, The Once and Future Witches and Three Parts Dead were stand-outs.
Greek myths, my beloved! I have had a soft spot for these since I was small, so I found Circe a delight.
Who doesn’t love Murderbot?
I have now added The Divine Cities, The Glamourist Histories, The Craft Sequence, Inheritance Trilogy, Los Nefilim, Planetfall and The Memoirs of Lady Trent to my list of series to finish, which now numbers 30. I don’t know whether to be proud of that or embarrassed.
As a self-confessed fan of Guy Gavriel Kay, I am frankly shocked that I managed to buy Ysabel on or around publication and then just . . . not read it for close to 17 years. I am telling myself that since I switched to ebooks, my shelves have looked the same for so long now that I’ve just stopped seeing what’s on them. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
It’s amazing how much reading you can get done in hospital waiting rooms when the patient transport flakes out and doesn’t send a driver for you.
In terms of continuing the TBR readathon,, there’s a difficult traverse looming, across the Wheel of Time glacier (book 9 onward). For years I re-read the series to date each time a new book came out, and round about Book 8(ish? I think?) I just stopped, although I continued to buy them up to Book 10 (Crossroads of Twilight). Usually I can rely on my memory to hold enough detail about previous instalments that I can handle a break between books in a series, but the last WoT I read was so many years ago that I might need to go back to the beginning to avoid being lost.
On the other hand, starting again from The Eye of the World feels daunting, I’m not gonna lie. Part of me wants to complete the whole series, because warts and all it is part of my fantasy journey, and remains a significant work in the genre. At the same time, another part of me is muttering about sunk costs and more books in the sea. Hmm. Will have to think on this.
So what’s next? I have stuck a bookmark into Chapter 1 of The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison. This is another book that has been patiently waiting since publication day (I know, I KNOW!) and I’m keen to continue my Murderbot adventure. We shall see what else the summer brings.
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