Monday, February 02, 2009

And it's already February!

Where has January gone, that's what I'd like to know. There was much barking at the front door this morning with Jaz getting highly stressed. When I went to look out there was a bunch of kids in school uniform and on bikes. You know what this means, don't you? School has gone back. School Has Started Again! Do you wonder why I wonder where January went? Scary, that's what it is - especially as not very much seems to have happened during the month.

Well some things have, I guess. Some of it good, some bad. As the bad is connected to the global economy I can hardly do anything about it. The good on the other hand is a series of small joys - a bundle of books bought with my Christmas and birthday money. It's taken years but I've finally convinced most of my family that book vouchers or money are the way to go for me. That gives maximum pleasure in the browsing, the choosing and the reading - and, of course, is where much of my time has gone, it being too hot to be outside.

This year the list is (plus some supplementary purchases that I am not convinced Pisces believes were essential):

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan. What can I say? Wow!

The Riven Kingdom by Karen Miller. Another Wow!

The New Space Opera ed by Gardiner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan. Thoroughly enjoyed it

The Awakening by Bevan McGuiness. I'll be interested to see the rest of this series.

The Aware by Glenda Larke. The first book in the trilogy The Isles of Glory. I missed it when it first came out and so came back to read it after I had enjoyed the following two books. I'm glad I did.

Dreaming Again ed. Jack Dann. A collection of speculative fiction stories well worth reading including several by some of my Clarion South mates - Ben Francisco, Chris Lynch, Christopher Green, Jason Fischer and Peter M. Ball.

On the still to read pile are:

The Daughters of Moab by Kim Westwood

Cosmic Logos by Traci Harding

Royal Exile by Fiona McIntosh

A Forest of Stars by Kevin J. Anderson

The Accidental Sorcerer by K. E. Mills

And just to show I do read other than speculative fiction sometimes:

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

6 comments:

Satima Flavell said...

Oh, an excellent range of reading, Helen! Of course, if you want more books, free ones, all you have to do is review for The Specusphere...:-)

Glenda Larke said...

What's it like reading a trilogy backwards?

I am scratching my head about this kind of problem at the moment as I prepare to send off a middle book to the publisher. How much does one assume the reader remembers from book 1? Do you cater for people who don't read book 1 at all, or just assume that if they do that, they just have to learn to suffer?

So tell me - did Gilfeather make sense to you when you hadn't read
The Aware?

Helen V. said...

You should have a review from me already, Satima.

Helen V. said...

It would certainly have been better to have read them in order but I think there was enough background in Gilfeather for it not to be a real problem. Even reading them in order you don't always remember everything in detail if there's too long a gap between readings particularly if you're like me. I'm a very fast reader and read a large number of books - around 300 and not all fiction, of course - every year so things can get a little fuzzy sometimes until I get back into the world in the next in the series. I sometimes need to have my memory refreshed about a few details but I suspect that happpens to any reader to some degree. If the writer is aware that we do have memory lapses even if we are reading it in the right order and includes a few references to the most important I think we can cope perfectly well. I've just finished rereading a series where the author has given a synopsis at the start of each book of what happened in the previous books. They were well written synopses but I'm happier with it being worked into the text.

Carol Ryles said...

Nice List. Enjoy reading them :)

Helen V. said...

I am. I've just finished The Accidental Sorcerer. Another wow! In between time I reread the four Fortress books by C. J. Cherryh. It's an interesting exercise to read a series like that one after the other after the discussion with Glenda above.