Book Lists 2023 • Page 2

Finished:

George R.R. Martin - A Game Of Thrones (November 11)
Terry Pratchett - Hogfather (started December)
Joe Abercrombie - The Blade Itself (audiobook)

Currently reading:
Octavia E. Butler - Kindred (audiobook)

 

I would say good idea but at this point I’m about 75% sure that he will never finish the series

 

As slow as I read I feel good starting now

Plus my gf has been wanting to watch GOT and I'm a read it first type

 

Books
A Court of Silvers Flames - Sarah J Maas
Tress of the Emerald Sea - Brandon Sanderson
She and Her Cat - Makoto Shinkai
And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer - Fredrik Backman
Of War and Ruin - Ryan Cahill
Aiduel's Sin - Daniel T. Jackson
The Passenger - Cormac McCarthy
Stella Marris - Cormac McCarthy
Brothers of the Wind - Tad Williams
The Burning Man - Tad Williams
Eleventh Cycle - Kian N. Ardalan
Arch-Conspirator - Veronica Roth
The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle
The Dragonbone Chair - Tad Williams
The Fear of Moncroix - Bryan Asher
In Ascension - Martin MacInnes
A House with Good Bones - T. Kingfisher
In The Lives of Puppets - TJ Klune
A Marvelous Life - Danny Fingeroth
The Ferryman - Justin Cronin
Seeds of War - Joao Silva
Frugal Wizard - Brandon Sanderson
The Book that Wouldn't Burn - Mark Lawrence
The Shadow Gate - LL Macrae
The Return of the Knights - Gregory Kontaxis
We Are the Dead - Mike Shackle
Empire of Silence - Christopher Ruocchio
The Lesser Devil - Christopher Ruocchio
Ascension - Nicholas Binge
Light of the Jedi - Charles Soule
Howling Dark -Christopher Ruocchio
Queen Amid Ashes - Christopher Ruocchio
The Forsaken Planet - Bryan Wilson
Harbinger of Justice - Andrew Watson
Gods of the Wyrdwood - RJ Barker
Secret Project #3 - Brandon Sanderson
The Rivener - Garrett Godsey
How it Unfolds - James S.A. Corey
The Ember Blade - Chris Wooding
Abandon - Blake Crouch
The Will of the Many - James Islington
A Dagger in the Dark - Tom Dumbrell
Thornhedge - T. Kingfisher
The Shadow Casket - Chris Wooding
Tales of the Sun Eater Vol. 1 - Christopher Ruocchio
Ruins of Smoke - Joao Silva
The Ice - Ryan Cahill
The Taming and The Betrayal - RM Schultz
Demon in White - Christopher Ruocchio
The Rains Came Down - Julian Shaw
Through Blood & Dragons - RM Schultz
Thrice - Andrew D. Meredith
The Peace of Freysdal - Michael Richards
Water - John Boyne
Murder in the Family - Cara Hunter
Isaac & The Egg - Bobby Palmer
Secret Project #4 - Brandon Sanderson
Whalefall - Daniel Kraus
Four-Scored - Andrew D. Meredith
House of Earth & Blood - Sarah J Maas
The Crystal Shore – Jo de-Lancey
Dead Eleven – Jimmy Juliano
Welcome to Neverbury – Chris Lynch
Sword Catcher – Cassandra Clare
All Hallows – Christopher Golden
Creature Feature Collection – Joe Hill
Hide - Kiersten White
Tender is the Flesh - Agustina Bazterrica
The September House - Carissa Orlando
A Path of Blades - RE Sanders
Murder on Lake Garda - Tom Hindle
Assassin - Andy Peloquin
The Knight of the Moon - Gregory Kontaxis
The Seam of Eternity - Rocco Levitas
Defiant - Brandon Sanderson
An Altar on the Village Green - Nathan Hall
The Narrow Road Between Desires - Patrick Rothfuss
Ascendant - Michael R Miller
The Passing of the Dragon - Ken Liu
Long Chills and Case Dough - Brandon Sanderson
Ashes of a Risen Empire - Corey Ratliff
A Prophecy Unsung - Adam Bishop
Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi - Shannon Chakraborty
Malarkoi - Alex Pheby
Infinity Blade: Awakening - Brandon Sanderson
The Advent of Winter - Dom McDermott

Audio
A Man Called Ove - Fredrik Backman
All Systems Red - Martha Wells
Every Heart a Doorway - Seanan McGuire
Down Among the Sticks & Bones - Seanan McGuire
Beneath the Sugar Sky - Seanan McGuire
In an Absent Dream - Seanan McGuire
Sir Gawain & The Green Knight - JRR Tolkien
Come Tumbling Down - Seanan McGuire
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Fellowship of the Ring - JRR Tolkien
The Two Towers - JRR Tolkien
The Return of the King - JRR Tolkien
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell
Voice of War - Zack Argyle
The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes - Suzanne Collins
The Call of Cthulhu - HP Lovecraft
Forest of Stars - Heather Kassner
Bookshops & Bonedust - Travis Baldree
The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
I'm Thinking of Ending Things - Iain Reid
Tombs of Atuan - Ursula K. Le Guin
A Good Girls Guide to Murder - Holly Jackson
Fabled Journey - Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Farthest Shore - Ursula K Le Guin
Adventures of a Christmas Elf - Ben Miller
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens


Graphic Novels/Manga
Saga Vol. 10 - Brian K. Vaughan
Berserk Vols. 2-8 - Kentaro Miura
Attack on Titan Vols 1-25 - Hajime Isayama

 

I'm definitely interested in A Man Called Ove, how was that?

Also my wife has been on a Sarah J Maas kick since late September and is working on the last book of her entire bibliography now.

 

It was good, I do think it started off strong and fell towards the end but it was definitely uplifting and funny. I'm actually seeing the movie tonight.

The deal with my partner was if I read SJM, she reads Mistborn haha! Suffice to say I'm still waiting on MB being read....

 

My wife and I have very few similar interests when it comes to books haha. This sounds like a hell of a idea for me

 

My partner is more fantasy romance than my choice of epic fantasy but I’ve started reading a whole load more fiction that aligns with us both.

also A Man Called Otto was brilliant. I think it translated a lot better on screen than audiobook. Not a perfect movie but had half the theatre sobbing!

 

Currently reading:

1. Tom Franklin - Crooked letter, crooked letter , en español: Letra torcida, letra torcida

 

January:
1. Stella Maris - Cormac McCarthy
2. The Light Pirate - Lily Brooks-Dalton
3. No One Left to Come Looking for You - Sam Lipsyte

The Deluge by Stephen Markley was delivered today. Ohio has become one of my favorites so I have high hopes for this one.

 

What did you think of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow? For a topic I didn't care about all that much, I got super invested in 2 of the 3 main characters.

 

Added some books on now. Favourite read of the year is Of War and Ruin by Ryan Cahill. Such an epic series from an indie author that deserves all the recognition. Going to read the new Cormac McCarthy then onto Memory, Sorrow and Thorn!

 

You’ve got Tress on there twice, bud!

 

Thanking you! I also had the number 5 twice. Copy paste was not my friend.

 

I was lukewarm on it for a while, but there were some pretty affecting moments in the second half so I ended up liking it overall.

 

Finished The Passenger/Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy. I just adore the writing and the story felt so surreal. Definitely going to have to reread them both to fully understand though.

 

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/84585951

Goal is to read 50 again this year.

1. The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende (10/10)
2. The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro - Fernando Pessoa, tr. Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari (10/10)
3. Stoner - John Williams (7/10)
4. Dancing in Odessa - Ilya Kaminsky (6/10)
5. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe - Carson McCullers (5/10)
   
   
6. A Treatise on Stars - Mei-mei Berssenbrugge (8.5/10)
7. Go Down, Moses - William Faulkner (8/10)
8. Cargo Hold of Stars: Coolitude - Khal Torabully, tr. Nancy Naomi Carlson (7/10)
9. Monsoon Daughter - Mandy Moe Pwint Tu (7/10)
10. Crossing the Water - Sylvia Plath (7.5/10)
    
    
11. The Sound of the Mountain - Yusunari Kawabata, tr. Edward Seidensticker (6.5/10)
12. The Hearing Trumpet - Leonora Carrington (5/10)
13. Fugue for Other Hands - Joseph Fasano (8/10)
14. Every Living Day - Adam Gianforcaro (8/10)
15. Ring of Bright Water - Gavin Maxwell (9/10)
    
    
16. Abacus of Years - Emily Grosholz (7/10)
17. Selected Poems - Octavio Paz (10/10)
18. The Green Lake is Awake - Joseph Ceravolo (9/10)
19. The Arabian Nights - Anonymous, tr. Husain Haddaway (7.5/10)
20. red low fog /transcript - Melissa E. Jordan (8/10)
    
    
    
21. Selected Poems - Nikiforos Vrettakos, tr. David Connolly (8.5/10)
22. Skinny Legs and All - Tom Robbins (4/10)
23. Lunch Poems - Frank O'Hara (6/10)
24. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov (6/10)
25. Reef - Romesh Gunesekera (10/10)
    
    
    
26. A Map to the Next World - Joy Harjo (8.5/10)
27. red doc> - Anne Carson (5/10)
28. & watch how easily the jaw sings of god - Ashley Cline (7/10)
29. The Immense Journey - Loren Eiseley (10/10)
30. Someone Who Isn’t Me - Geoff Rickly (9/10)
    
    
    
31. The Natural Order of Things - António Lobo Antunes, tr. Richard Zenith (8.5/10)
32. Beloved - Toni Morrison (8/10)
33. Kibogo - Scholastique Mukasonga, tr. Mark Polizzotti (7/10)
34. The Setting Sun - Osamu Dazai (6.5/10)
35. Nectar in a Sieve - Kamala Markandaya (5/10)
    
    
    
36. The Lost Weekend - Charles Jackson (8.5/10)
37. Aura - Carlos Fuentes (6.5/10)

 

Finished Hogfather from December, finally.

I didn't make my goal of 15 last year, but I feel committed to reading/listening more this year so I'm going to set a goal for 20 this year. I want to make a dent in a few series (ASOIAF, Wheel of Time, The Dark Tower) as well as knock out some shorter series

 

Finished A Game Of Thrones and The Blade Itself (big fan of both).

Started Octavia Butler's Kindred.

Tomorrow Grady Hendrix is doing a book signing here for his new book How To Sell A Haunted House. I'll probably start that next

 

The Abercrombie books are incredible. The first series is great, but once you get to the stand alones, he's writing on a whole different level.

 

I've heard good things about A Little Hatred. Not sure how many books in that is but I'm in for the ride

 

That's part of his second series, so you'll be reading the stand alones first. Best Served Cold is maybe the best revenge story I've ever read (which is saying a lot because I love a good revenge story), and The Heroes is an entire book that takes place at one battle. Basically you have a trilogy of the The First Law, then you have the stand alone trilogy, then the Age of Madness trilogy. That's the reading order too, although you would think a "stand alone" novel might not me necessary, they're just as important.

 

January:

1) Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke
2) The Butcher and The Wren by Alaina Urquhart


Currently reading:

Marple: Twelve New Mysteries by Various

 

January update. Pretty good start to the year! I'm going to try to stick to monthly recaps; it helps me remember how I feel about individual titles.

Ymir was really great: gritty, strange, bleary, wild, and poignant. I very much enjoyed it, and I want to read more of Rich Larson's short fiction. Silver on the Tree was a masterpiece and a stunning finale to the sequence; I can't believe I didn't read it when I was younger, but perhaps it was best to save it for when I had the proper context and frame of mind to appreciate it. The Dark Is Rising will continue to be a Yuletide read for me every year. Daughter of Darkness was good; I liked it more than the previous book in the series, and there were a couple moments near the end that were especially impactful or surprising. I still don't think these are Terry Brooks's best work, but I appreciate the shift following the close of Shannara, and I'm looking forward to the third book in this series, due out later this year. He's also mentioned that he intends to write a more traditional epic fantasy after that one, and I think he'll be able to apply new skills learned from these books and made something really cool, so I'm excited for that. Still one of my favorite living authors, and some of the older Shannara books are overdue for a reread on my end. Spark Joy was pretty good, kind of an expansion on the first book, so I did a lot of skimming, but it was still an interesting and motivational read. Scorpia Rising was fantastic; I'm finally into the Alex Rider books that I haven't read, and this was a killer adventure. I understand it was pitched as the last book in the series, and it's an excellent capper (though I know that a prequel and then two additional books have since been published, and I've heard they're good, so no complaints).

Monstress, of course, was incredible. No words. Definitely a series I will continue to revisit over and over. Coda was interesting and a good introduction to a unique world; I'll be reading more. Batman was also incredible; I saw that a lot of readers didn't like it, but I thought this was one of the best volumes in the series so far, and a really interesting collection of stories about Bruce's psyche. Very good.

 

Fucking Monstress man, new issues are back now and it's just out of this world. Like maybe the best anti-hero story ever? There have been so many Kippa revelations recently that make me so happy. As I'm sure I've mentioned to you before, I think Tom King's Batman is the best comic run of all time, and maybe like my favorite thing I've ever read, so I have nothing but good things to say about it. That being said, Knightmares was the one moment in the entire run where I was like getting a little impatient, I'm sure if I was reading it straight through it would have been fine, but waiting for each new issue I was more interested in where the overall story was going, than I was Bruce's psyche at that particular moment.

Also, I'm not sure if you're aware, but King's series actually ends with Batman/ Catwoman, a 12 issue series that I believe was just released in trade. It's...phenomenal, I don't know, I don't connect with anyone's writing like I do King's.