A few weeks back, Ken (Kcf on most message boards and Mr. The Neth Space himself) revealed his infamous Stack -- his "books to read pile." He invited people to do the same, but I declined because there was simply too many books to list.
Part of my reticence stemmed from the fact that I didn't really want to know exactly how many unread books I owned. Believe me, there's a whole bunch of them! But my curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to draw up a list of the "high profile" stuff awaiting my attention. The results sort of shocked me!
Do it yourself, if you dare! As for me, I now regret opening up that can of worms!;-)
Here is what I came up with:
- Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
- Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves and Only Revolutions
- George R. R. Martin's A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows
- China Miéville's Perdido Street Station and The Scar
- Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Stardust and Smoke and Mirrors
- Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon
- Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian
- Peter F. Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, The Naked God, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained
- David Drake's The Lord of the Isles series
- Jack Whyte's A Dream of Eagles series
- Dan Simmons' Illium and Olympos
- Mervyn Peake's The Gormenghast novels
- Gene Wolfe's The Knight and The Wizard
- Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series
- David Farland's The Runelords series
- Greg Keyes' The Briar King, The Charnel Prince and The Blood Knight
Yeah, that's right. . . Crazy, eh!?! The silver lining is that I have a lot of good reading ahead of me. . .:-)
save yourself the trouble of reading 'The Historian'. The ending was awful.
ReplyDeletethat was me above. i posted it before i saw that i could sing in with Google. sorry.
ReplyDeleteNice - but that list is what, 70 books long at the most. You obviously need more books ;-)
ReplyDeleteOh, and I enjoyed The Historian quite a bit, so like pretty much every book out there, opinions vary.
Ken, my list is WAY longer than that! That's just the "high profile" authors stuff and I left a few out. I got a lot more on those shelves, much to my chagrin and dismay.:-)
ReplyDeleteArgllll....
ReplyDeletePat, do yourself a favor and DON'T read any fantasy until you read GRRM, Greg Keyes and the two Gene Wolfe!
"Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" was a really really pleasent book as well, so consider this a must too! ;)
I have sitting "Crown of Stars" on my bookshelf too, but the complete series hasn't been released in german, so it will be a while until I start it.
Anyway, lot's of GREAT stuff you still have to read, enjoy it!
I figured it was longer - I think I recall another discussion about it.
ReplyDeleteA great and evil characteristic of The Stack is that it continues to grow - about a week ago I estimated that if I count books I overlooked in the original post and have gotten since, that The Stack is at least 20 books more.
The really annoying thing is that from time to time you still stand in front of your stack and find nothing interesting to read...
ReplyDeleteBut once you begin reading a book you remeber five others you wanted to read *sigh*
Sorry, the last post was by me
ReplyDeleteA couple of those are on my stack as well. I have 2 Malazan books on my stack, and I know they're good ones and I know I should start them, but I am putting it off for some reason.
ReplyDeleteCurrently reading:
ReplyDeleteF. Paul Wilson, Harbingers
Max Brooks, World War Z
Diane Duane, The Big Meow
Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker
Lawrence Watt-Evans, The Vondish Ambassador
To read:
Drew Bowling, The Tower of Shadows
John Connelly, The Book of Lost Things
Bob Newhart, I Shouldn't Even be Doing This
Daniel Handler, Adverbs
Tanya Huff, Blood Bank
Kage Baker, The Machine's Child
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Sharing Knife: Beguilement
Kat Richardson, Greywalker
Charlaine Harris, Grave Surprise
My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding (just the stories by Butcher and Harris)
My pile is around fifty..ack...
ReplyDeletecurrent read is Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie, book 2 in his 1st law series.
To be geeky, it is not a stack, since stack is a last-in-first-out structure (what goes in last comes out first). So you are talking for a pile or a collection or a stash, not a stack :P
ReplyDelete(mine is 37 books long btw)