Friday, October 27, 2006

My own "stack" revealed!

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 MiƩville'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. . .:-)

12 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:54 PM

    save yourself the trouble of reading 'The Historian'. The ending was awful.

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  2. that was me above. i posted it before i saw that i could sing in with Google. sorry.

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  3. Nice - but that list is what, 70 books long at the most. You obviously need more books ;-)

    Oh, and I enjoyed The Historian quite a bit, so like pretty much every book out there, opinions vary.

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  4. 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.:-)

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  5. Anonymous3:18 PM

    Argllll....

    Pat, 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!

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  6. I figured it was longer - I think I recall another discussion about it.

    A 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.

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  7. Anonymous4:19 PM

    The really annoying thing is that from time to time you still stand in front of your stack and find nothing interesting to read...
    But once you begin reading a book you remeber five others you wanted to read *sigh*

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  8. Anonymous4:20 PM

    Sorry, the last post was by me

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  9. A 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.

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  10. Anonymous3:06 PM

    Currently reading:
    F. 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)

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  11. Anonymous5:33 PM

    My pile is around fifty..ack...

    current read is Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie, book 2 in his 1st law series.

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  12. 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

    (mine is 37 books long btw)

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