So, I’ll leave something out here, I know. (I haven’t even finished The King’s Last Soldier yet, for instance.) But in the frenzy of prepatory cleaning for Scott and Justine‘s visit later this week*, I had cause to re-sort my priority reads. You know the kind; things I wish I could lay hands on and have downloaded into my brain, emotional responses and all, because I just haven’t had the time to read them quite yet.
I’ve been writing a pretty good amount, which slows my reading, since I usually want to watch television in the downtime and, also, when the writing’s going well? You must be careful and stay very still and not love another book too much or you’ll scare it away**.
Here are some books in my stack I can’t BELIEVE I haven’t read yet:
Map of Dreams (stories) by M. Rickert
Grey by John Armstrong (this only just arrived, but it looks great)
Half-Life by Shelley Jackson
Just in Case by Meg Rosoff
The Machine’s Child by Kage Baker
Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand (in my defense, Christopher stole this one for a bit)
Chasing the Dead by Joe Schreiber
H2O by Mark Swartz
Only Revolutions by Mark Danielewski
Grand & Humble by Brent Hartinger
Death of a Writer by Michael Collins
The Future is Queer anthology edited by Richard Labonte and Lawrence Schimel
Rain Village by Carolyn Turgeon
From the Files of the Time Rangers by Richard Bowes
The Exquisite by Laird Hunt
My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time by Liz Jensen
The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea (poems) Mark Haddon
The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas
Maul by Tricia Sullivan
Starred Wire (poems) Ange Mlinko
Saint Iggy by K.L. Going
Flora Segunda by Ysabeau Wilce
The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno
And, of course, I won’t even end up reading all these, not any time soon. For there are Yet More Books. Books that will come to displace them; books for the LBC; books, books, books.
Life is good. I wish I could perfect the absorption technique. And, wow, just realized I don’t even _have_ Eduardo Galeano’s latest yet. For shame.
(So many of these are BEA books from May. Bad reader. Bad.)
*If we’re really, really careful, maybe the house will stay all spiffed until Thanksgiving. Dreams!
**Okay, not true, but it can feel that way.
Let me know what you think about the Haddon book, ‘k?