Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Tower of Books

I keep this pile of library books in my room - it's my pending pile - actually, it's more of a tower at the moment as I've some fairly hefty hardbacks in the pile. Aside from the handful on the Vale of White Horse that are background reading for my forthcoming piece for the Tolkien Encyclopaedia, I've also got Dhiammara, the fourth and final book of Maggie Furey's fascinating Artefacts of Power series: I'll Blog the series once I've finished reading it, as I'm too engrossed to be coherent at the moment. Then there's Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock, the September Child_Lit 'group read' book. Gwyneth Jones' Bold as Love, which I'm feeling uncertain about since the title sounds rather romantic to me ! This is followed by Raymond Feist's Faerie Tale - someone recently recommended Feist to me and this appears to be a standalone novel, so I thought I'd give it a try. Below that is the epic-looking To Ride Hell's Chasm by Janny Wurts - her books caught my eye somewhere (although I don't recall where I saw them prior to picking up that one in the library !) At the bottom of the library pile is Sarah Micklem's Firethorn, another random pick-up at the library. Aside from this Tower of library books - and I'm still waiting on Troll Mill, the sequel to Katherine Langrish's Troll Fell, which has been "in transit" through the library system for so long I'm beginning to think they've sent it on the back of a snail ! - I have three books that I own that are waiting to be read: Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, the Mercedes Lackey trilogy 'Queen's Own' (thanks to the generosity of Suzi !) and finally, Charlie Butler's The Fetch of Mardy Watt. I suspect the latter will be somewhat supernatural, but I like Charlie, so I'm going to give it a go anyway (that sounds dreadful, but I don't mean it in a nasty way - I'm just not very keen on supernatural books - but Charlie may convert me yet !)

And of course, aside from that Pisa-ish pile of books, Juliet E McKenna's Western Shore is out at the end of next week so I shall be rushing out to get a copy - although before I read it, I'll need to re-read Southern Fire and Northern Storm, to remind myself of the little details I've forgotten in my immersion in other books !

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey yeah, I'm still here! (I was in Portland, about...um...170 km?...away last night, no computer access.) I know about the towers o' books. I know. I sympathize. I'm holding off on F&H for another couple of weeks so it's not too early (I have read it before). I'll look out for a copy of Tam Lin, but that's a parallel, not a source, book...so no worries for you. Glad you got the Lackey! I bet yours arrived before the "media Mail" books I sent to others in the States. Oof, tired. I know, you're leaving for work or something. More to you tomorrow!

Michele said...

Yes I'm going to hang on before I re-read F&H since the discussion doesn't start just yet - and like you, I've read it before (earlier this year in fact)...

I know my friend Margo often used to find that books to me had arrived in the UK before parcels to friends in the US, which used to give us a quiet chuckle...

By the time you posted this I was indeed en route for the office... But 5 days off beckon - it's a public holiday on Monday next so I've booked a couple of days off work to augment it and I'm going to stay with my parents and "little" (6' 2") brother for the weekend... Looking forward to the change of scenery and fresher air in the Cotswold Hills !