melreads: Text: "The earth is doomed" (it's a Buffy quote) (Default)
I've been doing one of these lists for several years in my paper reading journal (it was originally, I don't know, "23 books to read in 2023" or something). I limit it to books I already have, and while I've never come close - or really even tried to come close - to finishing the list, it usually does prod me to read some of these that I would have forgotten about otherwise, so I figure that makes it worth doing. However, it's already the end of March and I haven't touched the main list of 26 - although there was an "add-on" one that I read (I'll get to that at the bottom) - so I need to get on the stick about this!

Mel's version of "26 books to read in 2026":
(note: I'm updating as I read any)
1. Burning Roses
2. Middlegame
3. Back to the Garden
4. The Bookbinder (read)
5. Lincoln's Admiral
6. Agatha Christie short stories
7. An Arcane Inheritance
8. more Oz stories
9. Circe
10. The Rook
11. The Water Witch
12. The Wizard's Butler
13. The Poppy War
14. The Heart of Everything
15. The Widow Queen
16. Melusine
17. The Midnight Bookshop
18. Kingdom of Tomorrow
19. Fortress in the Eye of Time 
20. The Once and Future Witches
21. Elphie: a Wicked childhood (I think Rob gave me this one)
22. June, Reimagined (read!)
23. Poirot books (I guess I have several unread ones?)
24. Reckoning Hour
25. Lady Cop Makes Trouble
26. The Bright Sword

(I wrote "try again" by 25 and 26 because I know I started those two and never really got anywhere.)

The two "extra" ones were a Star Trek: TNG book called Klingon Empire - which I did start and didn't like - and then the one I actually did read, which was Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear. (I liked it. I have somehow managed not to read anything by Elizabeth Bear before, although I knew who she was.)

(Am I reading - or at least buying - a heck of a lot of fantasy these days? You bet.)


melreads: cartoon evil queen (evil queen)
(from my other journal)

October Daye
(generally)

Rosemary and Rue, part 1

Rosemary and Rue, part 2

(I never finished putting all my October Daye rambling online, but I have a lot of notes on paper I'll try to gradually get moved here!)

questions about book 18

melreads: Text: "Me were English major in college" (english major)
8/9/22

I made a Kindle category called "all-time favorites" and here's what on it. (This is in the mysterious order that the Paperwhite arranges things in lately - I don't really understand it.) (So effectively, no particular order!)

Winterkeep
Knife Children (a novella)
Leah on the Offbeat
How to Go to Hell in 10,000 Easy Steps
Penric's Fox (novella)
Strange Practice
Every Heart a Doorway
Nemesis Games
The Martian
Howl's Moving Castle
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings (if I had to pick one volume, I'd go with Two Towers)
Ready Player One
Good Omens
Leviathan Wakes
The Civil War vol. 2 (meaning the Shelby Foote books)
Doomsday Book
Jonathan Strange and Mr.Norrell
The Beekeeper's Apprentice
To Say Nothing of the Dog
Paladin of Souls
Coraline
Fire
Emma
Persuasion
Sense & Sensibility
Rosemary & Rue
The Magicians
The Murder at the Vicarage
Neverwhere
The Blue Sword
Foreigner
Game of Thrones
Spindle's End
Pride and Prejudice

I'm sure I'll tinker with this over time but that's a pretty fair rendition of the things I adore. (Although, huh, did I not put Graceling in? I'd say I love it more than Winterkeep.) (added: oh wait, Fire is there too. I think I didn't notice that at the time. But Fire is the one I usually say I love the most out of the original three there.)

This is 36 books, but I didn't pick a certain number or anything. There's clearly some things I missed (Graceling) and some where I still don't have them as e-books (Dune, Golden Compass, maybe I Capture the Castle?)

There's a good many things that I used to would have put in but now didn't - The Stand and The Dark Tower, for example. The non-horror King books haven't held up all that well, for me, that I'd still class them this high. Cassie Clare, ditto. (Although I happen to be reading Clockwork Angel right now.)

Anyway, I'd say this gets you pretty close on what I love - fantasy, SF, and Jane Austen, with some other genres occasionally thrown in!

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