Huzzah - I can finally participate in this thread as I've made my only real book purchases this year.
I wish I could post my library but I only have about 5% of the books I own at my sister's (though they are some of my favorites) while the rest languish, alone, at my friend's in Thunder Bay, half a province away.
But as this was the first Christmas with my full immediate family in ten years, I'm glad they all remembered that I love books and gave me giftcards with which to purchase them.
So... after a couple hours in Chapters:
The Complete Morgaine - C.J. Cherryh
- I haven't read much Cherryh in a number of years but
The Faded Sun trilogy remains one of my favorites SF series ever and you can't beat four books in one volume for one volume's price.
Chronicles of The Black Company - Glen Cook
- Contains the first three Black Company novels. I generally dislike first person but I'm fairly convinced that this is the right time for me to try this series again. Obviously, a must-read for Bakker fans as beyond Tolkien and Herbert, this is another constantly cited inspiration.
The Dragon's Path - Daniel Abraham
-
The Long Price Quartet is one of the most underrated Fantasy series out there, apparently, but I couldn't get
A Shadow in Summer so I opted for
The Dagger and the Coin series, instead. Obviously, I'm impressed by
The Expanse (though, I didn't get
Cibola Burn because I want to purchase it with the latest installment
Nemesis Games) so I hope that impression of Abraham remains true of his previous works.
Prince of Fools - Mark Lawrence
- I've tried to read
Prince of Thorns no less than four or five times now, even going so far as to plow through the first 20% at Camlost's when I was down there in October. He offered me the entire trilogy but something about Prince of Thorns (aside from the first-person) rubs me the wrong way. I've heard great things about the differences between
Prince of Fools as compared to
Prince of Thorns, if the latter turns you off Lawrence's writing, so I look forward to trying
Fools.
Johannes Cabal: The Necromancer - Jonathan L. Howard
- The covers on these books draw me in again and again whenever I'm in a bookstore and I hadn't happened upon the first book until now.
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
- I've been hoping to happen across this book forever (I don't often order things online) and so it was great to find this one last copy in the store today. McCarthy is highly recommended by FB - whose opinion of all things narrative I much value - and Bakker used to teach
Blood Meridian and it is constantly cited as the inspiration for the Scalpers, the Slog, the Captain, and Cleric in TJE and WLW.
All Hell Let Loose - Max Hastings
- Not generally a fan of political, war, real history books - whatever this is classified as; I generally prefer to study these things academically. The last one of its kin that I read was
The Day the World Discovered the Sun by Mark Anderson, which was fantastic. I look forward to reading this rendition of WWII.
How We Learn - Benedict Carey
- Pop-science brain books are generally a good buy for my money, though depending on the author and their allegiances to certain theories, I sometimes end up putting these books down in disgust (the last of which was
Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex, and Relationships because of Sukel's glaring misrepresentation of some neurobiological concepts). We'll see if and when Carey falls.
Smarter: The New Science of Building Brain Power - Dan Hurley
- Same as above. It's a book I've looked at, picked up, scanned, and not bought a number of times before. Felt indulgent today, what with all my giftcards.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi
- Same as above, though Csikszentimihalyi is the foremost "flow" researcher in the world. Always knew I would buy this book since I saw it in a used bookstore in 2011 but school has gotten in the way of this one.
Remapping Your Mind: The Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story - Lewis Mehl-Madrona & Barbara Mainguy
-
Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction - Keith Oatley is one of my favorite books ever since Bakker recommended it to me in '14. Oatley is the foremost cognitive scientist researching how fiction and brains interact so I'm curious as to how Mehl-Madrona and Mainguy's will stack against it. This one is guaranteed to be hit or miss: big potential for a B-rate academic-lite book here.
I also got
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone for my nephew. Apparently, he's reading at an appropriate age for his cohort (he's 10 in Grade 5) but he's reading well below what I was at the same age and the academic "standard" today doesn't inspire me much.
Huzzah, new books
. Maybe I'll join in SR's reading pledge for 2016 - seeing as I've eternally disappointed him by not participating this year (and I didn't really want to report that I've only read everything in Bakker's catalogue (again) and a handful of textbooks in 2015, as it was one of my worst years for reading). I'm not in school until May or even September and it'll be the first new year that I haven't been reading academically in five years so a book a week might not be a bad pledge.
Cheers, thread.
