Thursday, June 7, 2007

Cue Queue*

All right, so the list is a wee bit overdue. I have so. many. books. on my shelves (still not organized) that I've finally decided to suck it up and pick five - the three that always seem on top of my mental "I'll get around to it" list, one lent to me that has to get passed on in a timely manner, and one that's currently being buzzed about - sure, I have five years of catching up to do, but by the time 2012 rolls around, I don't want to say I skipped the books that were hot in 2007...

1. Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rackhoff. I'm slightly cheating here, as I'm already about halfway through it.

2. King Rat by China Mieville. I started it a long time ago and had to put it down for other things, but I know I was enjoying it.

3. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. We had a book club at work several years ago. It met three times and then never again, although the books and the people were excellent. The first book we read was Murakami's Underground, a non-fiction examination of the 1995 sarin gas attacks in Tokyo's subways. I ride the trains to work every day. It was a sobering, chilling book, especially in the wake of September 11th. Murakami's coverage made me a fan.

4. On Writing by Stephen King. I own it. I've read passages of it. I can tell you any number of points he makes in the book. I've never read it cover-to-cover. King is one of my favorite authors - I was remarking the other day that I haven't reread The Stand in far too long. I hang my head in shame.

5. The Kite Runner by Kalid Hosseini. I mentioned it in the "hot books I haven't read" post, and it just came out in paperback.

So, there's my next month's worth of reading. Well, I'll read more books than the ones on the list, but those are the ones I'm promising to write about. Keeping it simple to start. My literary preferences are probably pretty easy to figure out, although I'll try to mix it up a bit, read outside of my genre every now and then.

I'll let you know what's good and what sucks.

*the gamers that read this are wincing.