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Books Read 2011
This is another early end-of-year wrap-up… I tell you, every year, what I read.
I have one more book that I am gonna by-Chaos read this year, and it is Elizabeth Bear‘s Range of Ghosts
Here’s the cover:
And once I’ve read it, I will tell you things about it, because I am the very lucky woman who got a sneak preview. And also because Bear rocks, and I’m excited about it.
This was not an outstanding book-reading year for me, despite my lofty intentions. I read a lot of parts of books, for research, and feel as though I may have forgotten a book or two, but here’s everything I can remember finishing:
2011 Books:
1. Killing Rocks
2. The Girl Who Played with Fire
3. American Vampire Vol. 1
4. One Ring Circus: Dispatches from the World of Boxing
5. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
6. Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence
7. Deathless
8. The Hidden Goddess
9. Resurrection Code
10. Fall from Grace
11. Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter’s
12. American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century
13. The Brahms Deception
14. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin
15. Miserere: An Autumn Tale
16. Little Face
17. The Tears of the Sun: A Novel of the Change
18. Those Across the River
19. A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.’s Scandalous Coming of Age
20. Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris
21. Shatner Rules: Your Guide to Understanding the Shatnerverse and the World at Large
22. Better off Undead, by DD Barant
22. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – Century – 1910, by Alan Moore
23. Joe the Barbarian, by Grant Morrison & Sean Murphy
Rereads
1. Shadowland
2. Watchers
3. It
4. When the Wind Blows
5. Flowers in the Attic
6. The Hellbound Heart, by Clive Barker
I’d love to hear what all of you read and loved this year.
Blue Magic Cover Reveal
Blue Magic
Lovely, mmm? This is a composite image–the portrait is by photographer Clayton Bastiani and the nebula (here’s the original) comes to us from NASA. The exquisite design is by Jamie Stafford Hill. All of this effort was pulled together by the Tor Books art department, and in particular the wonderful Irene Gallo. Thank you, team Tor! It’s a beautiful cover and really appropriate.
What I love about this cover–besides that it looks so at home with the original Indigo Springs
P.S. If you click on the image, it gets bigger.
Holiday holiday, whoa!
I am finishing up my work year early–this week, in fact–because next Monday Kelly and I are turning over the cats to the housesitter (or the housesitter to the cats; I’m not sure which) and jetting off to Italy for the entire holiday season.
Rumble is Unimpressed:
What does finishing up mean? First, and very exciting it is too: I sent a new novel off to my agent Monday!!! And I hope to be able to tell you all sorts of things about it in the very near.
I also have one last January blog post to prep for Tor.com. Meaning: it’s written, and I just have to do some coding.
Aaand I’m fine-tuning my Novel I syllabus for the spring quarter of the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. And, less this list bore you to death, I’m prepping An Unveiling. Yes, gang, tomorrow I will be posting the Blue Magic cover art.
After that it’s all minutiae, like tidying up paperwork, and writing that handful of e-mails to people that boil down to “If you want something from me this month, you need to let me know now.” If you’re reading this, and the preceding sentence might apply to you, you should remember that my brain will stop running well before Monday. Get your requests in STAT and use very small words to express ur needz. Because, really, I say I’m working this week but whenever I can get away with it I’m lying on my face on a dock covered in seagull droppings taking pictures like this:
And then going home to post the photo while washing my tights in gasoline.
Because, you know, the tights are also going to Italy!!
Italy, Italy, Italy, Italy. More specifically: Rome, Palermo, Agrigento, Modica, Siracusa, Catania, Napoli, and more Roma!
Between one thing and another, Kelly and I have been saving both vacation days and dough for this trip for a shockingly long time. I am tired and ready to experience some exciting new things… and to photograph them! In fact, since I am a mad photoposter, some may well go up before I’m back.
WiFi permitting, you can look for them here:
Tumblr: mirrors my Instagram posts, which also get Tweeted.
Flickr: I have set up an Italy album, but all it contains is the above picture of my suitcase with a cat in it. My plan is to see if I can leave a slide show running on the site before I go.
Facebook: Anything I put on Flickr ends up here.
All that said, I sincerely hope all of you have such gratifying and exciting holiday plans that checking out my trip photos is the furthest thing from your minds.
Hey, what are your gratifying and exciting holiday plans?
Last of the Eighties Horror Rereads is up at @tordotcom
It’s about Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart
Not convinced? I’m just guessing from their expressions, but these guys thought it was an amazingly good essay.
