gosh I have a lot of books

And now, since I picked up several books at the convention last weekend and a couple since, here’s the latest book roundup!

Bought in print from Norwescon:

• Fuzzy Nation, by John Scalzi. SF. This is Scalzi’s reboot of H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy, finally out in mass market paperback, so I picked it up.
• The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity, by assorted authors, edited by Patricia Bray. Anthology, bought on the strength of Joshua Palmatier being in it, and on the title. Because that’s a hell of a title!
• The Singers of Nevya, by Louise Marley. This is an omnibus edition of the series of the same name, including Sing the Light, Sing the Warmth, and Receive the Gift. I had copies of these ages ago and wanted to read them again.
• Leaves of Flame, by Benjamin Tate. Which I’d already had in ebook form, but I bought it again in paperback on general principle!

Also gotten from Norwescon, but in the freebie bag rather than as a purchase:

• Touched by an Alien, by Gini Koch. I’d call this a paranormal romance, except it’s more like an SF romance, and instead of supernatural beings, we have aliens! It’s still definitely got mostly paranormal romance sensibility, though; partway through reading it as of this writing. I’d already gotten the ebook, so it amuses me to have a print copy too.

Speaking of ebooks, picked up from B&N today:

• Once Upon a Winter’s Eve, by Tessa Dare. Romance. This is actually book 1.5 in one of Tessa Dare’s series, and it’s a novella, snarfed off of bn.com for the low, low price of 87 cents plus tax. Grabbed it because I saw SB Sarah tweeting bits of Dare’s prose, thought she had a nice turn of phrase, and thought I’d give this novella a look. Plus, what with my current interest in French Canadian music, a guy speaking Breton–the language of the Celts that live in France–seemed like an excellent blend of two different swoonable tastes that taste great together.

48 for the year.

Recently purchased in print from B&N, one in-store and the other by mail order:

• Unbroken, by Rachel Caine. Urban fantasy, Book 4 of her Outcast Season series.
• In the Dead of Winter, by Abbey Pen Baker. Mystery. This is a Holmes-universe novel that’s proposing that the daughter of Irene Adler is herself a famous detective, and has a loyal partner who helps her solve crimes and chronicles their adventures. So essentially, “gender-flipped version of Holmes and Watson without actually being Holmes and Watson”. Saw a review from Laurie R. King (who knows something about Holmesian novels, I daresay) speaking well of this, so I wanted to check it out. Ordering was my only option, though, since local libraries were for once not terribly helpful in tracking it down.

Meanwhile, picked up electronically from B&N, all re-buys of books previously owned in print:

• All three books of the Sign of Seven trilogy, by Nora Roberts. Paranormal romance. Y’all may recall I was a little wibbly on how much I liked this, but I do like me some Nora in general and I wanted to keep these around even if I didn’t want to retain print copies.
• The first three books of the Mercy Thompson series, by Patricia Briggs. Urban fantasy. Shifting Briggs over to electronic buying since she’s got a lot of work at this point, which translates to a lot of shelf space, and I think I want her electronically instead.

This brings me to 25 for the year.

Nabbed from B&N:

• From the Ashes, by Jeremy Burns. Nabbed this one when it was a Free Friday book for the Nook a couple weeks ago.

Also nabbed from B&N, and specifically to support John Scalzi in his declaration that he would donate all of his ebook sales from Subterranean Press to Planned Parenthood until February 8th, all of the following Scalzi titles:

• You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing. This is Scalzi’s writeup about the current state of the publishing industry and what it’s like to be a writer in it.
• The Tale of the Wicked, a short story.
• How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story, another short story, whose title alone is lollertastic.
• Judge Sn Goes Golfing, another short story, set in the universe of The Android’s Dream.
• An Election, another short.
• The God Engines, a novella.
• The Sagan Diary, a novelette set in the Old Man’s War universe.
• Questions for a Soldier, another short in the Old Man’s War universe.

Picked up electronically from the Book View Cafe, because I like the current title (it used to be called What Wild Ecstasy when it was a romance in paperback):

• La Desperada, by Patricia Burroughs. Because also sometimes, I’m just in the mood for a Western-flavored romance.

And last but not least, picked up in print from Third Place Books:

• The Art of How to Train Your Dragon, a hardcover book about the artwork in the movie of the same name. I ordered this as a holiday/birthday gift for spazzkat, but it took a while for Third Place to get it in–and so I’m counting it towards the 2012 book tally!
• Je Le Ferai Pour Toi, by Thierry Cohen. This is a thriller, written in French, and I picked it up on the ambitious thought that, after I finish reading the French editions of The Hobbit and Storm Front, it would be amusing to test my language skills by reading a book originally written in French–and about which I have no prior idea whatsoever. (In other words, it’ll be a while before I make it through this one!)

Which brings me to 17 for the year thus far.

I realized much to my amusement that I was a scant 13 books shy of cracking the 1K mark on my To Read list, and so I did what any rabidly voracious reader ought to do in such situations: I called upon the Intarwebs for recs to push me up over the line! So now, as of this writing, I have a grand total of 1,002 books on the To Read list. And here are some amusing stats about them!

I actually own only 652 of these, and of those, 445 of them are ebooks, 119 are mass market paperbacks, 74 are trade paperbacks, 13 are hardcovers, and one is an ARC. Note also that there will be a slight margin for error here as a small number of authors are people I buy in multiple formats just because I love them and I CAN.

Of the rest of the 1,002, most of those are books I plan to check out from the library since most of them are authors who are new to me or who I haven’t read in some time. Since the vast majority of my reading these days IS electronic, before I commit to buying a new author, I prefer to test ’em out with library checkouts. Happily, our two local library systems are ebook-friendly, so I’ve been well able to do that!

For the curious, I track this ridiculous number of books on Goodreads, and my Goodreads shelves are publicly readable. You can see ’em all right over here, which will load you my entire list. My individual specific shelves are listed down the side of the page. And if you’re a Goodreads user, feel free to friend me there!

AND since this is of course a book roundup post, let’s get my 2012 acquisitions started, shall we?

First out of the gate are purchases from B&N, to wit:

• Leaves of Flame, by Benjamin Tate. Fantasy, Book 2 of his current Well of Sorrows series. I very much liked Book 1 and am looking forward to reading this.
• Unveiled, Unclaimed, Unlocked, and Unraveled, all by Courtney Milan. Historical romance, her Turner series to date, all starring various brothers of the Turner family. I checked out the first two of these from the library as aforementioned, liked them quite a bit, and have now put Milan onto my list of authors I will in fact buy directly.

And this puts me at 5 thus far for the year!

It has been suggested to me by the whomperjawed mizkit that I may need a new book buying moratorium. She’s probably right. I will in fact be laying off buying further ebooks at least until the end of the month–I want to get past my birthday–and that should give me time to dip back down under the 1K mark. It’d be amusing if I could actually read as many books as I buy this year.