Why, yes. I tend to always give at least one person a book. Typically it’s my mother. This year she is getting one of my favorite books. She might like it. She might not. It’s Company by Max Barry. Perfect who people who are frustrated with their job. As for books I am hoping to get there are none. Instead I want a Kindle Fire. I’m ready to enter the e-book age.

I’m excited about this movie. You should be too. Speaking of things you should be, you should also be reading the books this film is based on (inspired by?). They are written by Gideon Defoe.

I also bought a 2012 Corgi calendar, thus making it the last (and first for that matter) calendar I’ll ever purchase from Borders.

It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy by Laurie Notaro
July 26

Yes, this book comes out tomorrow, but that’s still 24 hours away and who knows when the UPS man will show up to deliver it. Laurie Notaro is hilarious, one of the funniest writers i’ve ever read. I giggle when I read her books which is why I never take them on planes with me. The last time I saw her at Powell’s, I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes. She’s written somewhere around eight books, two of which are fiction. She often writers about her life and the many, many awkward situations she manages to find herself in. Every time a new book of hers comes out I have to buy two copies; one for myself and one for my mom to prevent her from stealing my copy.

Machine Man by Max Barry
August 9th

Max Barry is one of my all time favorite authors. Machine Man is his fourth novel. MM actually started out as an online serial that ended up being picked up to be published. He has since gone back and smoothed out what he had originally written and made it more fitting for a book. I also recall that the movie rights had been sold and the director would be Darren Aronofsky. You may remember Darren from his most recent film Black Swan.

Abarat: Absolute Midnight by Clive Barker
September 27th

I speak of this book with a heavy sigh. I’ve been waiting for this book since 2004 after Days of Magic, Nights of War was released. Seven years is a long time to wait for the third book in the Abarat series. Just imagine if we had to wait seven years between Harry Potter books. Abarat is better than Harry Potter in my opinion. Maybe it’s because I read Abarat before Harry Potter and that created a bias. Maybe i’m just annoyed with the seven year wait. Who knows. The point is, i’m excited about this book. If you don’t know what Abarat is about here’s a brief recap: Abarat is a parellel world made up of 25 islands. Each island is a different hour of the day. One day, Candy Quackenbush manages to travel from her home in Minnesota and ends up in Abarat being pursed by Christopher Carrion, the villain. Barker does all the original artwork for the books, so if you do purchase a copy of either of the first two books, avoid the mass markets and get the quality paperback editions.

Since it’s been so long, I’ve committed to re-reading the first two books again before Absolute Midnight is released. I’ll post about both books when the time comes.

Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years by Gregory Maguire
November 1st

I’ve decided to take the audiobook route with this series. I like the stories, but find them difficult to read. The audiobook of Son of a Witch that I finished a couple days ago was enjoyable enough. I’ll pick up the audiobook of A Lion Among Men for my next road trip and be caught up by the time this book comes out. I don’t know much about what is suppose to happen in this book. It’s the last one though, so I expect it to be more on the epic side.

Max Barry, in case you didn’t know, is one of my favorite authors. He has written three books so far (Syrup, Jennifer Government and Company).  All three of them are fantastic.

Now does anybody know who I can contact at Vintage to get an ARC?

For those of you who prefer to keep it old skool, go play the original text based Hitchhiker’s Guide game instead.

5) Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins

Left Behind was a book series that was wildly popular in the late 90′s/early 2000′s. The book starts with all the Christians are raptured leaving all the non-believers down on Earth. Shortly after that Nicolae Carpathia, a Romanian politician, begins his rise to power and assumes the role of the prophesied anti-Christ. It probably one of the book series that got me reading during a time in my life where I hated to read (high school). Thirteen year old me enjoyed these books because they had a lot of action and violence and drama and intrigue. In know that Left Behind is inspired by text extracted from the Bible, but for me these books were akin to science-fiction. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but now that I think about it, a lot of science-fiction does revolve around religion or a set of culture beliefs. Left Behind isn’t too far off.

There was originally twelve books to the series. But after the initial twelve the authors went on to write three more prequel books and one more book that takes place after the end of the world. I never read these last four, but I did manage to make my way through 11 ½ of the original twelve books. Book 12, Glorious Appearing, got really boring once Jesus showed up and I couldn’t bring myself to finish the book.

4) Gone by Michael Grant

Speaking of people mysteriously disappearing, Gone by Michael Grant is a six book series currently being published. Everyone over the age of fourteen disappears from a small ocean side town in California. I admit that I have not read this book, but I intend to one of these days. My partner, however, is currently reading the fourth book in the series. You can read his review of Gone here.

3) Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

How can we talk about the Apocalypse and not mention this book? In it, an angel and a demon try to delay the end of the world because they’ve both taken to enjoying living among the humans. I read this book shortly after finishing The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for the first time. I remember, sadly, being disappointed in Good Omens because everybody says it’s such a fantastic book that I had incredible high expectations. My problem, I think, was that I just finished the Douglas Adam classic and my reading palate was accustom to something a little more absurd. I’m sure if I went back and re-read Good Omens I would enjoy it more the second time around. Sadly, my copy of the book has since gone missing.

2) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Speaking of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The book starts with the world ending. Later on the Earth does somehow manage to reappear, but there is nothing like the tale of Arthur Dent traveling around the universe with his towel to cheer a reader up when the end is near.

1) Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr.

This is one of my favorite books in a long while. In his mother’s womb, Junior is told the exact moment when the world is going to end. He must live his life with this knowledge. Does he attempt to stop the inevitable? Or focus on making every moment count? You can read my review here. But seriously, check out this book.

Christopher Moore is one of my favorite authors, yet I have not read all of his books. For the longest time four of his older books I never bothered to read or had much interest in. I’m working on correcting this.

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove is the second book in the Pine Cove storyline. I’ve previously read The Stupidest Angel (3rd Pine Cove book) so I had some familiarity with these characters, but it has been a while since I read that book.

Lust Lizard starts with the premise that they small town’s psychiatrist has, without warning, replaced everybody’s antidepressants with placebos after one of her patients commits suicide. Coincidentally, around this time a sea monster awakens from the bottom of the sea and takes to land, causing mayhem in Pine Cove. Investigating the mayhem is Theophilus Crowe, Pine Cove’s constable, who has spent most of his career getting stoned and keeping an eye out on Pine Cone’s resident crazy lady, former B-movie star, Molly Michon.

As with most of Moore’s books, it’s practically impossible for me to cover all the characters in this book. The town of Pine Cove is teeming with wacky characters each with their own personal quirk. Their quirks are really helpful to the reader because there are somewhere around five different plotlines to follow. No two characters are alike.

It’s hard to believe that this book came out in 1999. Where was the 10th Anniversary Edition? Luckily it still holds up. You know how sometimes you’re reading a book and their talking about Myspace or “the internet” and it sounds really dated? This book doesn’t suffer from that. Pine Cove is small enough to not need to rely on technology to advance the plot. Just an observation though. Not sure why I even brought this up.

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove is a completely wacky book. Surely it is one of Moore’s most crazy books (and if you’ve read his other books then you would understand just how crazy that is).

When did I start neglecting the books I wanted to read and instead read book publishers/authors wanted me to read?

This thought entered my mind while sitting in the Portland airport. I was flying down to Reno and had packed two books to take with me on my journey. One was given to me by a publisher asking me to review it, the other was one I purchased myself. The publisher book, as much as I hate to say it, wasn’t meeting my expectations. I swapped it for my other book but that only caused me to think about the other books at home I have in my To Be Read pile. How many of those books were books that I would pick up and look at in a bookstore?

There are currently three books in my immediate TBR pile. All three are from publishers for review. My non-immediate TBR pile currently consists of graphic novels (Bone, Unwritten) and the Christopher Moore books I have yet to read. If given the choice, I would be reading the graphic novels and Moore’s books. But who says I don’t have a choice?

Nobody, that’s who.

I didn’t start this blog to appease publishers. I started it because I was bored and I read a lot of books. I’ve become more picky about accept books for review for a couple reasons. First, I am currently working on my own manuscript and need to focus my free time on that. Second, sometimes I want to read what I want to read. If I want to read a comic, I don’t want to feel bad about neglecting a publishers book by doing so.

So for the time being, I am going to be accepting less books for review and get back to reading the books I want to read. That’s not to say I have stopped accepting books. If there is one that truly sounds right up my ally, I will gladly add it to my TBR pile.

After 3(ish) years, I thought I might need to finally establish a review policy, so I’ve added a “Review Policy” to the sidebar.

Additionally, starting later on today, I will be starting an online serial. My current plans are to post parts of it Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and see how it goes. They’re are just going to be short story snippets. I’m also not planning ahead. That can either come back and bite in the ass later. We’ll see how this goes and if I like it.

Lastly, I’ve been reading less books because I’ve been trying to focus more on my writing. Do writers read? Surely they must. Just look at all the endorsements on the back of books from other authors. They wouldn’t say nice things about another book if they hadn’t read it, right?