The OF Blog: WFA Reviews, Other Stuff

Saturday, October 20, 2007

WFA Reviews, Other Stuff

Since the World Fantasy Awards will be announced in about two weeks, I'm going to do my best to finish up my reading of the remaining finalists for the story collection category (still have M. Rickert's Map of Dreams and Susanna Clarke's The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories left to read/review), as well as post longer reviews of the three Best Novel finalists that I read in 2006 (not to mention finish reading Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword and Stephen King's Lisey's Story). Expect to see those reviews starting either later this weekend or by next weekend at the latest.

Also, I've received quite a few review copies in the past couple of weeks and while some regrettably will have to wait a bit before I can get to them, do expect to see reviews of the following before the year is out:


Josh Conviser, Empire

Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner, Fleet of Worlds

Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, A Companion to Wolves


There certainly will be many others that I shall read/review, but with my professional life being what it is now, it's hard to predict how much time/energy I'll have in the next few months for reading/reviewing. I hope to get through another 50-60 books this year, but with many of them by necessity of my job being non-genre fiction, it's hard to say how many of those will be recent spec fic works. Regardless, it hopefully shall be an entertaining experience for me and one that shall perhaps lead to many good books for the readers here to consider.

P.S. One non-genre book that I'm reading now is Dave Eggers' "novelization" of the life of Sudanese refugee and activist Valentino Ackak Deng, called What is the What. This book has garnered lots of praise and "Best of 2006" accolades in newspapers across the US and 250 pages in, it has surpassed my high expectations. Probably will review it here in the next week or two.

4 comments:

Robert said...

50-60 books! How do you read so many books so quickly!!! That's crazy :D

Larry Nolen said...

Very carefully? :P

I just have an ability to parse lines at a time rather than individual words. It's nothing that I can teach to others, it seems.

Also, many of those books are under 300 pages. The latest Erikson novella, The Lees of Laughter's End, just arrived and I know that won't take me days to read!

Combine that and I can get 2-5 books done in a day's time when I'm not working a lot.

Robert said...

Unfortunately I have no special talents ;) Depending on how long a book is, it can take me from 1-3 days to finish one. My goal is to review at least three books a week, but it all depends. Right now, I'm trying to get through a nearly 700-page monster :)

Larry Nolen said...

I only could finish reading the new Erikson novella last night, but I did get about 400 pages of Mario Vargas Llosa's Conversación en La Catedral read yesterday while I was waiting for my next round of allergy/sinus tests (and in the process, getting sick enough to miss work today, go figure). Hope to get a few others read shortly.

 
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