October and November – ‘Monthly’ Wrap Up

Posted on December 12, 2012 by christinasr

Yes, I admit to beeing behind on my wrap up posts – and just about everything else blog related. I blame work mostly – and that pretty much suck since I don’t get paid to work and because of that, I would really much prefer just reading and blogging. But it’s necessary to work and so we must try to find work as best we can. But lame excuses aside, I’ve been reading tough and long books these months so I haven’t read all that many books. The best thing, though, is that I finished Clarissa (and the crowd goes wild…) and I also read and loved Les Misérables. So two huuuuuge novels finished and although I’ve cheated and read Clarissa all year long, it only really counts in the month, it’s finished. I’m not sure I can complete argue for why that is but that’s one of the rules of (my) reading.

Anyway, this of course means that I’m hugely behind.

See, already 2 books behind on October 1st. But it should get much, much worse.

In one short month, I went from being two books behind to being 5 books behind. I mostly blame Les Misérables for that. It took me a month to read – but it was worth it. However, it did seriously mess up my goal of reading 52 books this year. And then I began reading The Kindly Ones in November too and well, any chance of reaching 52 was just gone.

Samuel Richardson: Clarissa. Clarissa, Clarissa, Clarissa. So many months spend reading about this young woman who flees an arranged marriage and ends up in the hands of a womanizer. It could have been so good but it wasn’t. 3 stars.
Jean M. Auel: The Land of Painted Caves. A dreadful end to a series that started out so so good. In this one, we follow Ayla’s training to become a Zelandonia but also relationship issues with Jondalar. After reading the last three books in this series, I have to say that Auel should have quit while she was ahead. 2 stars.
Victor Hugo: Les Misérables. This is an amazing book, well worth it’s status as a Classic. Jean Valjean as a character is so real and so flawed that you forget he is just a character. His relationship with Colette is one that all fathers will recognize, I think. Add to that Hugo’s fantastic grasp of language, which enables him to write beautiful about the sewers of Paris, and you can easily see why this book is so good. 5 stars.
Neil Gaiman: Neverwhere. From beginning to end, I loved this book! Richard Mayhew’s adventures in London Below are just so much fun. Gaiman’s grasp of language is amazing and I love how well he uses London as a setting and plays with well known place names. 4 stars.

As you can see, I’m also so behind on writing reviews. I promise I will try to get them written before the new year.

I have finished almost all my challenges this year. Reading Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere finished my second to last challenge. However, I have to realize that I will not finish my own reading list and challenge for this year. I still need to read 12 books, I need to read Neil Gaiman American Gods, Don DeLillo Underworld, the first volume of Coppleston’s history of philosophy as well as a non-fiction book about collecting and then finish reading Sherlock Holmes… I’m not going to make it. So I will focus on reading as many books as possible because there are so many books I desperately want to read – and then set some new goals for 2013.

Related posts:

Jean M. Auel: Hulernes Sang (Jordens Børn #6) (The Land of Painted Caves – Earth’s Children #6) (review)

Posted on November 3, 2012 by christinasr

So yes. Here we are. I’ve finally finished the entire Earth’s Children series. And – really, I’m not sure how to put this but – this was bad. This was really, really bad. The Land of Painted Caves takes what started as an excellent and fascinating series about a young Cro-Magnon girl who is adopted by Neanderthals, later forced out, finding her own way in the world, falling in love and being accepted by other Cro-Magnon people – it takes all this promising material and brings it to an extremely bad finish that throws such a bad light back upon the rest of the series that I’m not sure I will ever read any of these books again, even though I really liked the first three (The Clan of the Cave Bear, The Valley of the Horses and The Mammoth Hunters).

This final book in the series details Ayla’s training to become a Zelandonia, her Donier tour and relationship issues with Jondalar as well as Ayla being Called to become a Zelandonia. There’s an earth quake and as always, Ayla does amazing things. The plot is divided into three separate parts with jumps in time between each. I really don’t know what more to say about it as nothing much really happens.

So what makes this book so bad? First of, it’s extremely boring. Ayla visits one painted cave after the other and in every single one of them, we get details of the layout of the cave as well as details of all the paintings in the cave. She goes on and on and on and on about painted mammoths, horses, cave bears and red dots. And hand prints. The first one was interesting but when they just travel from cave to cave without much otherwise happening, it really gets annoying to get these descriptions. Yeah, I get that Auel visited these caves – but we don’t need or want to read her travel diary! If she at least had given some plausible explanation to why these artists painted these caves, it might have been worth it, but nope. That was too much to hope for. All we get is, that they felt like it…!

As if this isn’t bad enough, Auel lets one of her characters do something that is so out of character that I almost lost all interest in finishing this book when I read it. It just felt like Auel had realized that she needed some drama to engage her readers (and wake us up!) and so, she just wrote the first thing that got into her head – never mind that it was so out of character that it was unbelievable. I lost all interest in her characters after that and really, just finished the book because that’s what I do. I finish the books I start. I don’t think I can find words to describe how disappointed I was with this plot twist. And to add insult to injury, the actions this provokes, is equally unbelievable. You can’t write 5.5 books about characters and then expect us to buy something that is completely out of the question. He would never do that – she would never do that. I could write so much more about this and I really should so because it wouldn’t be spoilers, it would be a favor if it kept people from reading this book and wasting their time.

I don’t know if anything can make this worse but the one thing that could, is that Auel hints at many interesting plot points she could have explored. Ayla is working hard to become a Zelandonia, a spiritual leader, and the conflicts with doing this and raising a family could have been explored more and been much more interesting. As it is now, this little girl that Ayla really wanted, is just sent off all the time with other people so mom has the time to do more interesting stuff. Again, this is something that doesn’t make any sense since we’ve been told over and over that all Ayla ever wanted was to have a mate and a child – now she has it, and doesn’t seem to care all that much about her little girl…

Add to this, that we get the Mother’s Song repeated over and over and over again and it’s even part of one of the (few) major plot points because Ayla in a trance gets to hear another verse that explains how babies are made … Which of course is an interesting thing since it changes the whole world view from being a society revering the mother to also start understanding that men play a part too when children are conceived – of course Auel doesn’t use it for anything interesting…

It feels like Auel is repeating some of the plot points from her earlier books. Like Ayla again taking the drug from The Clan of the Cave Bear or Ayla and Jondalar again not talking like in The Mammoth Hunters. It’s like it isn’t enough for her to repeat things over and over – again in this book, we get the Mother’s Song repeated again and again, we hear about Ayla’s accent so so so many times, people introduce themselves with long names and she retells everything from the five former novels – but we also have to live through her rehashing scenes from the other books and pretending it’s something new.

I still think that the last three books of this series should have been edited down to one book. I think that would have helped but I’m not sure that the original content in these three (very long) books is enough to actually make one decent novel out of it. I can’t recommend the second half of this series. It’s really sad to see such a great series come to such a lousy and underwhelming end!

Title: Hulernes Sang (Jordens Børn #6) (The Painted Caves – Earth’s Children #6)
Author: Jean M. Auel
Publisher: Gyldendals Bogklubber
Year: 2011
Pages: 736 pages
Source: Own Collection
Stars: 2 stars out of 5

Related posts:

September 2012 – Monthly Wrap Up

Posted on October 18, 2012 by christinasr

Yes yes, I know, we’re already halfway through October and I’m late with the monthly wrap up post. I just think we have to agree that my schedule is … well, a couple of weeks after everybody else’s and just go with it. I’ve been postponing and postponing posting this post – and maybe procrastinating a little bit – because I wanted to include links to reviews of all the books I read in October. I’ve finally realized that that’s not going to happen so here, 2,5 weeks late, is the monthly wrap up post for September…!

I picked up the pace a bit more in September. 4 books read. This is actually strange, since I started work this month. Luckily, only 30 hours a week and – even better – I commute by train so each day I have one hour to read on the train. I love traveling and commuting by train! Even one Friday, when the train was late because four cows were talking a walk on the tracks and I was sitting close to some guys going to the October Festival in Munich – and they were preparing by drinking beer and shouting ‘prost!’ a lot, making it rather hard to concentrate on Clarissa… Still, the train ride gives me time to read, I get to say hallo to my brother-in-law almost every morning when he gets on the train as I get off and it’s just a nice way to start and end the working day.

So 4 books this month. That’s okay. 2240 pages. That’s fine too. But I’m still 2 books behind on my goal to read 52 books. Still, I think I’ll make it … (ignoring the fact that I still have to read some really big novels this year like The Kindly Ones and Les Misérables).

Christine Feldthaus: Feldthaus skruer ned. A Danish television celebrity takes on a challenge to become more environmentally friendly, use less electricity and hot water. An okay book that gives some nice perspectives on the environmental debate. 3 stars.
Marion Zimmer Bradley: The Mists of Avalon. Great novel about the women of Arthur’s court and the intrigues surrounding them and it. And of course Avalon and the Lady of the Lake. And Lancelot. 4 stars.
Stephen King: The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower #1)
Jean M. Auel: Folket i Klippehulerne (The Shelters of Stone) (Jordens Børn #5). After taking a long break from these books, I returned. Jondalar and Ayla has returned to Jondalar’s people and this book details how they get used to living in one place again, Ayla’s pregnancy and their mating ceremony. Very repetitive. 3 stars.

I also listened to one audio book this month:

Lisa Shearin: Con & Conjure (Raine Benares #5). Fast-paced light fantasy read. Entertaining, nothing more. 3 stars.

So I have three months left to finish my challenges this year. I need to read some Neil Gaiman – and I’m looking forward to that. I need to finish Clarissa – I’m really looking forward to having finished that! And I need to read 8 books for my private challenge (including American Gods by Gaiman, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, Don Delillo Underworld and the last book in the Earth’s Children series by Jean M. Auel). Last month I signed up for The Epic Dark Tower read-a-long and therefore, I need to read Dark Tower #2: The Drawing of the Three. I need to read 16 books more this year, having read 36 out of 52 so far. I think September again will focus on finishing challenges. Halloween is not a big thing in Denmark so I don’t plan on reading anything particularly scary this month – well, maybe Underworld, that one really scares me!

Related posts:

Jean M. Auel: Folket i Klippehulerne (Jordens Børn #5) (The Shelters of Stone – Earth’s Children #5) (review)

Posted on October 4, 2012 by christinasr

So there’s no chance of me spoiling this for anyone since really, nothing much happens. Folket i Klippehulerne aka The Shelters of Stone is of course the fifth book in the Earth’s Children series by Jean M. Auel. Since The Clan of the Cave Bear we’ve been following Ayla on her journey from part of a Neanderthal clan to finding people of her own kind, the Cro-Magnons. We’ve followed her living on her own, befriending various animals as well as meeting and healing Jondalar, the first Cro-Magnon man she’s ever seen. She and Jondalar then set off on their journey, first living and experiencing serious relationship trouble in the camp of the Mammoth Hunters. And then, they set off for Jondalar’s home.

After the boring journey across the plains in book 4, I was kind of apprehensive about the fifth book. I was hoping that the 12 years break was used by Jean M. Auel to get back to the quality of the first books in the series. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

This novel takes off when Ayla and Jondalar has arrived at the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, Jondalar’s home. Arriving on horseback, together with a wolf, they of course cause quite a stir. After Ayla is introduced to the family and the rest of the people in the cave, she starts trying to fit in. Most people are very impressed with this beautiful and amazingly talented woman, Jondalar brought back. However, not all are quite so happy. One of these is the girl, Jondalar was supposed to marry who is not exactly happy that he brought Ayla back and therefore, she decides to humiliate her. The plan doesn’t go quite as expected, instead it rather backfires and makes Ayla more popular with most of the people of the cave – although even more unpopular with a few.

Besides Ayla’s attempts to fit in, this novel focuses on Ayla’s pregnancy and her and Jondalar’s mage ceremony. Throw in a couple of hunts, some sex scenes, explanations about how things worked, everyone presented having extremely (ridiculously) long titles and Ayla being amazing at whatever she does – and you have yourself a book.

Unfortunately, not a very good one. It seems that Auel has more focus on the research she has done for the book than on the actual story the research should be the background to and this makes the book rather slow-moving and unbalanced. On top of this, Auel repeats herself over and over and over – I’m convinced that in at least one place, she simply copy-pasted from the first of the books – and even presents the same things as new information several times as well as recap all major events from the first 4 novels, and you can see some of the issues with the book.

But unfortunately that’s not all that bothered me about the book. So far, Auel has seemed rather progressive when it comes to sex and relationships between the sexes but in this novel, not so much. For this tribe, if a young woman has sex before her first ritual, it’s a great shame and people look down on her – but not on the man who did it with her, even if he’s an older man who persuaded her. Also, it’s the woman’s responsibility to keep the man happy by having sex with him – if not, he’ll probably leave her… This is some of the things Ayla are told before the mate ceremony – and it doesn’t seem that Jondalar is told anything similar to this. And I don’t like that.

Auel also has a tendency sometimes to step back and talk about how some invention or new thought, will evolve through the coming centuries and what it will come to mean and why Jondalar and Ayla thought of it. This way of stepping back breaks the rhythm of the story and ruins the pace.

I read a translation of this novel so I don’t know if the clunkiness of the writing and the sometimes very old-fashioned language is the author’s or the translator’s fault. I do know that the spelling and translation mistakes are the Danish editor’s and the translator’s fault!

The greatest issue with this book however, is how accomplished and amazing Ayla is. She is simply the best at everything. She’s the perfect woman, she’s beautiful and is able to create amazing clothes. She can tame animals. She is a fantastic healer – who on top of that, always is on hand when someone gets injured. No one gets injured in this book without Ayla being right there, ready to treat. She can solve social issues in minutes: issues, that have bothered everyone else for years. No wonder she annoys some of the people in the cave! I know she has had opportunities no one else has had and all that, but it just feels too much now. She is simply too accomplished for it to feel real in any way.

I went back and forth between giving this 2 or 3 stars. I actually think this doesn’t deserve more than 2 stars and if I had read the series closer together, I would probably have been so annoyed with the constant repetition of both the earlier books in the series and even of this very book, that it would have been difficult even to give it two stars. But since it has been 15 years or so since I read the first 4 in the series and so the repetition bothers me but not as much as it could have – maybe should have.

I really, really liked this series when I was younger. The first three books were really good – or at least, that’s how I remember them. But after the disappointment with both the fourth and fifth book in this series, I’m not sure if these books were any good or if it’s because I read them maybe 20 years ago when I was in my teens – and wasn’t as sophisticated a reader as now. It’s sad to start to question books you used to love, because the later in the series simply don’t live up to your expectations. So far, I’m convinced that book 4 and 5 should have been one book – and I’m not having very high hopes about book 6…

Title: Folket i Klippehulerne (Jordens Børn #5) (The Shelters of Stone – Earth’s Children #5)
Author: Jean M. Auel
Publisher: Samleren
Year: 2002
Pages: 739 pages
Source: Own Collection
Stars: 3 stars out of 5

Related posts:

Earth’s Children series or the Stone Age Super Hero

Top Ten Series I Haven’t Finished

Posted on September 25, 2012 by christinasr

So yeah, I like series. I mostly read fantasy series and I love diving into a completely different world and explore it through multiple books. It all began with the DragonLance shared world series. I fell in love with both the world and fantasy while reading Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weiss’ books.

As usual, the Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. And did I mention this is the fifth week in a row I’m participating in Top Ten Tuesday. And there are a lot of us, check out The Broke and the Bookish blog to see the links to the other participant’s blogs.

So most of these series are fantasy series – but there are other series I enjoy as well. Here’s my top 10 – with a bonus at the end.

Adrian Tchaikovsky: Shadows of the Apt. A wonderful refreshing fantasy series set in a world with insect kinden. The praying mantis are assassins, the beetles are hardworking people, the mosquitos are vampires etc. It’s the usual story – band of unlikely heroes goes against the big bad. But the insect kinden makes all the difference and makes it interesting. I’ve read the first four in this series of ten and enjoyed them all.
Robert Jordan: Wheel of Time. Sighs. Every fantasy reader knows this series. And I think everyone agrees that it’s way longer than it had to be. I’ve read the first four and they are not great. They are okay but I have my issues with them – especially because Jordan repeats himself. Every time a character appears, he looks at his character description and says ‘oh yes, the girl with the braids’ or whatever and then he writes that. Every single time. I can’t really say why I keep reading them but I do. I plan on finishing the series – as far as I can tell the last books in the series, the ones not written by Jordan, actually get better…
Diana Gabaldon: Outlander. A woman accidentally stumbles upon an opening to the past in Scotland, goes back and has great adventures and falls in love. I’ve read the first two and really need to get more of these. I sort of tend to forget how great this series is but it is actually really good and I enjoy reading them.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Just the name of this series is amazing. I’ve read the first of the trilogy and it was a very very good book. I want to read it again and then read the rest of the trilogy in succession. Luckily, I own all three.
Lev Grossman: The Magicians. Harry Potter, Narnia… This is kind of a mix-up between the two. I liked the first and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series. I have the second one, the third has not yet been published.
Anne Rice: The Vampire Chronicles. So everyone knows Lestat and Interview with the Vampire. And that’s what I know too. I’ve read that one and seen the movie. And then I didn’t get any further. I have The Vampire Lestat and I also have Pandora and Vittorio, the Vampire of the New Tales of the Vampires series. I enjoyed Interview with the Vampire and I want to read further into the series and see what I think.
Jean M. Auel: Earth’s Children. I loved these books. The first one, The Clan of the Cavebear, was so good. And the next two installments in the series were really great too. But the fourth one … The Plains of Passage was just so bad. It just went on and on and on – walking across the plains, detailing the plants, various tribes, sex scenes … But it was clearly just meant to get Ayla and Jondalar from A to B – and it was boring. Still, both Jean M. Auel and I took a break after that and I have the two last books in the series waiting on my shelves and I plan to read them later this year, actually. Hopefully, they will be as good as the first three books!
Gail Carriger: The Parasol Protectorate. I really like this series. It’s steampunk, it’s vampires and werewolves and it’s a a fun, light and very enjoyable read. I only need to read the last one in the series, Timeless. Luckily, Gail Carriger has more books coming out, also set in this world.
Jasper Fforde: Thursday Next. I read the first of these, The Eyre Affair, and I loved it. It was an amazing romp through Jane Eyre and it was so, so good. However, one of the things that made it so good was that I had already read Jane Eyre. So I decided that I wouldn’t read more of this series before I had read more of the classics, Fforde uses in his plots. And that’s what I’m sort of working on. I do look forward to reading the rest of this series!
Various authors: DragonLance. This is series of books based in a shared world. This means that a lot of different authors write these novels and editors are then making sure that chronology and everything else is correct. Or at least supposed to. This shared world concept unfortunately means that not all these novels are of the same quality. I don’t think I’m ever going to read the entire series but I am going to go back and read the main novels and my other favorites from the series again.

And as a bonus, some series I haven’t started but which I’m definitely going to read.

Patrick Rothfuss: The Kingkiller Chronicle. I own the two of these which has been published so far and I expect so much from them. And they look gorgeous!
George R.R. Martin: A Song of Ice and Fire. I’ve seen a few of the tv series episodes and I think that at the right moment, I will just love these. I don’t own any of them yet but I will!
Robin Hobb: The Farseer Trilogy. My best friend Henrik told me years ago that he thought I would love this if I could stomach it. I think these will be so good – if I don’t ruin them by tears…!
Deborah Harkness: All Souls Trilogy. I own the first of these and I think it’s going to be a really great read although I have read both good and bad reviews of it.

Earth’s Children series – or the Stone Age Super Hero

Posted on September 24, 2012 by christinasr

Earth’s Children is a series of six speculative alternative historical fiction novels. The first was published in 1980 and the series was finished in 2011 (maybe). I’ve recently started reading the fifth installment in the Earth’s Children series and I wanted to talk a bit about the series as a whole and my impressions of the first four books. It’s been many years since I read these first four – in part because it took the author, Jean M. Auel, 12 years to finish the fifth book. She says it’s due to life getting in the way – I’ve always felt that it was because the books got progressively worse and that the fourth one was so bad it’s hardly worth reading. But I get ahead of myself… Below, you find my thoughts on the first 4 books in the series (beware – spoilers!).

These were the covers of the my first editions of this series.
My parents then gave me hardcovers but I’ve always loved these the best.

The Clan of the Cave Bear. I loved this book! I don’t know how many times I’ve read it but it’s an amazing, amazing book. This book tells the story of a young Cro Magnon girl Ayla who is adopted by a Neanderthal Clan and taught their ways, especially when it comes to healing. However, the leader to be hates her and always makes sure to put her in her place.
The Valley of Horses. Forced to leave the Clan, Ayla has to make it on her own. She finds a sheltered valley and decides to stay there for the winter. In the valley, she learns herself many different skills – as well as tame a horse and a cave lion. She is lonely, though, but when she hears a man screaming, she is in time to save Jondalar and heal him – while he teaches her the ways of his people. This book is almost as good as The Clan of the Cave Bear.
The Mammoth Hunters. Together with Jondalar, her horse Whinney and the horse’s colt, Ayla leaves the safety of her valley to go out and meet others of her kind. She meets the Mammoth Hunters and is adopted. In this new setting, her and Jondalar’s relationship is seriously tested. This one is not quite as good as the first two but still worth reading.
The Plains of Passage. Yawn! Are we there yet??? This book heavily details Ayla and Jondalar’s journey across the plains to Jondalar’s home. It details every plant they see on the way – or at least that’s what it feels like. They have sex, eat, travel a bit, see some plants, have some more sex and meet a few people. The first 3 I’ve read several times – I’ve only managed to get through this one once.

I’m currently reading The Shelters of Stone and then I will finish the series with The Land of Painted Caves. Sex, descriptions of how things were made in the Upper Paleolithic era, about 30.000 years ago, plants and such like, have been huge parts of this entire series and so far, The Shelters of the Stone is the same. However, I feel that the writing isn’t that good but I’m not sure to blame the author or the translator. See, I read these books in translation since that’s how I started them many years ago, before I had the skill to read books in English. But some of the writing, especially some of the romance parts, feels almost juvenile and the dialogue so far hasn’t impressed me. It has gotten a little better as I have been slowly dragged into the story but I’m not that impressed yet.

Also, it’s starting to ring a bit false that Ayla is so accomplished. She can speak both the sign language of the Neanderthals and the language of the Cro Magnons. She is an extremely skilled healer and knows everything about plants. She has an incredible memory. She has tamed a horse, a cave lion and a wolf – which nobody has done before. And on top of that, she’s drop dead gorgeous and doesn’t know it… She is almost a Stone Age Super Hero! I know, it can be explained by her upbringing, her living on her own and more – but still, it does get a bit much sometimes.

I’m hoping that these two last books will remind me why I loved this series so much all those years ago. I’ve been dreading reading them since I was afraid they would be as bad as The Plains of Passage. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Read more:

Auel may add book 7 to Earth’s Children series – Hillel Italie for SFGate
Official Jean M. Auel homepage

Look what Santa brought…

Posted on December 25, 2011 by christinasr

Santa didn’t bring a lot of books this year – but he did bring some really nice ones so it’s okay. I’m not mad at him. I found three books under the tree and I’m hoping to read them all in 2012.

Stephen King: 11.22.63

New York Times has picked this novel as one of the 5 best fiction novels in 2011. I’m not sure if a King novel has been put on this list before? – but it’s impressive. And King is one of my favorite novelists. I started reading him as a teenager and have read him regularly since. I think he’s a wonderful story teller. This novel is about a man who gets to go back in time to stop Lee Harvey Oswald. It sounds very promising!!!

Jean M. Auel: Hulernes Sang (The Land of Painted Caves)

I started reading the Earth’s Children series way back, back when I wasn’t able to read them in the original English so I have the entire series now in the Danish translation. I loved the Clan of the Cave Bear, the next two was good as well – but I lost momentum with The Plains of Passage. It was sooooo boring! I hope to read both The Shelters of Stone and The Land of Painted Caves this year and finally finish Ayla’s story.

Victor Hugo: Les Miserables

The last couple of years, I’ve gotten a classic novel from my boyfriend. Previous books have been War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov and Madame Bovary. This year it’s Victor Hugo’s famous novel in a beautiful hardcover edition. I can’t wait to read this one! But wow – 1432 pages …!

10 books I’m looking forward to in 2011

Posted on February 8, 2011 by christinasr

Each year brings new and exciting books to dive headfirst into. I love it when you hear about a book and you just can’t wait to get your grubby little fingers on it and just read, read, read. (Although, truth be told, if I’m ever to get my to-read list down to a manageable number, there should be published no new books for the next … 9 years would do it, I think – provided I read 100 books a year…)

Anyway – here are 10 of the books I’m looking forward to this year:

Haruki Murakami: 1Q84 (this is without a doubt my most anticipated book of the year!)
Gail Carriger: Heartless (the fourth book in the Parasol Protectorate series – lovely fluffy steampunk.)
Lev Grossman: The Magician King (I liked The Magicians with it’s Harry Potter meets Narnia feel and with it still being so much more than just a rip-off of these two classics so I’m looking forward to how he will continue the story. It didn’t have the feel of a first book in a series to me so I don’t have any loose ends I would like to see him tighten so this can go in any direction he sees fit but I think it will be a nice read.)
Jasper Fforde: One of Our Thursdays is Missing (I’ve only read the first Thursday Next novel but loved it so I’m looking forward to any in the series – hopefully I will get a lot of these read this year – but I prefer having read the classics he is using in the books before reading them so I think I have some Dickens and more ahead of me first.)
Joyce Carol Oates: A Widow’s Story: A Memoir (I love Joyce Carol Oates so for that reason alone this is interesting. JCO tells about how she became a widow – and I lost my father late last year, leaving my mother a widow as well, so that’s the second reason this book is high on my list.)
Carol Wallace: Leaving Van Gogh (I love Van Gogh – he is one of my favourite painters. This is the story of his death – told by his personal physician.)
Benjamin Hale: The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (A chimp who can articulate deep thoughts on art and philosophy and who falls in love with a human… What’s not to love? Definitely looking forward to this one!)
Patrick Rothfuss: The Wise Man’s Fear (The second book in the Kingkiller Chronicle – and although I haven’t read the first book or anything at all by Patrick Rothfuss, both these books sounds great!)
Adrian Tchaikovsky: The Sea Watch (Shadow of the Apt #6 – another series I haven’t read anything of but I own the first three and besides the coolest covers, these books sounds like they could have some depth in them and not just be fluffy fantasy.)
Jean M. Auel: The Land of Painted Caves (I loved The Clan of the Cave Bear, liked the next two in the Earth’s Children series – but the fourth one was so boring. Having gotten up the courage to read the fifth installment yet but now the series is finally coming to an end so hopefully I will read both vol. 5 and 6 this year.)