“Words are the litmus paper of the mind.”
Terry Pratchett
Literally the top ten books on my TBR pile. Yes, I’m being lazy today.
- Mrs Bradshaw’s Handbook to Travelling upon the Ankh-Morpork & Sto Plains Hygienic Railway – Terry Pratchett. On loan from Hemel Hempstead’s surprisingly un-crap library. I’m actually looking forward to it: short and a bit of fun after the Tolkien Reading Marathon.
- The Eternal Flame – Greg Egan. Also on loan, this time from the Circumlocutor. It’s the sequel to The Clockwork Rocket, which I loved, but I’m nervous about where Egan’s going to take the feminist themes of Rocket.
- The Shepherd’s Crown – Terry Pratchett. Another loan from the Circumlocutor, and Pratchett’s last ever Discworld novel. I just know it’s going to be terrible, but I also know I won’t be able to look away.
- The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy – Sam Maggs. A present, from, um…I’ve got to start borrowing books from someone else. Another short read with pictures! And, therefore, good for my reading challenge, which is suffering at the moment.
- On – Adam Roberts. I bought this in a second-hand bookshop in Wales and I’m slightly dreading it. It has a terribly old-fashioned cover, and I suppose I ought to trust Roberts more, but I have my doubts.
- Charles Dickens: A Life – Claire Tomalin. This one hails from a little bookshop in Fowey, Cornwall, plus I got a free bookmark. I quite like biography, but I’ve never read any for pleasure before. And I love Dickens, and Victoriana, so I’m looking forward to this one.
- The Helene Hanff Omnibus. Another second-hand tome which hails from Wales (see what I did there?). Hanff wrote the famous 84 Charing Cross Road, about the bookshop, and there appear to be a couple of other bookish works in here. So we’ll see.
- The Shakespeare Notebooks. Hideously overpriced in Stratford-upon-Avon, but it has DOCTOR WHO and SHAKESPEARE in the same place and I could not leave it on the shelf.
- Bleeding Edge – Thomas Pynchon. I was looking for a certain kind of urban contemporary when I bought this in Oxford about a year ago. I’m not sure if this will be what I was looking for, and it might annoy me, but I’m always game for some Pynchon. Just please let it be like The Crying of Lot 49. Pretty please?
- Un Lun Dun – China Mieville. A present from…OK, this is embarrassing now. Plus it was a Christmas present, so it has been sitting in the Pile of Doom for like a year. The struggle is real, people. Anyway. I do love me some Mieville.
Incidentally, if I’m to complete the reading challenge I’ve set for myself this year (72 books, one more than I read last year), I have to read all of these books, plus approximately 7 more.
Help?
Has anyone read any of these? Opinions/thoughts/ramblings welcome!
The English Student 
Greetings, English Student.
I suppose, given my mentions above, that it’s quite obvious that I’ve read some of the things… but anyway, you asked for thoughts. Thus thoughts:
The Eternal Flame is still very good. On the physics front it does even better than the Clockwork Rocket, I think, with some startling new bits of stuff. On the feminism front, it still does amazing wonders, he certainly isn’t running out of startling ideas, but some of them are not quite so immediately applicable to us as the Clockwork Rocket’s were. Still, rather wonderful though.
The Shepherd’s Crown wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. It suffers from feeling like someone else is writing Discworld just like the last few have, but it’s not unpleasant. I think it’s a better end to the Tiffany arc than I Shall Wear Midnight, and is more of an appropriate goodbye than Raising Steam. Still not real Pratchett though, unfortunately.
I haven’t read any of the others on your list, but the few bits of Fangirl’s Guide that I read before giving it to you (sorry…) were very entertaining. I hope you have fun with your TBR pile! I have many more things to loan you if you should want them…
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I thought you said you read *all* of Fangirl’s Guide before you gave it to me…
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No! I read the “guide” bits but not any of the interviews. Which I acknowledge, I suppose, us more than a “few bits”…
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I forgot to sign on the above comment – I’m the Circumlocutor, in case you didn’t get that.
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