The Reading-Beside-the-Bed Pile

Post-Christmas luncheon (during which I ate my own body weight in turkey, ham, chicken and trifle – trifle is an honourary protein), I am half-reclined on the bed in the manner of Goya’s Maja (but with more clothes) contemplating the reading pile on the nightstand.

Am a third of the way through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – which I am slow at coming to, but am enjoying … but I fear having watched the movies has dulled my brain as far as the reading is concerned. I think I shall need to go back to book one and read them all over again so as to regain some kind of continuity in my own head.

I have Kristin Cashore’s Fire, which once again has a glorious cover and I am looking forward to reading (as soon as Harry is out of the way).

I have the schmick little Twelfth Planet Press double-up of Roadkill and Siren Beat. Shearman’s Roadkill (which I had the privilege of reading earlier this year after blackmailing the author in a poker game gone wrong), and Tansy Rayner Roberts’ Siren Beat, with which I’ve no previous familiarity, but I was lucky enough to do a read on her soon-to-be-released Pulp Fiction Press novel, Cafe La Femme (which is awesome), are an interesting double act.

And I have VanderMeer’s Finch queued up for a second read. It was mind-blowing the first time around and I look forward to reading it more slowly this time and picking up the stuff that I missed on the first read coz I was desperate to read fast and see what happened.

Also: Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness is awaiting me. I’ve not read anything of hers before and am anxious to see what a Booker winner can produce – I love short fiction and there’s a lot of good stuff about … it just doesn’t get promoted properly by publishers unless it’s by a big name author.