Top Ten Tuesday - Unread Books
Top Ten Tuesday is hosted at The Broke and the Bookish.
This Week's Prompt: Top Ten Books You Just HAD to Buy...But Are Still Sitting on the Bookshelf
Hmm. I buy very few books, and even fewer that I haven't read before. I like to take a book out of the library, read it, and if I really like it and want to read it again, maybe I'll buy a copy. I live in a very small apartment, after all.
I guess there are a few. Let me look around...
1: The Deed of Paskenarrion, by Elizabeth Moon
I read the first volume in this trilogy by getting a free ebook from the Baen Free Library. The local library refused to send me the rest of them, as they were paperbacks. I saw a cheap used copy of the whole trilogy so I picked it up to bump an Amazon order up to $25. I haven't gotten around to reading it, though.
2: The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, by William S. Baring-Gould
When I bought this, I didn't realize that much of the analysis is angled toward treating the Holmes stories as if they were real, and then trying to put them into an internal chronology that works, or suggesting solutions for internal inconsistencies. (For example, such and such a story can't take place this year as stated because of this other thing, so maybe Watson lied about this date, for this reason, etc...)
This approach to the stories doesn't actually interest me, so instead of reading it through as I expected to, I've just dipped into this as a reference. (I have read the complete Sherlock Holmes: I have another edition with no commentary that has the original illustrations.)
3: The Dragon and the George, by Gordon R. Dickson
4: The Goblin Tower, by L. Sprague de CampFound in a bin of dollar books, haven't gotten to them.
5: Showcase Presents: Supergirl
This black and white collection of early Supergirl stories is really corny, so I've only read a few. The book was a dollar, though, so I don't feel as though I wasted money.
6: I have a folder on my computer with a bunch of free ebooks I downloaded from Project Gutenberg and other sources and haven't read.... does that count? Among them: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Carmilla, The Great God Pan, The People of the Mist...
7: Phenomenal Girl 5, and Merlin's Harp are both Kindle books I downloaded when they were free and haven't read yet.
8: Ah-Ha! Got a real one! (Sort of) Vampire: The Requiem
Bought it soon after it came out, but just haven't plugged through much of it. Of course, if I had people nearby to game with, that might change quickly.
9: Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War: Volume Two
Cheating a little here. This is one of Erin's, but I keep forgetting we have it, and so I haven't read it yet...I don't think I have, anyway.
10: ....Last thing I can find: Box of Loose Comic Issues
There was an awesome sale at a comic store last year, and we got an entire box of back issues for $25. Despite my best efforts, I haven't yet gotten through all 135 issues. I have read a lot of them, though.
I bought lots of books when I was in high school, and some in college, before I had to budget for rent and food and such. Now I'm a lot more picky. Am I alone among book bloggers in that I buy books so seldom?
You're definitely not alone! I rarely buy books, and when I do it's usually the continuation of a series I already know I like. I've decided tho whilst I'm still at uni to start buying more books, as I may not have the funds when I graduate in the summer. So I'm spending £10 a week on books (which will get me 2 a week, or one hardback) which is a quarter of my weekly budget!!
ReplyDeleteAnnotations most always delight me -- Isaac Asimov once devoted an essay to examining Holmes' worth as a chemist. ;)
ReplyDeleteIf you're interested in Trek literature, my two favorite authors from this last year of reading have been David Mack and Christopher L. Bennett. Bennett's books tend to incorporate science, making it more than 'space adventure'.....but he and Mack both do character drama well.
"I have read the complete Sherlock Holmes..."
ReplyDeleteThis is a gross understatement. I know for a fact you've read every story in that collection at least three times, and most you've read far more than that.
Cool. A bunch of books I haven't heard of. What is Vampire: Requiem about?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments everyone!
ReplyDelete@Alison: Vampire: The Requiem is a role-playing game. The book in question is the rule book. (It's a tabletop game, like D&D, to be specific. The book contains rules for creating characters and guidelines for play. If you've never played a tabletop RPG, it's a lot like cooperative storytelling, improvised with a group of friends. One person "runs" the scenario: plans the plot ahead of time, tells you what you see, what happens, adjudicates in case of disagreement and plays all the antagonists and minor characters, and everyone else has one character who they determine the actions for. In V:TR, there are rules for creating Vampires in this particular game-world: what powers they can have, ideas of backgrounds to choose from, etc...)
I played a lot of the previous edition (called Vampire: The Masquerade) back in college, but I haven't played much of anything recently.