Well, it’s begun. The first of the nominees for the 2016 PNBA Book Awards has arrived in my mailbox. Which means I am now in my last few weeks of being able to read books for any other reason. Which gets me all in a panic because I don’t know what to read first and what’s going to get missed and there are just TOO MANY BOOKS and only one of me and has anyone perfected cloning technology yet?
Okay. Okay. Deep breaths. Let’s be logical about this. There’s only one Book Award nominee in my pile at this moment, which means I still have some time to read without judging. Well, without judging much. So, what’s on the To Be Read stack for these last weeks of reading freedom?
- Of Dreams and Rust by Sarah Fine, which is coming out in August. This is the sequel to last year’s Of Metal and Wishes, which was set in a world that was sort of a magical Industrial-era China, but not exactly. That description does the book absolutely no justice, but it was really good, trust me. I’m really looking forward to the sequel.
- China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan, which is coming in June. Crazy Rich Asians was my favorite beach book pick for last summer. If this follow-up is half as smart and snarky, I’ll be in heaven. This is exactly the kind of outrageously over-the-top fiction that I love to read as a palate-cleanser when I finish something like the book I’m reading now, Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins.
- The Golden Specific by S.E. Grove, the sequel to The Glass Sentence, which is due in July. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t as enraptured by The Glass Sentence as a lot of others were, but I liked it quite a bit and am looking forward to diving into the sequel.
- A bunch of romance: Rogue Spy by Joanna Bourne, The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla by Lauren Willig, Four Nights with the Duke by Eloisa James, and It Started with a Scandal by Julie Anne Long.
- And a handful of comics that I am late to the party on: Pretty Deadly and Captain Marvel by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson and Batgirl (The New 52) by Gail Simone.
I also have the books that I just jammed through, knowing that the Award nominees would start flowing in at any moment:
- Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley (A clown-free circus? Sign me up!)
- The Pirate Hunters by Robert Kurson (PIRATES!)
- I am Princess X by Cherie Priest (Part thriller, part graphic novel, all awesome.)
- The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins (Here be tigers. And gods. And tiger-gods.)
- Cakes in Space by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre (Cakes! In space!)
- The aforementioned A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson (I haven’t quite finished because I have to take my time and absorb what I’m reading, rather than just zooming through.)
And, yeah, that’s a lot more adult stuff than is usually on the agenda, but once the nominees start rolling in in earnest, the only other books I’m really going to have time to read are Kids galleys and ARCs for the store. And, oh, gods, I’m not even through my Summer galleys yet and Fall ones have started arriving? Why, universe, why? (Note to publishing: Could you just stop for a couple of months? Give me some time to catch up? Pretty please? that would be super-awesome. kthxbai.) (Pity me. I’ve too much to read and too many good books coming my way. I am the saddest of sad puppy dogs and you should give me cookies to cheer me up.)
Expect my columns here over the next few months to be focused almost exclusively on Pacific Northwest authors, since my reading will be focused almost exclusively on such between now and late Fall.
Billie Bloebaum works at A Children’s Place Bookstore and believes that the three most important food groups are cheese, chocolate and wine.