On Today’s Bookshelf (XIV)

I spend my working hours editing books and then spend my pleasure hours reading more books rather than watching TV. I can’t recall the last time I turned on the TV (except to watch a rented video). What follows is a list of some of the books that I am reading (or acquired since the last On Today’s Bookshelf post) either in hardcover or in ebook form:

Nonfiction –

• Harry Truman and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Shogan
• A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War by Amanda Foreman
• The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople by Susan Wise Bauer (I already own and have read the first 2 volumes in this outstanding history: The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome and The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade, as noted in prior On Today’s Bookshelf posts)
• The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid edited by John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd
• Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America by Owen Matthews
• The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition by Mark Twain, edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and Benjamin Griffin (I already own and have read volume 1)
• Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott
• Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum
• Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson
• Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan
• Stalingrad by Antony Beevor
• The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership by Yehuda Avner
• Shadow on the Crown by Patricia Bracewell
• The Last Tsar by Donald Crawford
• Thomas Becket by John Guy
• Hiding Edith by Kathy Kacer
• The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis by Julie Kavanagh
• A Monarchy Transformed by Mark Kishlansky
• The Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell
• Shooting Victoria by Paul Thomas Murphy
• Those Angry Days by Lynne Olson
• The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter
• Nixonland by Rick Perlstein
• The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain by Paul Preston
• Six Women of Salem by Marilynne Roach
• The Last Greatest Magician in the World by Jim Steinmeyer
• Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel by Andrew Graham-Dixon

Fiction –

• Blood Land by R.S. Guthrie
• Shadowborn by Moira Katson
• Ascendancy by Jennifer Vale
• Witch Wraith by Terry Brooks
• Two Fronts: The War that Came Early by Harry Turtledove
• Treecat Wars by David Weber
• Shadowborn, Shadowforged, & Shadow’s End by Moira Katson (trilogy)
• The Song of Eloh Saga by Megg Jensen (7 books combined in a single omnibus)
• The Dream Thief by Shana Abe
• Something Blue by Emma Jameson
• Venice by Peter Ackroyd
• The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin
• Devil’s Garden by Ace Atkins
• The Algebraist by Ian Banks
• Bone Thief by Jefferson Bass
• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
• Bridge of Dreams and Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop
• Killing Rain by Barry Eisler
• First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
• American Assassin by Vince Flynn
• Seventy-Seven Clocks by Christopher Fowler
• The Apostates Tale by Margaret Frazer
• Haunted Ground by Erin Hart
• Chosen, Exalted, Stained, and Stolen by Ella James (4 books)
• The Iron Legends by Julie Kagawa
• The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbo
• A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
• Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin
• The Chair by James Rubart
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

As you can see, I have no shortage of reading material. As I have noted before, my to-be-read pile keeps growing at a pace faster than I can read books. Perhaps if I ever retire I will have enough reading time to read faster than I acquire.

What is most interesting to me is not how many books I read but how many I start and never finish. Being an editor has its downsides. For example, I get frustrated by books that wander, or where the same character has 14 names (and counting), or the bad editing sticks out like a beacon, or the author has a lot to say but lacks even minimal storytelling techniques. (Note I have not mentioned those books that frustrate because of poor grammar and English, which is a category unto itself.)

The holiday season is soon upon us and I need to begin to put together a wish list of hardcover books I am interested in. Have you given thought to what books you will ask for this holiday season? How is your to-be-read pile growing/declining?