Jumping jellybeans, Batman! What a lot of drool-worthy titles coming out in 2012. Most of the ones of my radar will be release in January (that’s tomorrow!) so I don’t have to wait too long to read them. Whew! I’m eager to get my grubby mitts on:

The Daemon Prism by Carol Berg

A book written from the first person POV of Dante? Oh, yes, yes, YES! Btw, the dude on the cover? He’s all right, but he looks NOTHING like Dante. Boo. Ignore the guy, buy the book! (Er… buy books 1 and 2 first, then this one).

Incarnate by Jodi Meadows

All right, part of why I want to read this book is because I know Jodi. And I know she’s a fabulous writer. But the big part of why I want to read this is because of its fantastic premise: Ana is a newsoul, born in a world where everyone is reincarnated over and over, keeping their memories from past lives. When she was born, another soul vanished. Now Ana must discover whether she truly is the bad omen everyone else thinks she is.

The Serpent Sea by Martha Wells

Sequel to The Cloud Roads, which I finished on Wednesday. I love Moon’s character, and I get to find out what happens to him next week! Yay!

Heir of Novron by Michael J. Sullivan

Last book in the The Riyria Revelation series. Building to big climactic-type things. Lots of danger. Lots of loss. Many secrets to be revealed. Yay!

Other titles I’m interested in checking out: Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi (this one is all totally Jodi Meadows’ fault); Cinder by Marissa Meyer (a science fiction fairy tale featuring a cyborg Cinderella? Ooooh!); For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund (post-apocalyptic retelling of Persuasion, my favorite Austen? Oh, yeah!); and Cold Steel (sequel to Cold Fire) by Kate Elliott.

Any books you’re looking forward to in 2012?

I was saddened to hear the news of Anne McCaffrey’s passing yesterday. Like for many others, Anne McCaffrey was a huge influence in my teenage years.

I grew up in a relatively book-poor country, and F&SF books were particularly hard to find. The very first McCaffrey book I read was Pegasus in Flight, book 2 of the Talent series, which I got out of the British Council library (yes, foreign powers provided books for those of us who could afford to be members). While I loved that one–and read it over and over and over– my real love was Pern.

Dragonsinger was my first introduction to Pern. I found  it while patiently going through stacks of pirated Sidney Sheldons and John Grishams and 70s Mills & Boons at a weekly bazaar (The thellaywallay, as the men who ran the secondhand bookstalls were called, carted their books from place to place all over the city, following the different bazaars, which were–originally– known as Monday Bazaar, Tuesday Bazaar, Saturday Bazaar etc.). My delight knew no bounds–I was actually holding a book with little dragons (aka fire lizards) on the cover (which also came from the 1970s, but had survived till the 90s where I could get my grabby hands on it).

This cover! This is the cover on my tattered, falling-apart copy of Dragonsinger!

I read that book several times. A couple of months later I ran into its prequel, Dragonsinger, at a secondhand bookshop in an entirely different city. I still remember holding that book, dizzy with disbelief at my good fortune. Now I could find out Menolly’s backstory! (Yes, I was used to reading series out of order, and skipping books entirely, in those days.)

On a trip to the UK a few years later, I made sure to snag as many Pern books as I could lay hands on–the ones with the gorgeous covers put out by Corgi.

Isn't it beautiful?

Pern was the first world I ever immersed myself in so fully and completely. I ached with Menolly as her music talent was derided and dismissed by her family; I thirsted with vengeance with Lessa as she plotted to regain control of Ruatha. I felt the joy of the dragons and riders as they flew, and trembled for the rest of Pern when Thread fell. The culmination of Pern–for me–was the gamechanging All the Weyrs of Pern. I know McCaffrey and now her son have continued writing in Pern after that, but for me, that book was so final. When I got to the end, I had a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. It was the end of an era–the end of a chapter in Pernese history, the end of a season for me as a reader. I was not far from college by that point, approaching adulthood, and on the cusp of changing reading tastes. I don’t allow myself to be drawn into a world as fully as I did as a girl; no world has gripped me the way Pern did. I’m older, more wary, more holding myself at an arm’s length.

I devoured other McCaffrey books–the Brainships, the Crystal Singer series, Sassinak, Rowan, and the Powers that Be. But Pern was my first love. Thank you, Anne McCaffrey, for giving it to me and thousands of other readers.

As I’ve mentioned before, Sir I. is my sensitive (highstrung, anxious…) kid. That’s fine. I was that kid, too, and I managed–barely–to become a functioning adult. Part of my job as parent is to help him cope with anxiety. And boy, do suspenseful, dangerous moments in books and stories bring out that anxiety in a big way.

We were talking about books on an autumnal drive (cars are great places for serious conversations, btw—it helps that everyone is trapped in a moving vehicle with no place to run). We talked about the types of books we liked, and the kind we didn’t, and why we didn’t finish books. I stressed that it was okay to books down that didn’t interest him (except ones that his teacher–me–assigns for school, of course). Sometimes, Sir I. abandons books because they get too scary—the kids are trapped in a burning boat that’s about to sink and take them with it! What if they die?

“You know,” I told him, “you are allowed to peek at the ending to see if everything turns out okay. I do that, too, sometimes.”

Now I know that to some of you (like, ahem, my husband) that’s akin to sacrilege. Peek ahead to the ending? Won’t that spoil the surprise, ruin the story? Why bother to read if you already know what’s going to happen?

Um, no. For some of us ( the highstrung, anxious, emotionally over-involved types), it’s agony not knowing if X is going to happen or if Y is going to die or if A and B get together. This anxiety acts like a spreading stain, making the experience of reading that story a miserable experience. Since we read for pleasure (mostly–some of us have teachers who assign us books, like Sir I. *grin*), we’d rather give up on the book than continue in this wretched way.

Or we could just peek ahead and find out what happens.

If the outcome is satisfactory, then we can go on happily, secure in the knowledge Everything Works Out and eager to see how the author gets us to that ending. And if the resolution is not satisfactory… well, we can still abandon the book. Or we can begin to emotionally distance ourselves from the character who’s going to die and come to terms with the way the story ends before we get there and it slaps us in the face like a, um, big wet fish. It’s the difference between descending by going down the steps, or descending by jumping out of a window.

I’d rather take the steps.

What about you? Do you peek ahead or read a book out of order?

Finally.

Now to see if my library is in on this yet.

YA/MG steampunk is my current comfort read. I recently read Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan–and then promptly ordered it again, thinking I was getting the sequel *headdesk*.Westerfeld’s alternative WWI world is divided between the Darwinists–who rely on bio-engineered lifeforms–and the Clankers, who prefer machines instead. The POV alternates between Prince Aleksandar, son of the assassinated Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, on the run from his own people, and middy Deryn Sharp, a girl disguised as a boy so she can serve as an air”man” aboard the bioengineered airship Leviathan.

Right now, I’m reading Starclimber, last book of Kenneth Oppel’s Matt Cruse trilogy (fun with airships, pirates, treasure, airborn fauna, and space!). The love interest annoys me, but I like Matt a lot and I’m fascinated by the alternative aeronautical technology of his world.

I’m also recently finished up Bujold’s Diplomatic Immunity and Cryoburn, so I’m caught up with the Miles Vorkosigan saga. How long till the next book is out?

***

In other book news, Amazon sent me a pleasant little surprise–Cold Fire by Kate Elliot, sequel to the engrossing Cold Magic (I love the pre-order button; the pre-order button is costing me a lot of money, oh yes). The world of Cold Magic and Cold Fire is hard to describe, so I’ll just let the author do it:

…an Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk Regency fantasy adventure with airships, Phoenician spies, the intelligent descendents of troodons, and a dash of steampunk whose gas lamps can be easily doused by the touch of a powerful cold mage.

Exactly. What she said. And it’s a darn good coming-of-age story, too, with a strong likable heroine and a dash of romance.

There are a lot of good books coming out this fall and winter that I’m looking forward to. In no particular order:

• Debris by Jo Anderton (looking forward to reading it in actual BOOK form!)
• The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson (I read some early-draft chapters of this way back when on a critting workshop and have always wanted to know what happened next)
• The Daemon Prism by Carol Berg (last book of a trilogy, narrated by the complicated, fascinating Dante–eek)
• Incarnate by Jodi Meadows (in world where everyone is reincarnated over and over again, Ana is the only new soul–why? And what happened to the soul she replaced?)

Yep, that pre-order button is definitely going to get a workout.

Any book releases you’re looking forward to?

I got a Kindle for Christmas and I seriously LOVE it. I didn’t think I would love it as much as I do. But it’s:

• lightweight
• able to hold LOTS of books–the equivalent of a portable library
• extremely easy on the eyes, and the change-font-size feature is very nice for my six-year-old reader
• has an astoundingly long battery life. Sometimes I forget it’s a high-tech electronic device

However, it’s not perfect. It:

• had issues because the metal clasps of the cover created a short circuit, causing it to reboot randomly, freeze up, drain its battery fast and/or forget my place in a book. It’s a known issue with the cover, and when I called to complain, they gave me a refund and credit to buy a cover with a light. Haven’t had a problem since.
• makes it toooo easy to buy books. It defaults to the Buy button when I’m looking at any book on the Kindle store. I can’t count–okay, I don’t want to count–the number of times I’ve accidentally bought a book. And the number of times I just shrugged and said, “Oh well. What the hey” after doing so.
• is not friendly to those of us who like to go back to reread our favorite parts or need to look back through the pages to refresh our poor aged memories (“wait, who exactly is this character again?”). When I have to do arcane mathematical calculations to figure out the numerical “location” of such information, it’s not a good thing for my poor aching head.

How has the Kindle changed my reading habits? I’m glad you asked! It has:

• increased my book buying, both in quantity and in monetary terms. Not only am I happily buying e-books, I’ve also upped my print book-buying to support my beleagured Borders and/or authors whose works I want to support. So, er… yeah. That’s a… con?
• …but I haven’t entirely lost my head. I’ve also downloaded a bunch of free classics–and I’ve actually read some of them.
• expanded to include e-book-only novels (or those with prohibitively-priced POD versions), which I avoided for years because I find it that hard to read fiction on a computer screen.

And I just read yesterday that Amazon is working with Overdrive to make Kindle books available to libraries. I am very excited by that development.

Do you have an e-reader? What do you like/dislike about it?

Sadly, children’s fantasy writer Diana Wynne Jones passed away on Saturday. I discovered her books as a pre-teen, and she’s been one of my favorite authors ever since then. No one married the delightful and whimsical with emotional depth and intricate plotting as well as she did.

Howl’s Moving Castle is my favorite DWJ book, full of delightful characters and amusing situations, and an unexpected hero and heroine. But any of the following are also thoroughly enjoyable reads:

• The Lives of Christopher Chant, Conrad’s Fate and Witch Week: These are all standalones, but involve the character of Chrestomanci, a nine-lived enchanter charged with governing the use of magic in a series of parallel worlds.
• Fire and Hemlock: A more YA book, and a modern-day Tam Lin.
• The Homeward Bounders: I cried at the end. But it was good.
• Archer’s Goon: Funny and poignant. In a town run by seven magical (and fractious) siblings, one family rebels against their control.
• Dogsbody: The dog star, Sirius, is accused of murder and cast down to earth in a puppy’s body, where he is befriended by a young girl. Touching.

ETA: I knew I forgot a couple of books. Dark Lord of Derkholm and The Tough Guide to Fantasyland–thumbs up.

RIP, Diana Wynne Jones. You will be missed.