Welcome To My Reading List

One thing I've always loved doing since I was a little kid is reading. My parents instilled in all of their children a love of reading. Every birthday and Christmas we could bank on the fact that we would get at least some books, often a fairly decent stack of them, and during the summer months between school years going to the public library was a pretty regular occurrence.

Over the course of my life I've read a lot of books and in previous posts here I've made it pretty clear that I gravitate towards the science fiction and fantasy genre's. For a long time I was reading nothing but the Star Wars Expanded Universe, but then a few friends introduced me to things like BattleTech, Wheel of Time, and the Shannara books. These gave me plenty of things to read and re-read time and time again.

In the past couple of years I've wanted to expand my reading, but never really knew a good way to find new authors I might be interested in, or find other genre's I might enjoy as well. I thought that obtaining my Kindle a couple years ago would help with that, but I'll admit that while I've used the hell of it, its library is still filled with pretty much just science fiction and fantasy novels.

That's where this new page I spent all day yesterday working on comes into play. I've dubbed it my Kindle Reading List because every book on it is available on the Kindle which is pretty much the only way I read books now unless it happens to have been written by Brandon Sanderson. This reading list includes mostly science fiction and fantasy because that's what I love, but you'll notice a few entries for both modern fiction and classic fiction. I figured I would expand my horizons slowly at first, staying within the genre I love the most, but with new authors as well as re-reading some of my old favorites.

You'll also notice there is a page in the sidebar for the Star Wars Expanded Universe. I was going to include it in the main list, but there are far too many books for that, so I decided I would split it out to its own page. I am still working on the Expanded Universe list, but should have it finished in the next day or two in case anyone is interested.

My end goal is that these lists will help me to keep track of stuff I've always wanted to read as well as motivate me to read stuff I've never read before. Furthermore, I'm completely open to suggestions of books to read, and if you leave me a comment I'll be sure to give all suggestions a good hard look and add them to the list accordingly. Feel free to recommend as many as you want. I really want to have a massive list to pick from moving forward.

A Few Books I'll Read This Year

Yesterday in my post regarding some of the things I might like to try and do this year I mentioned wanting to read a lot of books. Well, I did some thinking last night and I think I've got a pretty decent list to start with that should keep me going for the first couple months at least. Thought I would share them with you in case anyone else was looking for some ideas on what to read, or wanted to make some suggestions themselves in the comments.

SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY
Obviously, since I do tend to read books mostly from this genre, there is going to be a fair amount of them  that I read over the course of the year, but I figured I would start with these:

Fate of the Jedi: Conviction by Aaron Allston
Fate of the Jedi: Ascension by Christie Golden
Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse by Troy Denning
X-Wing: Mercy Kill by Aaron Allston

A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
(no link available at this time)

The three books from the Fate of the Jedi series are the final ones in a story arc I haven't gotten around to reading yet. They go pretty quick for me, but the story is pretty good and I've read all of the other Star Wars Expanded Universe stuff since I was a teenager. The new X-wing book is one I just discovered today on Amazon, and it comes out in August. There is no way I'm going to miss that book since those books were my favorite of all-time when I first started reading the Expanded Universe.

The last Wheel of Time book comes out sometime this year by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson and you better believe I will be secluding myself in a closet somewhere and not emerging until it is finished.

POPULAR FICTION
I'll be honest, I'm not really sure what to call this category. It's supposed to be books that are currently popular in today's world. You know, the stuff you hear people talking about at the water cooler in the office, or the stuff those strange lunch-time reading groups like to read. I'll just go with popular fiction, it seems to fit alright I guess.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
The Road by Cormac McCarthy

THE CLASSICS
I really do need to read more of the novels from days gone by that people seem to think are important. There are an awful lot of them, but I may only work in a couple this year because they tend to be a little to deep-thinking in nature for me.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

My wife is in love with Atlas Shrugged, and I may have possibly read The Fountainhead to impress her at some early stage of our dating history. I figure if I can make it through one Ayn Rand book I can likely make it through another. As for the other two, well, you can't blame me for targeting the classics that are more adventurous for my first foray into the genre now can you?

And of course, all of these books will be read on my trusty Kindle, which has brought me much enjoyment over the past two years. Seriously, if you don't have a Kindle and you do a lot of reading you are doing yourself a major disservice.