This morning, I took the Little Miss over to the local Barnes & Noble, where I picked up a paperback copy of James Clavell’s Shogun. I read Shogun some 9 years ago, back in 2005, and I remember really loving it. I just had the urge to read it again. When I first read it, I read a paperback copy and I don’t know what happened to it. Likely it was part of a big book donation we made when we moved into our current house 4 years ago.
I have the e-book version, and I was tempted to get the audiobook version, but the reviews of the reading of the audio book were mixed. I decided to go totally tactile with this one, and read it as I did the first time around. Of course, then I had neither glasses nor children, but time waits for no one. I’ll read it when I’m not listening to the audiobook I’m finishing up (Christine by Stephen King). It might take longer. I listen to a lot of books while on my daily walks, which should return to normal tomorrow. But that’s okay. It’ll be a nice change of pace.
And speaking of changes of pace, my “to-read” list is looking somewhat different for 2014 than it did for 2013. In my experience, my “to-read” lists are very tentative and express more of a present mood than a future one, but the list is quite bare of what I’d call genre fiction (always setting aside the 12 books each year that I read for my book review column for IGMS). Among the authors on my list for 2014: Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove, etc.), Earnest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and, of course, James Clavell. We’ll see how this pans out. I’m certain that I’ll read more Stephen King in 2014 as well. And the list of genre books I have queued up for review all look promising.
For now, with the snow turning to slush, and the air still cold and the rain still wet outside, I’m looking forward to sitting by the fire today with my paperback version of Shogun, and leaving this world for the world of 17th century Japan–at least until the kids require my attention once more.
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If you have an opportunity, thumbing through a copy of Jeff Vandermeer’s Wonderbook is well worth the fact that it weighs a ton and feels like a 300+ page heavy gloss magazine.
Michael, I took the book on vacation with me and went through it for a review in one of my upcoming columns for IGMS. But I really liked the approach. 🙂
Lonesome Dove is such a great book. Easily one of my favourite, if not my absolute go-to.
I find your to-read list this year interesting, since your habits seem to be an inverse of my own. I’m currently finishing up The Stand, though I have not read much Stephen King. However, I read Under the Dome earlier this year and was curious, since I wasn’t terribly impressed by it but have really appreciated some of his short fiction (and read Carrie as an impressionable freshman in high school). Once I’m finished with that, I’m going to be returning to more Hemingway and Faulkner, which are my favorite authors, going through a reread of my own.
I find their styles both challenge and complement one another (and probably try to copy them a bit too much in my own writing). Out of curiosity, have you read much Cormac McCarthy? Blood Simple is the ultimate western, in my opinion, and The Road is a very interesting take on (and, I’m finding, probably fairly indebted to) King’s own The Stand.