Top Ten Tuesday: Recommendations for Classic Lit Based on Your Favorite TV Show

For That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesday:

November 16: Books to Read If You Love/Loved X (X can be a genre, specific book, author, movie/TV show, etc.) For this one I’m recommending classic literature on the basis of TV shows. But I’m not recommending the book if it’s a direct (or not so direct) literary adaptation (too easy!). I’m recommending classics that remind me in some way of these TV shows. Just to be clear, these aren’t always read/watch alikes, but they have something similar in terms of subject, theme, characters, or tone.

image source: wikipedia

1. Squid Game- I’m tempted to say The Hunger Games as a recommendation here, but I don’t know if I’d call that “classic.” I’ll say Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Twisted games that turn into a survival match, though at least in this one, the people involved are children. I know it’s a short story, but I’ll also shout out Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery here: another game of chance with deadly consequences

2. Game of Thrones- I feel like Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien is sort of a no-brainer here. They’re both epic fantasies. I mean, there are even articles out there about how they’re similar!

3. Bridgeton– The obvious recommendation here is the novels of Jane Austen. Yes, I’m aware that Jane Austen is great literature, and Bridgeton is fun TV. But fans of the regency romance in Bridgerton will probably find something to love in Austen. If you want to get away from the obvious, check out Fanny Burney, whose work influenced Austen. Yes, maybe I’m cheating by mentioning authors here rather than single books, but I don’t care!

4. Downton Abbey– For this one I went with Howard’s End by EM Forester. Both deal with the British aristocracy in the early 20th century. Like Downton, Howard’s End has strong themes about class and foreshadows that worldwide change is imminent, and an era is ending in terms of upper class way of life.

5. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel– I had a tie for this one: The Group by Mary McCarthy and The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe. Both deal with women’s experiences in work and love. Both are set in New York City, too.

image credit: wikipedia

6. You– Actually now that I think of it, Dexter can also be a good show to pair with Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. All involve a murderer as the protagonist.

7. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend- This might seem kind of weird, but go along with me for a moment. Crazy Ex- Girlfriend is about a mentally fragile woman who is obsessively in love with a man. So is Passion by IU Tarchetti (it’s been published under both titles). Plus, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a show with strong connections to musical theatre. Passion became a Tony winning musical by Stephen Sondheim.

8. The Good Place– The Divine Comedy by Dante. I feel like this is sort of self explanatory too. Both deal with what happens after we die, if we’re good, bad, or somewhere in between. But actually as I write this, it strikes me that Sartre’s No Exit could also work as a pairing.

9. Stranger Things– Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury- Both are about kids (about 13ish years old) fighting evil. Both also have strong nostalgic tones for their era (1980’s and 1930’s respectively).

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#WyrdAndWonder’s Desert Island Reads

This month I’ll be attempting to participate in Wyrd and Wonder’s Challenge celebrating the fantasy genre (well see how much I get done. It’s a busy month for me!). But today I managed to think about my Desert Island Reads.

Here are The Rules:

• Eight (audio)books – your Desert Island Reads float ashore in a watertight chest, phew!
  • If you want to take a series, each book in it counts as one of your eight unless a collected edition has been published. So Temeraire would be all your books; The Lord of the Rings could be just one (rather heavy) book
  • No, you can’t have a fully-loaded ebook reader. Nice try
• A podcast, TV show or movie – for when you really can’t read any more
  • If you choose Podcast / TV show: yes, you get all the episodes / seasons
  • If you choose Movie: since I’m being lenient, yes this can be a series / franchise
• One thing you just can’t do without
  • A favourite food, something comforting, a touch of luxury – this can be pretty much whatever you like, so long as it’s inanimate, can’t help you escape or communicate with the outside world, and doesn’t require electricity or internet connectivity
  • Bonus: you can listen to audiobooks / podcasts or watch your TV show / movie (on some magical waterproof device that doesn’t need power and has very limited storage, shh)
  • Don’t worry: you already have access to any medication you require to manage medical conditions, plus a well-stocked first aid kit

Assuming you do this for the Wyrd And Wonder Challenge, please limit your bookish and entertainment picks to fantasy titles. If you’d like to make a non-fantasy-related response at another time, you’re very welcome.

So…

Eight books

1.Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien – Yes, I have a collected edition. I also have a rather complicated history with these books. In the past, I’ve found them very hard to get into. But I am a fantasy reader and writer, and they are a genre cornerstone. I think on a desert island I’d have time to really dive into it!

2. Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss- I enjoyed The Name of the Wind, but the sequel has been sitting on my shelf for a while. I sometimes need to summon up the motivation to commit to a really long book (over 1000 pages). But again, If I’m on a desert island with limited reading material, I think I can manage it!

3. The Red Queen by Isobelle Carmody- This is the final book in the Obernewtyn series. I’ve read and enjoyed all the others. But this one is another book I’ve put off due to the size (again, over 1000 pages). But as I look at this list, I’m thinking I should stop being intimidated by really long books!

4. The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis- Yes, again this is a collected edition, and it’s a series I’ve been meaning to reread for a while. I think that the island would give me a chance to do that.

5. Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm – Pretty much anyone who has ever looked at this blog knows that I’m a fairy tale girl! This would let me dip into different stories that would suit different moods.

6. Hans Christian Anderson’s Complete Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Anderson- My reasoning for this one is pretty much the same as above.

7. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare- I figure this counts, because plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest are definitely fantasy. Macbeth has three witches, and other plays have hints of the supernatural here and there. Plus Shakespeare holds up to repeated readings.

8. Burning Your Boats by Angela Carter– Carter’s short stories can suit every mood. Plus, they’re books you can get more out of them, each time you read them.

A Podcast/TV Show/Movie

This is tough! I think I’m going with TV show, since that’s the most entertainment bang for my buck (it’ll take me the longest to get through). On one hand I’m tempted to pick something I’ve never seen before. I’ll get a chance to binge. But what if I don’t like it? It seems like a big risk…

I’ll go with The Twilight Zone, assuming that in addition to all the seasons I’ll have access to the reboots as well. I haven’t seen every episode so there will be something for when I’m in the mood for something new. But I like the episodes I’ve seen, so the risk factor is fairly minimal. The anthology structure gives me some variety.

One Thing You Just Can’t Do Without

A lifetime supply of chocolate. I think no explanation is needed for this one.

2018 Mid Year Book Freak Out

I’ve seen this tag on a lot of blogs, so I thought “why not mine?”

BEST BOOK YOU’VE READ SO FAR IN 2018

Idaho by Emily Ruskovitch– While I enjoyed the plot, this wasn’t a book to read to find out whodunnit or what happens next. If you read it for clear, unambiguous answers, you’ll be frustrated. But there are passages in this book that are so exquisitely written that I almost had to stop reading for a moment. There is ugliness in the plot. People do ugly things. But those are written about so beautifully that you almost can’t help but find something lovely in them, even when you don’t want to. The book consists of this torturous pairing of sadness and hope, and love and pain.

BEST SEQUEL YOU’VE READ SO FAR IN 2018

Actually, I don’t think many of the books I’ve read in 2018 qualify as sequels. Probably one of the only ones is Messinger of Truth by Jacqueline Winspear, which is the 4th in the Maisie Dobbs series. While somewhat grim (set in the aftermath of WWI and the looming shadow of WWII) the characters developed in interesting ways. One of the characters’ circumstances took a turn that I didn’t quite expect. I’m eager to see what becomes of him in the next book.

NEW RELEASE YOU HAVEN’T READ YET BUT WANT TO

The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock is one that I’m very anxious to read because I’ve heard good reviews from several fairly reliable sources. The combination of fantasy and historical fiction is right up my alley.

MOST ANTICIPATED RELEASES FOR THE SECOND HALF OF THE YEAR

There are a lot. At the moment, the most notable are these.

Bellwether and The Clockmaker’s Daughter are the long-anticipated new books by two of my favorite authors.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT

After Anatevka by Alexandra Silber

I think that I wanted to like this more than I did. I’m a fan of Alexandra Silber as an actress and a blogger and I wanted to love her debut novel. She played Hodel in the 2007 London production of The Fiddler on the Roof and Tzeitel in the 2016 Broadway revival of the same show. In this book, she imagined Hodel’s life after she leaves the stage (Hodel is last seen getting on a train to Siberia, where she will join her lover, Perchik in a labor camp). Tzeitel is also given a voice in letters she writes to her sister. I thought that this was a great extension of the creative process, from an actress who clearly has a strong connection to the material and the characters. Which makes my biggest problem with it surprising. An actor is supposed to show who a character is and what s/he feels by illustrating it with their body and voice. But in this book, we’re told things about the characters rather than shown. We know for example that Hodel loves Perchik because we’re told that this is the case, but not because we see it. So ultimately I liked this less than I wanted to.

BIGGEST SURPRISE

Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo

I read this because I’d seen it recommended many times, rather than any interest I may have had in a Nigerian couple struggling to conceive. But this story of the traditional culture coming into conflict with modern life drew me in right away. I found that I cared about the characters and the things that happened to them. The plot twisted in directions that I didn’t expect, but it never felt contrived.

FAVORITE NEW AUTHOR

I look forward to reading more from Susanna Fogel, author of Nuclear Family. According to her bio she’s written a couple of screenplays and some stuff for The New Yorker. But her first novel has a really nice blend of the humor, love, and exasperation that makes family what it is. Granted, the Fellers are their own unique kind of dysfunctional, but the blend of wanting to simultaneously hug some of these people and never see or speak to them again is something that many people will understand. The chapters consist of letters that the family writes to the main character, Julie. They have names like One of the Eggs You Just Froze Has a Question, Your Mom’s Rabbi Has a Great Idea for a TV Show!, Your Uncle Figured a Mass E-mail Was the Best Way to Discuss His Sexuality, The Gerbil You Drowned in 1990 Would Like a Word With You, and Your Intrauterine Device Has Some Thoughts on Your Love Life.  Yes, some of it’s weird, but Fogel pulls it off.

FAVORITE NEW CRUSH

I haven’t really encountered any new literary crushes. I’ve recently discovered Simone St. James though, and while her books aren’t great literature, they’re good fun. Her romantic heroes tend to be compelling enough for me to fall for, for the duration of the book, even though they’re not likely to become long-term book boyfriends.

FAVORITE NEW CHARACTERS

Probably Sir Anthony Peters, Beth Cunningham, and Alex MacGregor from The Mask of Duplicity. All three are intriguing. I’m eager to get to know them all a bit better in the next book in the series.

BOOKS THAT MADE YOU CRY

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett probably came the closest. It takes place over five decades but the events in two time periods really got to me. One is when several children in a blended family are playing one summer day. The other is when one of those children is caring for her sick father, nearly a half a century later. When she and her father are directly confronted with the events of that summer day, I got a bit of a lump in my throat. I won’t say more, because I can’t without giving away spoilers.

A BOOK THAT MADE YOU HAPPY

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson

The movie has always been one of my “happy movies”- something I put on to make a bad day a little bit better. I found the novel on which it was based to be even frothier and lighter than the film. In some ways, I actually wished for some of the additional weight that the film added, but the book definitely left me in a good mood.

MOST BEAUTIFUL BOOKS YOU’VE BOUGHT SO FAR THIS YEAR

Cheerful Weather For the Wedding by Julia Strachey. Like most Persephone Classics, it’s a small work of art, as an object. Its cover features Girl Reading, a painting by Harold Knight. I like the colors in the painting and the general state of repose of the figure. The endpaper features a printed dress fabric design by Madeleine Lawrence. It’s also beautifully written.

WHAT BOOKS DO YOU NEED TO READ BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR?

The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien– I’ve never actually made it through the Lord of the Rings books. Finally, the prospect of being a fantasy writer who had never read Tolkien was too much. I’m making my way through this slowly, in between reading other things. I will finish it before the end of the year though!

A to Z Reading Survey

I found this on Gin & Lemonade‘s blog and thought it looked like fun:

Author you’ve read the most books from:

It’s hard to say. Some are more prolific than others so I’ve read more from them even if they’re not my “favorite” authors. According to Goodreads I’ve read 19 books by LM Montgomery, 18 by Juliet Marillier, 17 by Lisa Gardener, 15 by Mercedes Lackey, 15 by Marian Keyes, 15 by Phillippa Gregory

But I wouldn’t say that they’re my favorite authors. Just that they’ve written more than a lot of other authors that I read.

Best Sequel Ever:

Hmmm… This one is hard! I’m thinking of book two in my favorite series… Often the second books aren’t my favorites! My initial instinct is to say Anne of Avonlea but I don’t want to be too predictable, so I’ll say Emily Climbs. It’s the sequel to Emily of New Moon and it’s by the same author.

Currently Reading:

Just started Marlena by Julie Buntin. So far it’s good but I’ve only read the first few chapters so far.

Drink of Choice While Reading:

Tea. Iced in warm weather, hot in the cold.

E-reader or Physical Book?

I’ll read an ebook on occasion but I far prefer physical books. If I read something as an ebook I feel less like I’ve read it. Does that make sense? Probably not!

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School:

Hmm… This is surprisingly tough because most of the guys in YA aren’t guys I’d want to date, and most of the guys in adult fiction are too old for high school me to date (have I been giving this too much thought?) Maybe Gilbert Blythe when he was high school age. He was always a sweetie!

Glad You Gave This Book A Chance:

Hmm… I remember when I read Crime and Punishment my senior year of high school. I didn’t think I’d hate it but given previous experiences with Russian literature I didn’t think I’d end up liking it. But I did. I don’t know if it qualifies as me “giving it a chance” since I had to read it for school. But we ended up talking about it in class at the same time that I was reading Donna Tartt’s The Secret History at home. Since Tartt’s novel alludes to Crime and Punishment quite a bit, the class discussions ended up enriching both books for me.

Hidden Gem Book:

Time and Chance by Alan Brennert- I actually just remembered the title and author of this one after only remembering the plot for a long time!

Important Moment in your Reading Life:

Probably the first time I fell in love with a book. The “problem” is that I’ve fallen in love with a lot of books from an early age.

Just Finished:

Touch by Courtney Maum

Kinds of Books You Won’t Read:

Non-fiction about topics that hold no interest for me.

Erotica

Graphic/gory horror

Longest Book You’ve Read:

According to Goodreads, it’s Clarissa by Samuel Richardson at 1,534 pages. I read it in college. Though I read a different edition from the one on there. I think my edition was probably a few hundred pages less. Mostly likely due to bonus material like introductions, footnotes etc.

Major book hangover because of:

I suppose it depends on what we mean by “book hangover”. If we mean a book that stayed with me emotionally for a long time after I read it, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barberry and A Little Life by Hana Yanagihara, are probably the most recent ones. I’ve read other great books since then but these lingered under my skin in some way.

Number of Bookcases You Own:

2. But my books are not limited to bookcases.

One Book You Have Read Multiple Times:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I think in college I was sort of obsessed with it. I did my senior project on it and discuss it a bit in this post.

Preferred Place To Read:

My bed. I can also go for a hot bathtub. I want to get a really comfy oversized chair just for reading.

Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you’ve read:

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (because sometimes a quote just a true thought perfectly into words)

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.” – A.A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh (just simple and lovely)

“Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (something I try to remember!)

Reading Regret:

You mean like a book I’ve never finished? Or one I wish I hadn’t read? I don’t understand…

Series You Started And Need To Finish(all books are out in series):

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher- I don’t actually know if it’s complete but I’ve only read the first 6 and I think there are like 15 in all.

Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

Tarien Soul by CL Wilson

The Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear- Again, I don’t know if it’s complete but I’ve only read the first 3 and there are many more out there.

The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett

Three of your All-Time Favorite Books:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

It is insanely hard for me to limit this to just three books!!!

Unapologetic Fangirl For:

Outlander. I started reading the books over a decade ago. When the TV series started I revisited them and got hooked all over again.

Very Excited For This Release More Than All The Others:

At the moment I’m looking forward to Bellewether by Susanna Kearsley

Worst Bookish Habit

Planning to read more than I can get to.

Dog-earring pages.

X Marks The Spot: Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book:

Well, it doesn’t say which bookshelf, but I picked one at random. The 27th book is The Collector by John Fowles

Your latest book purchase:

I bought these at a used bookshop at the same time:

Messenger of Truth by Jacqueline Winspear

Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye

The Night Watch by Sara Waters

A Curious Beginning by Deanna Raybourn

ZZZ-snatcher book (last book that kept you up WAY late):

Probably Night Film by Marisha Pessl. I think that’s the last time I remember thinking “I should go to sleep. But I need to know what happens next!”

Top Ten Tueday: Books I Didn’t Read in 2017 But Meant To

For The Broke and The Bookish’s Top Ten Tuesday:

January 9: Ten Books We Meant To Read In 2017 But Didn’t Get To (and totallyyyy plan to get to in 2018!!)

1. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien– I know. I can’t really call myself a fantasy reader (let alone writer) and not have read these! I will, I swear! They’re sitting on my shelf waiting for me. I think part of the reason I haven’t read them yet is that I want to have a nice chunk of time to really get lost in them. But I did make some progress already. I decided to get started and I’m about 100 pages into The Fellowship of the Ring.

 

2. Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey– This one starts off a series has been recommended to me for years. I have it sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me. But again I feel like I’m waiting for a point where I can just read, and lose myself in the world of the books.  That time may never come though!  I do want to get through some of these books before I’m a senior citizen.

 

3. Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson– I’m not usually a fan of “westerns” but this was very highly recommended by a coworker, who isn’t usually a big “reader” so I feel like I should give it a chance. Actually plot-wise it does sound interesting. It’s about Cynthia Ann Parker, who was kidnapped by the Comanche Indians at the age of nine and grew up to be a Comanche woman. It’s based on a true story and is supposedly very well researched.

 

4. Trinity by Leon Uris– I’m a fan of author Cindy Brandner’s Exit Unicorns series and she cites this as a book that book that was hugely influential to her. She says “Long ago I read the book Trinity by Leon Uris. It changed everything for me. I was thirteen at the time and I remember reading that last page, closing the book with a sense of profound loss and just knowing that this is what I wanted to do, tell stories that made people think, cry, laugh and create characters that would live for others as vividly as they lived for me. People that readers would consider personal friends and that they would wonder about long after the last page was turned.” I certainly want that experience as a reader!

5. After Anatevka by Alexandra Silber– In 2007 Alexandra Silber played Hodel in the London revival of The Fiddler on the Roof. In 2015 she played Hodel’s older sister Tzeitzel in the Broadway revival of the show. She’s obviously spent a lot of creative time and space with these characters. In this book, she imagines what Hodel’s life would be like after the curtain falls. We leave Hodel on the way to join her lover, Perchick in a Siberian labor camp.  This book picks up at that point. Often actors imagine a backstory for their characters, but I like the idea of imagining a “forward story” for one. I think that when you’ve spent a lot of time and energy in a creative world, it’s can be hard to let go of. This is an interesting way of keeping it alive. Plus, a historical love story against a turn of the century Russian backdrop? Yes, please!

6. Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn– This was written in 1966 and has been in print ever since its publication, yet for some reason, it doesn’t get talked about all that much. Learning that made me curious. It’s about a black man and a white woman who fall in love in Depression-era New Orleans. I bought it in 2017 and haven’t started it yet because it’s 750+ pages about a pretty heavy subject (race in America). Hopefully, in 2018 I’ll be able to give it time/attention/thought.

7.  The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss- I loved The Name of the Wind, the first in the Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy. This is the follow-up. It’s sitting on my shelf and I’ve been putting off starting it because I want to know that the trilogy will have a conclusion. This book came out in 2011. No word on a release date for number three yet. Hopefully, we’ll hear something about a release date for it in 2018 so that I can start this one!

8. The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett– This is book three of Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles. They follow the adventures of the main character (sometimes he’s a hero, sometimes he’s more anti-hero), a sixteenth-century Scotsman with a talent for getting into and out of trouble. The first two books in this series can work as stand-alones, but supposedly with this one, it becomes more of a series where each book is dependent on the books that came before. These books can be a lot of fun but they’re dense. We hardly ever get inside the main character’s head, so his motives are often a mystery. Sometimes it’s only in seeing the result of an action that we understand why the character did it. They’re also loaded with allusions to classical literature and words and phrases that you need several dictionaries to understand. That means that reading them when you have other stuff on your mind can be a challenge. I really hope I get to make some progress on this series in 2018 though.

9. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset– This is another series that I’d intended to start in 2017. It’s the story of a woman’s life in 14th century Norway, and it hasn’t been out of print since it was initially published in 1927. The author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the 1930s and at the time, this trilogy was her only published work. I had intended to begin this year, but the translation that I had felt very laborious. I’ve since learned that the translation by Tiina Nunnally (linked) is the way to go.

10. Nor Gold: The Pirate Captain, Chronicles of A Legend by Kerry Lynne– I read The Pirate Captain, the first book in what is intended to be a trilogy in 2017. I enjoyed it a lot in spite of the fact that there was some serious “borrowing” from Outlander and Pirates of the Carribean in terms of plot and characters! It’s not literary greatness by any means, but it’s a fun historical romantic adventure. I wanted to wait until book 3 is out (projected release is sometime in 2018) before reading this one because it supposedly ends with a cliffhanger, and I have no patience to wait and see what happens!

Top Ten Tuesday: Series I’ve Been Meaning to Start…

For The Broke and the Bookish’s Top Ten Tuesday

June 20:  Top Ten Series I’ve Been Meaning To Start But Haven’t

1. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien– I know, I know. How can I call myself a reader of fantasy, let alone an author, and not have read these? I will I promise!
2. The Earthsea series by Ursula K. LeGuin– Ugh, I know! I’m a terrible fantasy fan! I’ll read them ASAP, I swear!
3. Kushiel’s Legacy by Jacqueline Carey– These have been recommended time and again, and I’ve yet to get to them. I’ve heard they’re dark and rather racy.
4. Black Jewels by Anne Bishop– Another dark fantasy series that’s been recommended to me at several points.
5. Kate Shugak series by Dana Stabenow– A mystery series that I’ve seen  praised by several authors that I like. It’s got a lot of books in it.
6. The Marcus Didius Falco mysteries by Lindsey Davis– This was recommended based on some other series I like, so I plan to give it a try at some point. When I get around to it!
7. Hannah Trevor trilogy by Margaret Lawrence– Another historical mystery series. This one seems like it’s got an interesting heroine.
8. The Dalriada trilogy by Jules Watson– Historical fiction with a Celtic setting that has dabs of fantasy and romance. Yes, please!
9. The Iceberg trilogy by Sherryl Caulfield– This was recommended for fans of the Outlander series, the Wilderness series, and The Bronze Horseman trilogy. I’m a fan of all three to one degree or another. The first book, Seldom Come By, is sitting on my shelf.
10. The Four Seasons quartet by Ciji Ware–  These are stand alone sequels to several of Ware’s historical novels. Unlike those novels, these are contemporary stories. Since I read the historical novels that they’re based on, and enjoyed those, I’m interested to see how the contemporary stories tie in with the historical on which they’re based.

Of course all of this is in addition to several series that I’m already in the process of reading like The Dresden Files, The Lymond Chronicles, the Maise Dobbs novels, the Tarien Soul series, and those are just the ones with books already out that I haven’t read yet…. Any other series that I need to check out?