Christmas is only a few short weeks away, and although there is much and more to do with gift buying, Christmas party planning, and family visits, and The Battle of the Five armies, I have started squirreling away books for my Winter Reading List.
The List
The Martian by Andy Weir: (Amazon/GoodReads) An engineer is trapped on Mars after his ship leaves without him. Help isn’t coming because no one — not Earth, not his crew — knows he’s alive, so he has to figure out how to survive on his own. It’s been a long time since I read a good Mars book, and this one sounds like it fits the bill. I learned about the book after it won the top science fiction honor in GoodRead’s 2014 Choice Awards.
The Abyss Beyond Dreams by Peter F. Hamilton: (Amazon/GoodReads) This is the latest book in Hamilton’s Commonwealth universe and picks up where the Void books left off. Pandora’s Star remains one of my favorite SF novels, and while the Void series was uneven, I am looking forward to this book.
Revival by Stephen King: (Amazon/GoodReads) I had been on a long King hiatus until 2013’s Doctor Sleep, which was an excellent follow-up to The Shining. It was King on the smaller, more intimate scale of some of his earlier novels (Salem’s Lot, Firestarter, The Shining) and it showed he’s still got his stuff. Based on the spoiler-free reviews I’ve read, Revival looks like more of the same.
Willful Child by Steven Erikson: (Amazon/GoodReads) A send up of Star Trek that seems like it’ll hit three marks pretty well: space opera, military SF, and satire. John Scalzi covered similar ground with Redshirts, but I’m hoping this novel ends up being less meta.
Winter Vacation
This is a far shorter list than my Summer 2014 one because I’m hoping to knock out the majority of it over the 12 days of my Christmas vacation. That’s something of a tall order given family commitments, but I figure I can get through all of these books by February.
What book are you curling up with by the fire this winter? Post to the comments or email me at nuketown@gmail.com.