What did you recently finish reading?
I read quite a bit today, Chuck Wendig’s Irregular Creatures and James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. Reviews for both of those are coming up on the blog (though you can see them on Goodreads/Librarything already, in the unlikely event that you’re desperate). Before that it was Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Signal to Noise, from Netgalley.

What are you currently reading?
Actively, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, by Alan Bradley and The Man from Primrose Lane, by James Renner. Oh, and Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls, which is reminding me very much of Firefly right now. On the backlog, many books from this list and books mentioned here before that didn’t make it onto that list because I’m a scatterbrain. The Alan Bradley book seems to be serendipitously being read at exactly the right time of year — it’s Christmas in Bishop’s Lacey and Flavia de Luce has a plan to catch Santa — and The Man from Primrose Lane got my attention when going through library books I should return, last night…

(I should talk someday about my problem with library books. Suffice it to say, I went to Ikea, bought and assembled a whole bookcase almost solely for library books, although one shelf does hold my games.)

What do you think you’ll read next?
I’m probably going to break off from the aforementioned backlog to read The Dark is Rising, since it’s exactly the right time of year for it and there’s a readathon going on via Twitter to celebrate the 40th anniversary. I might even start that this evening. Other than that, I want to read more of Alan Bradley’s books (they are on the list), and I’m hoping to finish Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City, Rosie Best’s Skulk and Julianna Scott’s The Holders in relatively short order.

Books acquired:
It’s Christmas, so I have duly been acquiring. Well, that and the Kindle Daily Deal… I forget exactly what I’ve got there altogether, but basically some fantasy/SF stuff that looked interesting. For Christmas so far, I got Jaine Fenn’s Principles of Angels and Consorts of Heaven from my friend Lo, and from my Librarything Secret Santa I got Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls and Jack McDevitt’s The Engines of God, which seem likely to prove very good picks.