Top Ten Autumn TBRs

This week the Broke and the Bookish want to know: as school resumes and the trees begin their autumnal parade, what will you be reading?

1. The Age of Faith, Will Durant

"Oh, pshaw," you say? "You've been trying to read that for a year. Why bother pretending you're going to finish any time soon?"

Because I only have a hundred pages left, that's why. I've been dedicated to it this last week. I read it in the morning with my breakfast, I read it at lunch, I read it at supper, I read it in the afternoon and I read it at night.

2. Department of Temporal Investigations: Watching the Clock, Christopher L. Bennett

I bought this a couple of months ago but lost it halfway through my reading. Actually, I didn't lose it so much as someone decided to put it someplace without telling me. By the time I found the book I'd forgotten what was going on, though -- so I'll probably be restarting.

3. Vagabond, Bernard Cornwell

This will be the last in the Grail Quest series for me, and (alas) my last medieval Cornwell read for a while, since I've been spending my spare money on Star Trek DVD sets instead of books lately.(If you could buy an entire season of an hour-long show for $15, wouldn't you?!)

4. The Land of Painted Caves, Jean M. Auel

This is really more a maybe. I read the Earth's Children series back in 2006 or 2007, but I enjoyed it progressively less as the series wore on. The last book (The Shelters of Stone) seemed to be missing a plot altogether, as the lead character Aayla wandered around being an awesome Mary Sue and coping with the other characters' jealousy.  It's still a book about Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals, though, so I'll give it a try at the very least.

5. The End of Eternity and 6. The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov

For some reason I want to knock out the rest of Asimov's novels this year. I'm not sure why, because I know I'll regret it and mourn the fact that I have no more Asimov novels to read.

7. Children of the Storm, Kristin Beyer

Beyer has impressively turned one of Star Trek's least-liked shows into one of its best-regarded novel series. Voyager is now leading a small flotilla of ships into the Delta Quadrant to make sure the Borg are truly gone, as well as to patch up any misunderstandings left from Voyager's original trip through the Delta Quadrant's many various civilizations.

8. The Litigators, John Grisham

Back in the start of the year we were asked to post books we figured we'd be reading this year, and I mentioned a hypothetical Grisham book. I titled it The Safe Assumption, because I just KNEW he'd be releasing another book this year. As it happens, it will hit the shelves on October 25. I won't actually read it until Christmas (which is when my sister and I will receive it from our mother), but I mention it here because the accuracy of my prediction amuses me.

I'm not sure what to make of the plot, though. It seems like a combination of one of his short stories from Ford County: Stories and The King of Torts.

9. Jesus for the Nonreligious, John Shelby Spong

I bought this a few weeks ago and started it right before The Age of Faith demanded my attention. I love Spong from what I've seen of him on YouTube, so I'm looking forward to this.

10. Various Incidentals

I'll be reading more of the Sharpe series, beginning with Sharpe's Havoc. I'm reluctant to be too quick about it, though, because once I finish my library's Sharpe books I've got nothing but Stonehenge and a series of books on the American Civil War which I'm inclined to avoid, because the idea of a northerner fighting for the slave-holding confederacy puts a bad taste in my mouth.  I'll be finishing Astronomy Made Simple once this book on the medieval epoch is done, and I want to return to that history of chemistry I picked up a few weeks ago -- Creations of Fire, I think it was called. I also have Galileo's Finger to finish, if I can get past the chapter on entropy (an appropriate place for my reading to be derailed, I suppose), and I need to find The Wellsprings of Life by Isaac Asimov so I can finish that. There are also a couple of books from my "top ten books I resolve to read" list that I should get cracking on sometime this fall.