The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
I read a lot of really good books this month, and A Court of Splintered Harmony is definitely the book I’ve talked about the most, but Book of the Month goes to Christopher Buehlman’s The Thrice-Bound Fool, which somehow I didn’t review. You should read it.
Pretty heavy, partially because a lot of rereading happened this month. We aren’t going to talk about these:
These books are, uh, let’s say awaiting promotion to the Unread Shelf. They certainly aren’t the beginnings of a third shelf. That would be crazy.
Given the sheer number of new releases this month and the number of books I read that didn’t come off of the Unread Shelf, I’m impressed the carnage is this limited.
I got a new R.F. Kuang book today, along with the second installment of He Who Fights with Monsters, and the middle of those three September 15 arrivals is China Miéville’s new doorstop, which is one thousand two hundred pages. And I’m probably going to order the special edition of Tad Williams’ The Dragonbone Chair, out September 29, (and 672 pages) because it gives me an excuse to read that series for the first time and the new hardbacks are stunning. However, I need to make sure the other books in the series are getting the same treatment, because God forbid they don’t match.
In other words, now that my lesson planning is finished, I’m going back to my chair, because Warlords of Wyrdwood isn’t gonna finish itself and I need to get to the Kuang book soon. There is Discourse that I’m missing, damn it!
About the same as last month, and I’m going to take a serious beating in September, because there are a ton of new releases this month that are already pre-ordered. I need an extra three or four hours a day if I want to keep up.
Y’all! Look! Progress! Actual progress!
This represents genuine progress from last month, believe it or not. Everything I bought in January has been read! February I bought a whole damn lot of books.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, shelves, whatever. The good news is I’ve cleared out everything I bought in 2025! Let’s pretend that’s an achievement.