Looking Ahead

I've seen a number of other blogs around the place producing their 'Looking forward to 2012' lists over the last month or so. I did give some consideration to doing this here, but have ultimately decided against it.

There are a few reasons for the decision.

1) I know what I'm like, I'll get all excited about the forthcoming releases and wind up having pages of them, and even then I'll forget something.

2) I may not even get around to buying and reading some of the titles I list, and that's really rather pointless, isn't it? I can't have been looking forward to them that much in this case.

3) For reasons beyond anyone's control in some cases, some titles slated for release in 2012 simply won't get released and that makes everyone look stupid.

Having said all that there are definitely some things I'm looking forward to seeing hit the shelves in 2012, that I know I will be buying and reading. However you'll just have to wait for my verdict. I like to keep people on their toes and you never know what you'll get with Travels Through Iest, hell half the time I don't know what I'm going to post! If I get a new release rest assured that I will read it post my thoughts, I did pretty well with new releases in 2011, to the extent that my top 5 is entirely comprised of them.

I do want to get back to my 100 Must Read Fantasy Novel challenge in 2012, though. I let that kind of slip to the wayside for a fair chunk of 2011 largely in an effort to make a dent in the TBR pile. I didn't do badly, and a recent reorg of the library means that I don't actually have a physical TBR pile at the moment, although the books are all still there looking at me accusingly from the shelves.

TBR Pile

Most fantophiles have a TBR (to be read) pile, actually most keen readers have one of these. I was making some headway with mine. I had it down to under 10, I even had a schedule worked out. I’m rereading George MacDonald Fraser’s marvellous Flashman series (it’s historical fiction, which is what I tend to flirt with most when I’m not reading fantasy), so I’d read a Flashman and then whatever happened to be laying around that I hadn’t yet gotten around to reading.
So what went wrong? I’m still trying to figure that out. All of a sudden it just went crazy!
Like I said it was under 10, now it’s jumped to over 20. A couple of things contributed to it. I have 2 Flashmans to go, so it’s not Harry’s fault. One was my self set challenge of trying to read everything recommended in 100 Must-Read Fantasy Novels, (already started that, expect my take on Watership Down soon) and the other was that come March publishers started putting out things I wanted to read.
I think I’m going to have to tackle the ever growing pile this way: read one of the challenge novels and then something not on the list, there will be no rhyme or reason to that I’ll just pick out whatever happens to be on top of the pile (it is an actual pile, it sits in a corner of the lounge room) or possibly if I’m in a specific mood or I’ve got something I’m really dying to read I’ll delve a little deeper. How is your TBR pile going? Growing or shrinking. What’s in it? How do you work out what you’re going to read next?