Aaron Helton

tags: #readinglist #books

(Note: This post was rescued from Medium, where it first appeared. It is here for archival purposes.)

Even though we're almost a month in, there's still plenty of time left in the year to get started reading if you haven't already. And if you need a list, that's what this is for.

The basic list structure contains one series, often a trilogy, each two months. (Edit: I am also spacing out an additional series, James S. A. Corey's The Expanse, over the remaining year.) At the end of the main list, I will offer up the list of books from which I am supplementing this, because the nature of the main list makes for a faster reading pace than I can manage with classics. I will endeavor to write up some thoughts on what I am reading, but I don't want to make promises I can't keep.

December/January

The first series is N.K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth trilogy: * The Fifth Season * The Obelisk Gate * The Stone Sky

Update: I've completed this series as of 1/20/2018.

February/March

Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Captial series was collected in an omnibus edition called Green Earth. You may notice a strong environmental thread in this list.

Bonus: Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey

April/May

Cixin Liu's series Remembrance of Earth's Past comprises three volumes, two of which were translated by award-winning author Ken Liu. * The Three-Body Problem * The Dark Forest * Death's End

Bonus: Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey

June/July

The late, great, Terry Pratchett collaborated with Stephen Baxter to produce a five volume series called The Long Earth:

• The Long Earth
• The Long War
• The Long Mars
• The Long Utopia
• The Long Cosmos

Bonus: Abaddon's Gate by James S. A. Corey

August/September

This was originally allotted for Charlie Stross's Empire Games series, but the last volume of this won't be available until January of 2019. I am tentatively replacing this with Octavia E. Butler, either her Xenogenesis series, or Earthseed. I may just do both, since that's 5 volumes, and both series are thematically related to the others in the main list. The other contender is Nnedi Okorafor, who won a Nebula and a Hugo for Binti, the first book in her recently completed trilogy. Assuming I stick with Butler: * Dawn * Adulthood Rites * Imago

And/or: * Parable of the Sower * Parable of the Talents

Bonus: Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey

October/November

Of the items on this list, Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota is the least familiar to me. * Too Like the Lightning * Seven Surrenders * The Will to Battle

Bonus: Nemesis Games by James S. A. Corey

Ongoing

I'm making my way through War and Peace again, at the pace of a chapter a day; it will take me all year to read it again. Mahabharata is still in my rotation as well.

Supplements

From my list of supplements, I have already begun Watership Down by Richard Adams. I also have Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, The Trial by Franz Kafka, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and The Three-Cornered World by Soseki Natsume. These I will pick up as time permits between other readings.

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