Earlier this week, John Ottinger of Grasping for the Wind posted another of his ‘Inside the Blogosphere’ interview series, where he asks fellow book bloggers a question about books or reading and posts everyone’s results. ‘How do you organize your library’ was the question this time around, and John got a lot of terrific responses (and some pictures of blogger’s personal collections) which you can read all about right here.

Great responses from some familiar names, and I think I may have picked up a few ideas for my own shelves from reading everyone’s responses. If, like me, you are instantly drawn to a person’s books when visiting their home, you’ll get a lot of enjoyment from scrutinizing the pictures that accompany the posts, and it’s always fun to spot books that you yourself own in someone else’s stacks. One contributer even sent in a flickr slideshow of her collection.

Because of some unexplained weirdness, my own contribution to the conversation would not paste into John’s post nicely, so he graciously allowed me my own post, entitled ‘Late to the Party‘ (and no, I’m not devious enough to do that on purpose in order to get my own post — or, more importantly, smart enough). By chance, I happened to be in the middle of a book purge when John sent the question around, so these things were uppermost on my mind when I responded. My picture, which is only one shelf, is of a bookshelf that I’ve had since I was a kid — and old Betamax shelf bought from Erol’s video when they switched entirely to VHS. It makes a great mass market shelf.

Another fun feature from Grasping for the Wind, one bibliophiles will not want to miss.

Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books are among my all-time favorites — lush, weird, and full of unforgettable characters locked in a near-operatic conflict of competing passions and duties. As fans of the series know, Peake’s degenerative illness cut this amazing series short, and quite possibly radically influenced the tenor of the third book, Titus Alone. For those initiate in its strange wonders, Gormenghast remains one of the great what-ifs of fantastic literature — if Peake had produced the multi-book cycle he had intended, would it have given us a new model for the fantasy epic?

Sadly, we’ll never know, and fans have long resigned themselves to accepting that three books is all we get. Until now. Found by Peake’s son in the attic of his mother’s home, Titus Awakes was handwritten in several notebooks by Peake’s wife, Maeve Gilmore. It continues the story of Titus based on the vague outline left by Peake (familiar to many readers as an appendix of Titus Alone), and takes it in new, unexpected directions.

Read the Telegraph article ‘New Gormenghast novel found in attic‘ for a fuller story.

I’m very excited by this. I don’t see it in the same vein as the resurrecting of old literary corpses such as the stunt with the latest Vladimir Nabokov ‘novel,’ or the retread recycling we’ve gotten with the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert. Peake often collaborated with his wife, and it seems a natural and poignant thing that she would continue the journey of Titus when her husband no longer could — that she did, it seems, bring the Titus story to a conclusion in a very personal way that melds the imaginary worlds of Peake with the reality of his passing.

Over at the big BG today I posted a brief write-up that looks at a relatively new line of chapbook novellas from small press Blackwyrm. Focusing on stories that skew genre conventions, the Blackwyrm line has a lot of personality, and it’s great to see a publisher — whether big or small — taking the chance on short books like this once again. From military fantasy series to genre mashups, Blackwyrm seems to be casting the net wide to come up with a nice variety of styles, voices, and approaches.

In the age of fat fantasy series, doorstop thrillers, and historical epics it’s often impossible to find a short, satisfying read. Gone are the days of the 60,000 word science fiction novel, or even the novella doubles series Ace once put out. Long a standard of genre fiction — both the worlds of SF and of fantasy having a host of renowned novellas and short novels considered classics in their respective fields — these short, sharp stories are increasingly ignored for multi-book works of massive length. But, sometimes, it’s nice to get a book done in a day or two, it’s nice to explore an idea, premise, or setting without committing to dozens or hundreds of hours with it.

Over at Black Gate I’ve put up a post that provides links to many of my reading related posts from the last year, including the recent ‘Ramp Up Your Reading’ three-parter over at Grasping For the Wind, and some of my old favorites from BG itself, such as my posts on book lists, bookmarks, and the joy of browsing brick-and-mortar stores. For anyone that reads BG regularly, or has followed some of the links in my ‘Reading & Writing’ section, there isn’t anything new here. But I thought it would be nice to get links to many of these posts in one spot, especially as they pertain to the subject of setting reading goals.

And, what would New Years Day be without some goal-setting and resolutions? Have a look at Reading Goals in the New Year and see if there is anything over there that might help and inspire you to take a stab at doing things bigger and better in 2010.

Just when I thought 2009 had said all it was going to say I see the announcement over at Black Gate that the fourth book in the Imaro saga — that’s right, the never-before-read-or-seen-by-human-eyes fourth book — has just been released from Sword & Soul. With less than twelve hours left in the year, this might actually be the biggest news of 2009 . . .

If you don’t understand why this is such a big deal, then you haven’t read my reviews of the previous Imaro books: Imaro and Imaro II: The Quest for Cush, and Imaro III: The Trail of Bohu (and let’s not forget one of the most finely realized female warriors in fantasy fiction, Dossouye). Simply put, this series is every bit as good as the very best the genre of Heroic Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery has to offer, and it’s been badly handled by publishers at every turn.

Now Imaro: The Naama War is out — a book that has never before seen print. Reading through the first three, I got the sense that Charles Saunders was just getting started — after all he was leading up to a continent-wide war for his land of Nyumbani:

Warfare on a cataclysmic scale is convulsing the continent of Nyumbani from north to south. Soldiers fall. Cities burn. Blood reddens the sea. Sorcery sears the land. Deities gather in opposite dimensions, poised to unleash unimaginable cosmic power on a land already battered by the conflict between the Cushites of the north and the Naamans of the south.

In the midst of this massive struggle, Imaro, warrior of the Ilyassai, wages a personal war against his nemesis, the sorcerer Bohu of Naama. This individual vendetta mirrors the larger clash between the forces of good and evil – a confrontation that threatens to tear Nyumbani apart.

The destiny for which Imaro has been honed like a living weapon now lies directly before him. Imaro vs. Bohu. Cush vs. Naama. War. Magic. Blood. Fire. The losers in this wide-ranging battle for the fate of a continent face oblivion. But the winners will not emerge unscathed.

If you’re a fan of fantasy and you haven’t read Saunders . . . what on earth are you waiting for?

Get Imaro: The Naama War right here (as well as The Trail of Bohu and Dossouye). You can bet I’ll be reviewing it very soon.

A decade or so ago, when I first discovered Gene Wolfe’s opus The Book of the New Sun, I looked hungrily around for more. More books by the same author, of course, but also books about the New Sun itself; books of criticism, and of reference. Wolfe himself has written some excellent and fascinating essays on his story, collected in Castle of the Otter (and recollected in The Castle of Days). But there was another book that caught my eye, a combination encyclopaedia and dictionary for the Urth cycle called the Lexicon Urthus from small press Sirius Fiction. As an impulse purchase I picked up a hardback copy and immediately fell in love.

Lexicon Urthus is the creation of Wolfe scholar Michael Andre-Driussi, and functions as a guide to the weird and sometimes obscure world of Wolfe’s far-future Urth. But not only that, the book itself is a rewarding read itself. Not only are aspects of the world of the New Sun made clear — especially in the case of the extraordinary vocabulary on display — but further questions and trains of thought are suggested that through the doors of investigation into Wolfe’s rewarding series wide-open. Lexicon Urthus is truly a feast of the intellect.

When I had heard that a second edition had been released I assumed it was essentially a reprinting of the now extremely hard to find first,with some errata and corrections included. Not so. Lexicon Urthus, Second Edition boasts an enormous amount of new material, including 300 new entries (up from the original 950+), extended commentary, a complete synopsis of the books (an enjoyable read all by itself), and greatly improved maps.It’s easy to say that this is by far the definitive reference to Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun and, in the burngeoning world of Wolfe-scholarship, Lexicon Urthus is still the go-to book for questions and theories.

So, just what will we find in a random browse through the book? (A practice that is, by the way, a whole lot of fun by itself). Well, we learn that athame is a greek name for a Warlock sword, that the initiation rights of the beast handlers of Nessus has echoes of the Roman cult of Mithra,that Echopraxia is the habit of mimicking others (and gives it’s name to a brothel that imitates the  House Absolute in the story), that gyves are shackles and hipparchs cavalry commanders, omophagists are eaters of raw flesh, peridot is a variety of gemstone, and that zoanthorpes, men who regress into beasts, was a term for madmen who thought  themselves animals. Wolfe uses real words, with greek, latin, and germanic roots, to flesh-put his strange world of the far future, and any of them can be understood from context and the English-speakers general familiarity with many of these root words.

But Lexicon Urthus isn’t just about defining weird words, but about connections. Wolfe’s many classical allusions are detailed within, as are theories of things only hinted at in the narrative. The extraordinary depth of the New Sun series

a feast

. . . Not even a bibliophile. Since my Black Gate blog day falls on Friday I have the heavy responsibility of coming up with something for Christmas. So, go scan ye merry gentlemen ‘Books at Christmas,’ a simple post I’m offering for kids from one to ninety-two. In it I talk about how books still retain some of that magic of the unknown that I remember from Christmases long, long ago; and how they are (nearly) as exciting to me now as a pair of hop-along boots and a pistol that shoots were to me back then.

I hope all ye faithful will go check it out, pa rum pum pum pum — and good tidings to you, and to all of your books, on Christmas.

This week I’ve had the honor of guest posting over at John Ottinger’s science fiction and fantasy review blog, Grasping For the Wind. My posts appeared Monday, Tuesday, and today, and take the form of a three-part article entitled ‘Ramp Up Your Reading.’ Those of you who have read my posts at Black Gate will find some of the material in ‘Ramp Up Your Reading’ familiar, such as my recommendations to use a list and my musings on specialists and generalist readers, but it is an all new article and something of a synthesis of many of the reading related themes I’ve been blogging about over the last year.

Each part of ‘Ramp Up Your Reading’ looks at how to improve your reading in one or more ways. In part one, More and Faster, I talk about ways to get more reading done over the course of a year, both from a practical and an inspirational perspective. In Do It Better, I dial the speed knob back a bit on quantity and talk about close and immersive reading. In the final part, Expand Your Horizons, I propose a few strategies for breaking out of reading ruts and challenging yourself  do something different, like the Five Book Challenge I’ll be doing in 2010.