I’ve put away Hart’s Hope, even though I’d nearly reached the end. Honestly, it was just way too stinking gory for me. The story was interesting, the world well-developed, the writing excellent, but I know it gave me nightmares and after a certain point I just couldn’t bear to pick it up anymore. It’s unfortunate that it was my first Card, because I’m told not everything he’s written is quite so graphic.

Instead I’m reading Alanna by Tamora Pierce now, and while the writing is definitely simpler than what I’m used to, I’m hoping it’ll be a quick but fun read. Considering I have yet to add a single book to my 50bookchallenge tally!

The Preliminary Nebula Awards Ballot has been released. Fantasy/SF awards lists are great places to find interesting books you’ve missed out on in the previous year. If you want to go back farther than the previous year, I recommend the list of past Mythopoeic Award winners and past Mythopoeic Fantasy Award finalists.

If you’ve got a Livejournal account and you love reading, you’ll want to check out a community that showed up in the Livejournal Spotlight today, 50bookchallenge. It’s a challenge to read fifty books a year, and since I feel lucky if I can manage a paltry ten anymore, I joined up. I will conquer my bookcases! Huzzah!

Jeff VanderMeer’s Twelve Overlooked Books of 2006 at Locus Online.

Most of it looks like the type of literary fiction with a genre twist that’s usually featured in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (in otherwords, not my cup of tea), but Fairy Tale Review sounds kinda interesting.

(Actually, The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden, mentioned in a footnote, looks like the most interesting of the bunch.)