Reading update

I don't necessarily like making short little posts where I update on my status for something like "what I'm reading", but it's my blog, and when I feel like doing so, I'll do so because this is only really for me anyway. My reading has been a little bit behind, because my last few evenings have been busier than I expected, but I've still finished A Darkness at Sethanon and therefore the Riftwar Saga. I'm also halfway through Black Sails Over Freeport, and it's my goal to finish that before Thursday night is over, because Friday I'm going out of town and I want to bring some different books to read.

I'm actually not reading a pdf book at the moment, but once I finish Black Sails, I'll pick up the next Freeport book in my trawl, which is Creatures of Freeport, curiously co-written by Graeme Davis (the Warhammer Enemy Within guy) and Keith Baker (the Eberron guy.) I've read that before, but not in many years. I also won't pick it up until I get back in town.

I'm also about a third of the way through my Kindle book, Flight of the Dying Sun, a Heirs of Ash novel (second in the trilogy.) I'll probably finish that while I'm away too. If I do, next Kindle book will certainly be the third book in that trilogy.

What should I pick up in physical gamebooks and novels? I'd like to pack one of each for my trip. For novels, I think it will be one of three options: Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini (I attached a picture of the same version I have, although my lettering is more faded and harder to read. It's a print from the 1920s.) Second would be Ghouls of the Miskatonic by Graham McNeill, an Arkham Horror novel and first part of the Dark Waters trilogy. If I pick that one up, I'm committed to reading the whole trilogy before I break, but they're pretty quick and fast novels. Although they're game novels based on a board game, the board game is, of course, directly based on Lovecraft fiction, so these are really just Lovecraft stories, literally set in Lovecraft's own Arkham setting and Miskatonic University, as you can probably glean from the title. I've read them before, but a while ago now. I'll read this this year, even if it's not next, and I doubt it will take more than a week and a half or two to finish all three novels. They're all about 300 pages each. Pretty quick and easy. The third option is my long-delayed read of the Solomon Kane collection by Robert E. Howard. Holy cow, I see that that's extremely expensive on the used market now; I'm glad I bought it when it was pretty new and recently in print... although I feel kind of embarrassed that I still haven't read it. I'd love to get the big batch of books by the REH Foundation Press that isn't Conan, Kull or Solomon Kane (because I already have all those stories from Del Rey). I've got most of them, I think, on my Amazon wishlist: Tales of Weird Menace, Adventures in Science Fantasy, Western Tales, The Early Adventures of El Borak, Pirate Adventures, Spicy Adventures (he wrote in the 30s for a mainstream audience; I doubt that they're really that spicy), Swords of the North, and Steve Harrison's Casebook. These average probably a little over $20 each, so that's the better part of $200. I won't be buying them all at once, I don't think, unless I can convince someone to give them to me for Christmas or my birthday. 

The other novels that I have on my shortlist to read soon include the James Silke Horned Helmet series, four books. I've read the first two, years ago, but I only just got the last one a month or two ago; it's been out of print and hard to find at a reasonable price for years. Now that I have all four, I'll re-read the first two followed by the next two which I haven't read before. Also, I have a copy of The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs, which I really liked and I'd like to read again. I've also got a good omnibus of the first five Barsoom books, a nice copy of Dracula that my daughter gave me for my birthday a couple of years go, and another series that I read probably in the 90s but never since; the so-called Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn, the books that put Star Wars novels on the map. But those are mostly after the ones above are done, I think. 

I think Scaramouche is going to be the one that I bring, but we'll see. I may change my mind at the last minute. 

For physical gamebooks, Sharn: City of Towers is next up on my Eberron Trawl, and one that I wanted to read even before I started my Eberron Trawl anyway. But other shortlist books from my 3e collection include Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss, Libris Mortis and maybe a couple of others (I need to look at my list at home to confirm if there's something else that I had my eye on for short term). I was also going to do a Monster Manual trawl; I recently read the first 3.5 version of the Monster Manual, so if I continue with that, Monster Manual II would be next, followed by Fiend Folio and then Monster Manual III, IV and V. I'm going to read the Monster Compendium: Monsters of Faerun as part of the Forgotten Realms trawl rather than as part of an unofficial monster manual trawl. Not sure which of those I'll feel like packing up for my trip yet, but probably either Sharn or the Demon book. 

I don't know how fast I'll be reading any of this. I'll be traveling starting on Friday, but it's not a business trip or anything like that; I'm going with my son-in-law and one of my sons to go hiking in the Uintas again (unless the Beulah fire gets worse; it looks like that's not the case, though). I have vague thoughts of sitting on a camp chair or log and reading with a beautiful mountain view in front of me, but we'll see. That's probably naive. Maybe I can at least read a bit in the evenings on driving days.