In my weekly Reading Journal, I’ll provide a brief update on what I’ve been reading and what’s on the horizon. In the interest of full disclosure, I will also list which books (if any!) I’ve received from publishers for review.

Remember how I wrote last week that I didn’t get to read a lot, due to a bunch of factors I had no control over? Well, same story this week! The whole medical and moving thing still applies, but the main problem this time was my computer blowing up on me. Yeah. So for the time being I’m blogging on my wife’s tiny little netbook. Somehow I still managed to get some new posts up here, including my very first author interview and a few new reviews.

All I managed to read was the rest of Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper. I’m working on the review right now and hope to have it up on the site early next week. Yesterday I started reading Chasing the Moon by A. Lee Martinez, a fun comedic fantasy that’s more or less exactly what I need to take my mind off things like chronic pain and computers blowing up.

In the interest of full disclosure, here are the books I received for review from publishers this week:

– Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente. Well, I absolutely loved Valente’s novel Palimpsest, and I’ve heard mostly good things about Deathless, so I’ll probably read it fairly soon. (This also reminds me that I should post my review of Palimpsest here at some point, as it’s one of the few books I rated five stars over on GoodReads in the last few years. I’m pretty stingy with stars.)

– Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole. Doesn’t this book just look like a fun escapist SFF adventure? Even the cover gives me that vibe, like an action movie you may feel a little guilty about liking but still end up watching from beginning to end. I’ll probably read this soon, maybe even right after my current read.

– POD, by Stephen Wallenfels. I’d never even heard of this author or novel, which is rare. From the blurb, it looks like a fairly standard alien invasion story, but I’ll give it a try and let you know. I’m putting this on my “try fifty pages to see if I get into it” shelf.

– After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, by Nancy Kress. The title is a bit unwieldy, but this is an author I’ve always wanted to read but never got around to. The plot summary looks very interesting too, including aliens, ecological disaster and time travel. This one definitely goes in the review queue.

Finally, I got this email from the good people at Night Shade Books on Thursday afternoon:

After reading about the cuts to public library funding in California this week NSB have decided to give something back, for every 10 new followers @nightshadebooks gets in the next 48 hours we’ll give a book to a Bay Area public library. If you could help us out with a tweet about it or spread the word in some other way that would be awesome!

For every 10 new followers @NightShadeBooks gets in the next 48 hrs, we’ll donate a book to a Bay Area public library!

Wonderful initiative, right? I’m a big fan of the local public library system here in San Diego. Please help NSB support Bay Area libraries by following them (@nightshadebooks) and spreading the word!

And that’s it for this week’s reading journal!