If you buy only ten books this year, buy ten copies of RT Essentials!

Ok, I'm kidding. I wrote a couple chapters for this one and it should be out any day now. Hyperbole aside, I think that for people who are currently using RT or considering it, it will be very helpful. And especially if you've ever considered customizing RT but couldn't get what you needed from the RT docs, this book should help fill the gaps.

This is a pretty good book, but I wish I'd read Jane Eyre before I started it. A good chunk of the story depends on being familiar with Jane Eyre, and so not having read it, I had to find some online Cliffs Notes-like site to get the skeleton of the plot.

It's still really fun and entertaining, and there are many many other literary and artistic references throughout the book, as well as references to all sorts of SF/F standbys such as vampires, werewolves, time travel (and time paradoxes), demons, and more. It's pretty much overflowing with ideas, which explains the plethora of sequels.

I liked the last Hoffman book I read so much i went out and picked up another one. This one's a sort of ghost and haunted house story, though the focus of the novel is really on the protaganist's family, which is far more disturbing than any ghost.

Apparently it has a couple sequels (or rather this is a prequel), which I'll be looking out for in the future, but this story stands alone quite well.

Every time I read a book by Sean Stewart, I am reminded how good he is. This one, like many of his previous novels, uses fantasy (and in this case a bit of horror) to explore the main character and his relationship to the world. The main character is a perpetually depressed divorced dad trying to do the right thing by his daughter (who lives with her mom and stepdad). Unfortunately, he also sees ghosts, and they mess up his life, or give him an excuse to mess up his own life, maybe.

The book was a bit tough to find. AFAICT, Uncle Hugo's never had a copy in stock, but I picked it up at Powell's and read it in one day (yesterday). Update: I went to Uncle Hugo's earlier this week and they had a copy (finally).

Wow, this was really good. It combines three distinct elements. One is a coming of age story. The other is a story about a large family, and the third is a sotr of logic puzzle about how to deal with some dangerous powers that must be used nonetheless.

I picked up this book on a whim in Powell's and I'm glad I did. Now I'll have to track down more books by this author.

Inevitably, reading Wolfe's short stories always makes me feel a bit dumb. If you've ever read Wolfe's work, you're familiar with his very unique style. You really have to pay attention to every detail if you want to get the most out of his fiction. With his novels, there's enough different pieces in them that if you miss some you can still get a lot out of it.

However, with his short fiction, sometimes they are so oblique that I finish the story and just say "huh"? On the other hand, when I do grok the story, it's often incredibly rewarding. It's amazing just how stuff he can pack into so few pages.

I wouldn't recommend his short stories for those new to Wolfe (the Wizard Knight is probably the easiest way to start), but if you've enjoyed his novels the short stories are definitely worth a shot.

Wow, I borrowed this book, along with Harry Potter book 6, from a friend who has borrowed many, many books from me. It's a total Ghostbusters reverse the beams moment.

I've been following this series since it began, and it's been pretty entertaining. It's beginning to get a bit formulaic, however, and the wise-cracking of the main character is getting somewhat thin. If he's going to continue writing this series (and I think he is) I hope he comes up with some ways to vary it a bit.

Basically it's like those Laurell Hamilton books without the super-cheezy soft-core porn aspects.

Yes, I've been reading the Harry Potter books. I'm ever so slightly embarassed by this, but heck, they're quite readable and entertaining, even if they're a bit on the light side. This one was good, and increased the danger level of Harry's fictional world quite a bit.

It seems like Rowling is trying to drop hints that Harry might die in the last book, but I don't think that's likely. I guess we'll find out in a coupl eyears.