Someone started this in another forum I'm a part of and since I do not recall ever having seen this on here in this incarnation of the forum (or if it was it was one of the threads that got deleted accidentally back when Adam added the Word of God section), I thought I'd bring it to this forum.

The posting rules for this thread are simple:

List as much as possible that you can remember you've been involved with reading over the last year. List here books that you've finished since October 1st of last year, books you're in the middle of now, and the books on your shelves (come on, you aren't really a reader if you only have a shelf) waiting to be read that you've purchased or received over the last year.

I'll go first.

Books I've finished this last year:

Several Dune novels both of the originals by Frank Herbert and the newer ones by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
Enemies and Allies by Kevin J. Anderson
The two Star Wars Darth Bane books by Drew Karpyshyn
The Dark Half by Stephen King
Black by Ted Dekker
Red by Ted Dekker
White by Ted Dekker
Field of Blood by Eric Wilson
Dark To Mortal Eyes by Eric Wilson
The Hero Complex Book 1: Hero, Second Class by Mitchell Bonds
The Personifid Invasion by R.E. Bartlett
Summa Elvetica by Theodore Beale
The Dark Man by Marc Schooley
Star Wars: Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn
Star Wars: Dark Force Rising by Timothy Zahn
and a great many comicbooks and graphic novels and tradepaperback collections too numerous to mention here in detail.

Books I'm in the middle of now that I actually read something from or started this last year or are almost finished:

A Dune novel
Terra Incognita: Book 1: The Edge of the World by Kevin J. Anderson
New Spring by Robert Jordan
G.I. Joe: Above and Beyond by Max Allen Collins
Monster by Frank Peretti
Star Wars: Republic Commando: Hard Contact by Karen Traviss
Star Wars: Death Star by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry
Star Wars: The Last Command by Timothy Zahn
Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse by James Luceno
Star Trek: Destiny: Gods of Night by David Mack
Showdown by Ted Dekker
Obsessed by Ted Dekker
Expiration Date by Eric Wilson
Four Past Midnight by Stephen King
Starfire by Stuart Vaughn Stockton
The Eternity Gene by Robert Don Hughes

The books I've received over the last year that I haven't cracked open yet:

Two of the Dune books
The Last Days of Krypton by Kevin J. Anderson
Hopscotch by Kevin J. Anderson
A whole bunch of Star Wars books - like well over twenty, so I won't list them all
The other two Star Trek Destiny books by David Mack
and the follow up by Keith R. A. DeCandido
Star Trek: Troublesome Minds by Dave Galanter
The Terminator Salvation prequel From the Ashes by Timothy Zahn
The Terminator Salvation novelization by Alan Dean Foster
Transformers: The Veiled Threat by Alan Dean Foster
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen novelization by Alan Dean Foster
Outriders by Kathryn Mackel
The Best of Evil by Eric Wilson
Saint by Ted Dekker
Skin by Ted Dekker
Relentless by Robin Parrish
Fearless by Robin Parrish
Merciless by Robin Parrish
Kingdom Wars I: A Hideous Beauty by Jack Cavanaugh
Dragonspell by Donita K. Paul
Terminal Justice by Alton Gansky
The Soul Hunter by Melanie Wells
My Soul to Keep by Melanie Wells

This sums up my last year when it comes to novels. Now when it comes to non-fiction............

I've been reading a couple theological books:

-4 Views of the Millennium
-What is a healthy church member

And as for fiction, I don't remember everything, but here are a few

-A Voice in the Wind - Francine Rivers
-An Echo in the Darkness - Francine Rivers
-As Sure as the Dawn - Francine Rivers
-The Green Mile - Stephen King
-A Man for All Seasons - Robert Bolt
-Macbeth - Shakespeare
-The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald

A year ago, I never thought I'd be a reader. Since high school, I've only ever attempted one novel, The Shining by Stephen King. But about a year ago I discovered the Left Behind series. Being as obsessed as I am with end times (duh!) I thoroughly enjoyed these (I have read all of them except for the Glorious Appearing, which I'm 1/4 of the way through).

Apart from that I started the Christ Clone trilogy. I'm through the first book and am anxiously awaiting reading the other two (I'm hoping to get them for Christmas). I was pleasantly surprised to see that this book was quite a bit different from the left behind books. Don't know if I have a preference between the two series or not yet.

I also read some of "Remembering Wholeness" by Sharol Tuttle (name and book name going by memory, may not be right). Didn't make it all the way through. I picked it up by recommendation of a coworker. It got too new age for me and I disagreed with enough stuff to quit reading at some point.

One other book I read was Chevy Chase's biography. I saw it as I walked past it in the library. Being a big Fletch fan I picked it up and read it. Somewhat interesting, he had a pretty messed up childhood. . .

I've been reading different kind of books...

The Institutes of the Christian Religion - Jonh Calvin
Providence - Jonh Calvin
11 Minutos - Paulo Coelho
The Great Divorce - C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
The Pilgrim's regress - C.S. Lewis
Complete Tales & Poems - Edgar Allan Poe
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Call of the Wild - Jack London
White Fang - Jack London
The Oath -frank Peretti

fiction:

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester (largely considered THE BEST sci-fi novel ever written, for good reason --- check it out if you haven't yet. simply fantastic.) my 3rd time around!

Redemolished by Alfred Bester

Typhoon by Joseph Conrad, 2nd time around.

Little, Big by John Crowley

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, my nth time around.

First Meetings by Orson Scott Card

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

nonfiction:

For Hearing People Only (don't recollect author)

A Man Without Words by Susan Schaller

A Loss For Words by Lou Ann Walker

Mostly graphic novels and fantasy, but some historical fiction too.

Graphic novels:
From Hell (Alan Moore)
Tales of horror 2 (compilation with Doctor voodoo, scarecrow, Modred the mystic and some more obscure Marvel horror stars)
The sandman (Neil Gaiman)
Death (Neil Gaiman)
Watchmen (Alan Moore)
Planetary (Warren Ellis)
The filth (Grant Morrison)
Fables (Bill Willingham)
Jack of fables (Bill Willingham)
Nana (Ai Yazawa)

Fantasy/historical fiction
ASH, a secret history (Mary Gentle, this is one of my alltime favourite books)
Boudica (Manda Scott, currently reading this)
The Farseer trilogy (Robin Hobb)
The liveship trilogy (Robin Hobb)
The tawny man trilogy (Robin Hobb)
The tamuli (David Eddings)
The dragon quartet (Marjorie B Kellogg)
The adventures of Mr. Maximilian Bacchus and his travelling circus (Clive Barker)
Several Discworld books (Terry Pratchett)

This and that, currently reading "The Sins We Love" by Randy Rowland.

I'm not much of a reader, but I do read every now and then. Some good fictional books I've read are:

The Illuminati by Larry Burkett--Sort of a fictional conspiracy theory/end-times novel that presents a post-trib view. Really good!

The Left Behind Series (only got as far as "Apollyon" and never got back to it.)

And there's also this new seires I've been getting into called "Kingdom Wars" by Jack Cavanaugh. They are basically novels about the war between the angels of God against the angels of Satan. The main character, Grant Austin learns that he is actually part angel. The first book "Kingdom Wars I: A hideous beauty inroduces all the main characters in the series and book Two is called Tartarus.

Gotta go for now!

A lover of Christian speculative fiction I see! Good, good....and I recognize everything mentioned.

I've read Larry Burkett's The Illuminati as well as a good portion of its sequel The Thor Conspiracy before I put it down. The thing I don't like about The Illuminati is that it wraps up too nicely at the end. All of a sudden after all that happened things are suddenly back to normal? Huh? That's just not realistic. And it was one of the first "Christian" fiction that I read. The Thor Conspiracy didn't really seem to add much to the story for me, so I quit reading it. I liked Larry as a financial man who gave great advice with what to do with your money when you have it, but his novels weren't realistic enough for me.

I gave my opinion very much on the old forum about the Left Behind series. My last statement I think said that I had gotten the complete series including the prequel books minus the very last one (the sequel) and that I was reading through the prequel trilogy and planned to re-read the first eight books that I had read previously to get myself up to where I would read the final four and then maybe get the sequel book to read. I finished the prequel trilogy and went on to other authors and am currently expecting to read a lot of other books before I can get back to that series. I would say to go ahead and finish it because the long term plotting starts showing up in the books following the one you gave up one and also just so that you have done so, but Jerry Jenkins has definitely written better things than Left Behind, and Tim Lahaye just seems to fancy himself as a novelist now with the success of L.B. as he did another series and blew through his "co-writers" on each book that did the actual story telling based on what Tim gave them to work with. I've seen videos of Tim. He does seem like a nice, sweet old man that I wouldn't mind having a conversation with, but as a writer he strikes me as arrogant.

As you can see in my list, I've got Book 1 of "Kingdom Wars", so I'm glad to see that it looks like a good read. I'll have to pick up Book 2 before I read Book 1, so that if I really get into it I can just go straight to the next one.

If you want to see the biggest list of Christian fiction you'll find on the web go here (and I recommend the Red Pill myself): http://www.wherethemapends.com/Booklist ... _intro.htm

That was the booklist page of Jeff Gerke's Where The Map Ends website where you'll find writer's tips, interviews with top Christian speculative fiction authors, a special features page, and much more: http://www.wherethemapends.com

Jeff Gerke also has his own Print-On-Demand publishing company Marcher Lord Press which is the only publishing company that exclusively publishes Christian speculative fiction: http://www.marcherlordpress.com

In fact, I'll be starting a different thread about this, but go here for the press release of the contest Jeff is doing to determine one of the next books that he will publish through MLP in the Spring of 2010: http://wherethemapends.proboards.com/in ... thread=948

That link is to a post on a thread on his Where The Map Ends forum I am also a part of: http://wherethemapends.proboards.com/index.cgi?

Five of the books I mentioned in my lists are books published through Marcher Lord Press.

It's nice to see someone else that's into Christian speculative fiction, so I thought I'd help you out by pointing you in the right direction for a whole lot more.

Happy reading!

Jumping on a little late here, but here ya go! I'm gonna post up to now though)

Books read over the past YTD (year to date):

The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky (this was my second read through,and favorite book)
The House of the Dead - Dostoevsky
Nuclear Jellyfish- Tim Dorsey
Atomic Lobster- Tim Dorsey (these are the latest in his series. hysterical...if you like sex, drugs, MacGyver-style serial killing, and Florida! If interested you gotta start from the first book though. Florida Roadkill There are 11 books now in all. Serge A. Storms is the man!)
Skin-Ted Dekker-recommended on here by someone in the past, can't remember who. Didn't really like it though. The whole "mustard" thing...Sorry
American Psycho- Brett Easton Ellis - very disturbing stuff, but good read none-the-less. Especially Patrick Bateman's album/artist reviews!
Lunar Park- Brett Easton Ellis
The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus:What's So Good About The Good News?- Peter J. Gomes

That's all i can recall at the moment...I'll add more later

have you read his Crime And Punishment?


Shalom

lots of short fiction stories too numerous to name...

nonfiction:

Train Go Sorry by Leah Hager Cohen

What The Rabbonim Say About Moshiach by Douglas Pyle

Yes I have. Also one of my favorites. It was actually the first novel of his i read. I have a lot of his work. he's definitely my favorite writer.

Don't read as many books as I would like... Most recently finished:

The Collective Journals by Eric Clayton

Under The Dome by Stephen King

Hey Dizzy!

I just ordered a copy of The Christ Clone Trillogy Book One off of Amazon the other day--should be here in a couple weeks. Kind of frustrating though. Number one, the ONLY way to get the book is by ordering it online either via Amazon or his own website--tried looking for it at Borders and other stores and they claim the book is online only. So then I go to James BeauSiegnurs website and guess how much he wants for a PAPERBACK copy (not a hard back mind you)? $32! For a book? I went to Amazon and found it for $8.00 (the other reason I went for the cheaper copy is I'm supposed to be saving up for a summer trip so I need to be SAVING instead of SPENDING) so as much as I hated to "rob" the author by buying from Amazon instead of him, I did so. Can't wait to read it If I like it (and I probably will from what I've read about it) I'm gonna get the other two.

I just finished reading "Acts of God" which is the third book in the Christ Clone Trilogy. The series is great if you like fictional stories about End Times prophecy. Not sure if I agree with all of the theology presented but overall, still a good read. Word of caution though...you need to read the entire trilogy...if you just read the first two the things said about Christ and the apostles sound blasphemous, but to understand why they are said, you have to read all the way through to the end for it all to make sense! Overall, cool series

I really enjoy this book when I read it first around a year ago, I also read the sequel Speaker for the Dead and that was also very good. But how about the next books in the series?

I hate being disappointed so I would rather stop not and not reading the rest of the series if it is disappointing.

Shalom,

XENOCIDE, the third installment, is very good. it brings most of the matter to a close. there is a fourth one, called CHILDREN OF THE MIND, which finishes out the tale completely, but i rather felt it was more of an addendum, and didn't have the weight of the others.
however, if you enjoyed ENDER'S GAME, there are followup books set immediately after the events of that particular story, before Ender travels to the stars, which you might find engaging. those are:
FIRST MEETINGS
A WAR OF GIFTS
ENDER IN EXILE
and a parallel series to Ender's Game, focusing on the character Bean from EG, which i've really enjoyed thus far:
ENDER'S SHADOW
SHADOW OF THE HEGEMON
SHADOW PUPPETS
SHADOW OF THE GIANT
SHADOWS IN FLIGHT -- not yet released

if you like this writer, he has done lots of other tales that are superbly entertaining reading. a few definitely worth checking out:

the HOMECOMING series:
THE MEMORY OF EARTH
THE CALL OF EARTH
THE SHIPS OF EARTH
EARTHFALL
EARTHBORN

for a oneshot book, THE WORTHING SAGA is also very good.

and for a lengthy series, the ALVIN MAKER stories are great:
SEVENTH SON
RED PROPHET
PRENTICE ALVIN
ALVIN JOURNEYMAN
HEARTFIRE
THE CRYSTAL CITY
MASTER ALVIN -- not yet released

he also did a retelling of the Exodus events that is pretty cool, called STONE TABLES. furthermore, he's done some books on female characters from the Bible:
SARAH
REBEKAH
RACHEL and LEAH

i should probably point out that the writer himself is Mormon, and so the faith-based works reflect that to a degree. also, the Homecoming, Alvin Maker, and Worthing Saga books are all sci-fi versions of different Mormon stories / history. you wouldn't make the connection unless you've ever studied LDS history and theology, but he's basically retooled his faith into sci-fi stories and done very well. i'm not a Mormon myself, and don't think much of their theology, but his stories are very well done and entertaining.

so i suppose that's more than you ever really wanted to know... hope something in this was worth the read!

Thanx. I guess that I have to read the rest of the books in the series then. I just have to finish the books from the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series that I'm reading now.

I didn't know Orson Scott Card until I one day was visiting a friend that has a wife that works in a bookshop, he had a rather large box of books in his entrance some books that they could not sell at the shop. He told be that I could take the books I wanted I only had to promise that I would read it. So that's how I got Ender's game, and read it as I promised. Speaker for the Dead I found like a year later in a sale at a bookshop that I passed. I didn't know that it was a series at the time but a reconised the author and as I enjoined the first I might as well like the sequel.

I don't care much that he is Mormon or if he was associated with any other religion, if his books are good they are good no matter what he might believe in.

The Christ Clone Trilogy is my favorite book(s), it's such a good read!!! Other than finishing those a few months ago, I read a couple more Frank Peretti books (Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness), a couple Narnia books, and Sean Hannity "Deliver Us From Evil."

I read about your struggle to find the Christ clone books at a reasonable cost. You should look into paperback book swap. Basically you "trade" books by sending your unwanted books to those who request them and you request books from others. I got all 3 clone books (and every Peretti book) for free this way (only cost is shipping of your books to others). It worked well for us because our daughter had grown out of her little kid books so we gave them away there.