So, I’ll leave something out here, I know. (I haven’t even finished The King’s Last Soldier yet, for instance.) But in the frenzy of prepatory cleaning for Scott and Justine‘s visit later this week*, I had cause to re-sort my priority reads. You know the kind; things I wish I could lay hands on and have downloaded into my brain, emotional responses and all, because I just haven’t had the time to read them quite yet.

I’ve been writing a pretty good amount, which slows my reading, since I usually want to watch television in the downtime and, also, when the writing’s going well? You must be careful and stay very still and not love another book too much or you’ll scare it away**.

Here are some books in my stack I can’t BELIEVE I haven’t read yet:

Map of Dreams (stories) by M. Rickert
Grey by John Armstrong (this only just arrived, but it looks great)
Half-Life by Shelley Jackson
Just in Case by Meg Rosoff
The Machine’s Child by Kage Baker
Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand (in my defense, Christopher stole this one for a bit)
Chasing the Dead by Joe Schreiber
H2O by Mark Swartz
Only Revolutions by Mark Danielewski
Grand & Humble by Brent Hartinger
Death of a Writer by Michael Collins
The Future is Queer anthology edited by Richard Labonte and Lawrence Schimel
Rain Village by Carolyn Turgeon
From the Files of the Time Rangers by Richard Bowes
The Exquisite by Laird Hunt
My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time by Liz Jensen
The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea (poems) Mark Haddon
The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas
Maul by Tricia Sullivan
Starred Wire (poems) Ange Mlinko
Saint Iggy by K.L. Going
Flora Segunda by Ysabeau Wilce
The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno

And, of course, I won’t even end up reading all these, not any time soon. For there are Yet More Books. Books that will come to displace them; books for the LBC; books, books, books.

Life is good. I wish I could perfect the absorption technique. And, wow, just realized I don’t even _have_ Eduardo Galeano’s latest yet. For shame.

(So many of these are BEA books from May. Bad reader. Bad.)

*If we’re really, really careful, maybe the house will stay all spiffed until Thanksgiving. Dreams!

**Okay, not true, but it can feel that way.

In her review of Susanna Clarke’s new collection, Ursula Le Guin writes:

Those who dislike fantasy dismiss it as inconsequential: Inconsequentiality is in fact fatal to it. Explanation is irrelevant, but coherence, inner consistency, is essential to the flight of imagination. Gabriel García Márquez does not explain where the man with enormous wings flew from; Jorge Luis Borges does not explain the mysterious appearance of the Aleph; J.R.R.Tolkien does not explain the existence of Middle Earth: They simply tell, and the narrative is both explanation and justification, because it is strictly consequential. The imaginary act has inevitable consequences; the fantastic threat is carried out; the uncanny cause has its ineluctable effect. A fantasy lacking consequence, like a spell spoken wrong, is mere nonsense.

Which is lovely and has the added benefit of being true. (Le Guin, btw, is not convinced that Clarke meets this challenge and the review is positive overall but with reservations.)

Ed’s kicking off a gigantabulous roundtable on Richard Powers’ (now NBA-nominated) The Echo Maker today. Some of us … um, that would be me … got too tied up in other things and behind on the reading and still haven’t finished the book*. But those who did participate are the smartest of the smarties and have said some amazing things. And Powers will weigh in at the end with some amazing comments of his own. So go thither.

*I’m very much enjoying the book, so I may throw some thoughts up here when I’m done.

Stolen shamelessly from Sarah, who thinks it sounds awesome:

David J. Schwartz’s SUPERPOWERS, dubbed "The Incredibles" meets THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY, in which after a night of heavy drinking, five friends wake up to discover they have superhuman abilities, but lacking super-villains they find that the ramifications of their new powers are more complicated than they anticipated, to Jason Pinter at Three Rivers Press, by Shana Cohen at the Stuart Krichevsky Agency (NA).

I have no doubt it will be. Yay, Dave! (And Shana!)

Here’s a link to his story The Lethe Man, which is one of my favorite stories that we’ve ever published in Say… And his bibliography has links to more stories online.

Again with the YAY!

Tomorrow, the final installment of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events books hits the streets. The Washington Post asked 13 fans how they think it will end. Half think happy ending, half think dark as night. The results are charming:

"The series will end with Mr. Snicket writing two endings to the book. One of the endings will be happy, and one of the endings will be sad. Mr. Snicket will say something like, ‘If you like happy endings, read the next chapter, and if you like sad endings, read the chapter after the happy ending.’ " — Henry Brandmark, 12, Vienna

"Olaf and the orphans travel to a remote island and miraculously find the orphans’ parents. The Count tricks them into letting him have their money in exchange for their children. But then he kills the parents anyway and escapes in a boat, leaving the murder weapons behind. Soon some fishermen arrive, see the dramatic scene and assume that the orphans killed their parents. The children are sent to jail and live miserably ever after." — Alexander Kopenhaver, 12, Arlington

The sweet thing is how most everyone wants some sort of happy ending. Oh, woe, that is so not what these books are about–but a kid can dream.

National Book Award nominations are out, and I’m so so so happy to report that M.T. Anderson’s Octavian Nothing is among the Young People’s Lit nods. Yay!

There’s lots of other cool kid favorites or, at least, Danielewski, Spiotta and Powers.

Complete list here.

(Thanks, Shana!)