No, I did not just go on yet another book buying spree.  In fact, exactly half of these books were given to me by either publishers or authors.

• The Color of Rain by Cori McCarthy
• The Transhumanist Wager by Zoltan Istvan
• Red Dragon White Dragon by Gary Dolman
• The Devil Incarnate by Jill Braden
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough

The Color of Rain is an unusual book that I found through Grace’s blog, Books Without Any Pictures.  Her description of it intrigued me so much that I went ahead and ordered it from my bookstore, read it in a day and will be writing my review for it shortly.  For those of you that are curious, it’s the book that spurned me to write my ‘The Beauty of Fiction‘ article.

The Transhumanist Wager is something that I’m both excited for and reluctant about because while it’s something I might normally pick up on my own, I know it will be a controversial book to read and review here on my blog.  Red Dragon White Dragon was sent to me by Gary Dolman’s publisher ages ago (2-3 months!) and only got here a few days ago.  Hooray for Canada Post.

The Devil Incarnate was sent to me by Jill Braden’s publisher because they saw how much I loved The Devil’s Concubine (the first book) after I reviewed it through NetGalley.  This second book is not necessarily better than the first, but it is different and I love the cover art even more.

The Kite Runner was a book recommended to me by a fellow book lover in real life and when I saw it at the library’s “fill a bag of books for $1” I knew I had to get it.  It may be a while before I actually get around to reading it, but I’m definitely anxious to see what all of the hype is about.  And of course the last book I bought for myself was The Grass Crown, the second book in Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series.  It’ll take me a while to read, being over a thousand pages, but it will be great in that since I’m so far ahead in my book challenge I’m going to skew my results by only counting books with larger page counts.  That, and Colleen McCullough is a great author.

So what are you guys reading lately?  See anything you like here?