Birthday Book 2020

I reserved my copy of Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir at the only Barnes-N-Noble in Omaha.  It will be released on 4 August.  I asked the book seller questions about when it will arrive just to make sure I can pick up the copy before my birthday.  I told him it will be my birthday book.  He asked me how old I will be and I told my age without enthusiasm.  Then we chit chatted about life and getting older.

So I will receive an email when the store receives the books.  They will receive five copies and one of those is reserved under my name.  The book seller told me to come in when I get the email and they will be more than happy to pull it from the box for me.  I am happy.

This book will break a few of my birthday book rules.  One, at five hundred pages it is much longer than the normal 150-200 page book.  Two, it is the middle book of a trilogy.  The birthday book is supposed a stand alone novella and preferably by someone I have never read before.  It is supposed to promote finding out new authors.  Something I have been do already this year.

But due to the issues of selecting the birthday book due to the pandemic and the date of release for the book, I will make this exception.  It also helps that this is one of my most anticipated books of the year.

Recently I found out that the author lives and works in Oxford.  It makes me smile to think while I was walking around Oxford listening to Gideon the Ninth, the author was just a stone’s throw away.

Gideon the Ninth surpassed Dracula in my top ten books (a list that I actually never made).  Frankenstein is probably number one, I can’t see another book beating that.  A few years ago, probably more than a decade ago, publishers actually released an unedited version.  Mary Shelley’s husband Percy Shelley actually edited the book and added his poet flare to the manuscript.  I imagine that unedited version would read more like The Mortal Immortal, a novella Mary wrote after Percy’s death.

Anyway, I’m excited to get my hands Harrow the Ninth.  I will be taking days off for my birthday and so I may yet finish the book within the week I give myself to finish the birthday book.