Over on her blog, fellow Arlington Writers Group member, Colleen Moore asks, “Why read the book when you can watch the movie?” She has some interesting comparisons between movies that live up to the books. But she concludes by asking, “So, why read the book?” I think it is an important enough question to reproduce…
Many people I know have lists (or stacks) of books that they intend to read. I used to have something similar. But since shifting my focus to short fiction, and trying to read a lot more short fiction, I’ve discovered that despite doing a pretty good job at keeping up with 1 story/day, there are…
Every once in a while, when I reflect on how small a dent I make in my stack of reading, I think about audio books. I have friends who swear by them. For some of them, it seems, it is the only way they get their fix. There is a great deal of advantage to…
Last night, I settled down to read Action Comics #5 and the Little Man was a bit restless. “You reading, Daddy?” he said. “Yeah, I’m reading about Superman,” I said. “Oh, Superman. Okay. He flies.” “Yes, he does. Do you want to read it with me?” “Yeah!” So we sat down to read Action Comics…
Here is the short fiction I read in December. Finally, for the first time, I beat my goal of reading 1 story/day. I read 38 this month, most of them while I was on vacation, but hey, I’ll take it. As always, bold titles are recommended. Found in the Wreckage by Marge Simon (Daily SF,…
Because of my focus on short fiction, novel reading has taken a backseat the last few years, and I imagine that will continue for the next few years. Novels are more of a time investment and with everything else going on, something has to take a backseat. That said, here are a few goals for…
In Wednesday’s post, I listed some of my favorite short fiction that I read this year, some of it published in 2011, and some published earlier. I thought it important to mention that in all of the short fiction I read in 2011 (excluding the stories from Astounding), while there were some definite standout stories,…
It has become a kind of year end ritual, at least for the last 3 years or so, for me to pick up a big anthology or two and spend time reading stories. It started with David G. Hartwell’s The Hard SF Renaissance, which I read 3 years ago at this time and absolutely loved.…
Let me just confess up front: reading more short fiction in 2011 cut into the novel reading time. If you look at the list of books I’ve read since 1996, you’ll note that in this year, much of my reading consisted of issues of Astounding. In the past, I never added magazine reading to the…
Some items of interest to SF/F writers and readers to round out your year: 1. Juliette Wade writes about writing for Analog Go check out Juliette’s post. She has good advice for anyone trying to crack the Analog market. Everything she says there is spot-on. 2. Michael Burstein talks about re-reading Heinlein’s Stranger in a…
I have said that we are in a golden age for short science fiction and fantasy. There is so much good short fiction out there it is difficult to keep up with it all. I had no specific goals for short fiction reading at the beginning of 2011. Reading short science fiction is probably my…
I’ve written before of the many reasons why I love e-books. One of those reasons is the ability to highlight text and make notes about what you are reading. I find this enormously valuable, and it is something I would never dream of doing in a physical book. I’ve been reading a lot of magazines…