I have yet to read Gideon the Ninth, though my friends have been texting me constantly to chat about it. Despite Reddit constantly recommending him, I’ve yet to read a single Brandon Sanderson novel. Dragonriders of Pern? Nope. Joe Abercrombie? Meant to. And oh Lord, please don’t strangle me when I admit I’ve only read a single book by Ursula K. Le Guin.
At writing workshops, my friends gush about books I meant to read while I sit quietly, encased in total dorkness, wondering how Charlie Jane Anders’ and Robert Jackson Bennett’s and N.K. Jemisin’s latest books still sit atop my to-read pile despite me gobbling down their prior writings like candy, and how am I so utterly ignorant not to have delved James Tiptree’s award-winning stories.
I am scandalously unread.
Except…I’m not. And I don’t think you are, either. Not if you’re showing up at Tor.com to read an article about how guilty you feel about not having read enough.
But before I can confirm that, allow me to do some math for you on my reading habits—because I suspect the amount of books I read will not be at all unusual when compared to the magnificent overachievers who frequent this site.
On average, I read somewhere between 30 and 60 books a year.
Now, “reading 30 to 60 books a year” is about three to five times above the national average of 12 books a year (of those who read books at all…don’t think about it, best to think light thoughts). In my case, most of those books are speculative fiction, most of them recent releases….
Yet that number is way down from my wayward youth, where thanks to the startling benefits of having no friends, I often knocked off three or four books a week in an existence startlingly like that of Morwenna from Jo Walton’s Among Others, but without the interesting magical bits. Doing some rough math indicates I’ve probably read somewhere in the range of 2,300 books in my 51 years of age, most of which are speculative fiction.
But wait, there’s more! I not only have read deep, I have attempted to read wide.
Buy the Book
The Chosen and the Beautiful
In 2010, fresh off of two major writing workshops where I sat numbly by the sidelines as people merrily discussed authors I’d heard good things about but never actually read, I compiled a list of Authors I Should Have Read By Now—a selection cultivated by trusted friends with magnificent tastes. I read about one a week, knocking off another 50 or so authors I had always meant to get around to.
And when I went into my next sci-fi convention, I thought, This is it. I’ll finally be caught up. When people discuss Ted Chiang and Lois McMaster Bujold and Peter F. Hamilton, I’ll be on top of it.
Gentle reader, all my efforts did not make a dent.
Which was when I realized: You can’t read everything in speculative fiction. Heck, it approaches a full-time job just to scratch the surface of having read a meaningful speculative canon.
But why do we feel like we’re behind, when the truth is that we’re in a delightful Platinum Age of science fiction, where there are so many magnificent, wonderful, well-reviewed books that it’s hard for anyone to keep up?
I have a couple of theories.
Being Online Magnifies the Sensation of Missing Out
If you’re reading Tor.com and checking Book Instagram and discussing on r/Fantasy and following your authors on Twitter, chances are good you’re two things:
- An author’s best friend—someone who pays attention when their new books come out, and:
- Statistically above-average.
A lot of books come out in a given year—and while it’s lovely that you’re paying attention to them, the fact that you’re hip-deep in friends who constantly broadcast literary squeeness amplifies this sensation that you should be reading ALL THE THINGS.
Which isn’t a bad thing! It’s good to have friends who are invested in other people’s stories. It’s a thrill to find some new author based on a recommendation! But that potential goodness can turn milk-sour when you transmute joy into a sick guilt.
Remember: These aren’t obligations to be shouldered on. These are joys you can partake in. And if you’re being showered with so many potential delights that you can’t keep up, then you’re letting the thrills you can’t have taint the pleasures of today.
(Though, you know, if you haven’t read my book The Sol Majestic, you’re absolutely missing out. Right? Sure.)
You Discount the Clubs You’re Already a Part Of.
I was at a writing workshop when I heard the words “Matthew Woodring Stover is a genius,” and I leapt across a table shouting “DAMN STRAIGHT!” to high-five a stranger.
Now, the other people in that workshop who I had accidentally elbowed aside (sorry about that) doubtlessly felt was a sense of alienation—“Who’s Matthew Woodring Stover?” or “Oh, man, I keep meaning to read him.”
But what I felt in that moment was having found My Tribe. I was new to a workshop, on the lookout for friends, and was warmed by that nerdy certainty that Anyone Who Liked Matthew Woodring Stover Couldn’t Be All Bad.
And in this case, I was right! I made a couple of fast friends at that workshop, because correctly picking Matthew Woodring Stover’s Heroes Die as one of the best grimdark fantasy novels of the early 21st century meant that we had similar tastes, and we bonded over our goal of matching Stover’s visceral fight scenes.
In truth, that happens a lot. I can usually find a few books in common with most people.
But particularly if you have social anxiety, those moments where the entire table discusses The Author You Meant To Get Round To, lavishing praises for an anguishing eternity where you have nothing to contribute to the conversation? They can be excruciating. Particularly if you have nasty flashbacks to those old days of being left out of the crowd (see also: my lonely, book-filled childhood).
Yet if you are sensitive to such temporary lockouts, remember: a) large-scale conversations usually veer away from any given person’s interests for brief periods of time before coming back around, so that’s normal, and b) most folks tend to discount all those times when they were actually in sync with people and focus on the uncomfortable, feeling-left-out bits.
You’re not poorly read. There’s just a lot of books, and simple statistics will tell you that everyone gets left out occasionally. And the only way to avoid that is to become that boorish person who arm-wrestles every conversation into submission by complaining, “Aww, who cares about that author? Why don’t we discuss somebody I’ve read?”
Just go with the flow. It’ll come back around to people you’ve read and are excited about. (Or else you need to find better friends.)
There’s Some Books You’d Rather Have Read Than Actually Read, and That’s Okay.
Some books pull you aside with a trenchcoat-jacketed whisper. “Hey,” they promise. “If you read me, you’ll be the erudite scholar you’ve always longed to be seen as!”
“Yes, I’ll be seen as smarter for having read you,” you agree. “But will I enjoy the process of reading you?”
“So many questions!” the book shrugs.
Yeah, sometimes that works out—my wife and I read Moby Dick, and it was surprisingly entertaining! Then I took another stab at Gravity’s Rainbow, and bounced off.
Truth is, there’s some Very Notable Books out there, books with cachet—and they’re books in styles that you don’t particularly enjoy.
It’s fine to read pulp! It’s fine to read for fun! Not every book must be A Deep Tome! (Or, alternatively, if you like books packed with massive philosophical digressions, it’s fine to skip the pulpy books in favor of dense, tangled narratives!)
Point is, there’s no shame in skipping a book that you’re not enjoying, or reading just to prove a point.
There’s Some Books You Probably Don’t Need to Read, Even If Other People Think You Do.
There’s plenty of books that Some Fans think you absolutely have to read. And many of them are enjoyable! (This statement applies to both the books and the fans.)
However, a significant portion of those books fall into the uncomfortable category of “A Product Of Their Time”—books where women and minorities didn’t seem to exist, or did exist but were written as uncomfortable stereotypes, or had romantic dynamics that seem, shall we say, a little more coercive in the cold light of modern conceptions of consent.
These are books that have good points if you’re willing to overlook the flaws that have sprung up now that society has marched on. But if you’re not willing to overlook those flaws because you find them icky, it’s perfectly acceptable to say “I read the opening chapters and didn’t like what I saw” or even “Heard from a friend it’s aged poorly,” and move on to talking about something you do enjoy.
Reading should be for pleasure. Will you get more out of contemporary works knowing who their influences are? Absolutely! But a good fiction book should also be enjoyable on its own merits.
And if someone tells you that you have to be familiar with “the classics” before you can claim that you’re well read—well, note that most people’s definition of “the classics” mysteriously line up in a perfect Venn diagram with “the favorite books that person read in their teens and twenties.” And then remember that you don’t have to endure poorly-aged books to achieve some imaginary sticker of completion.
Remember: there’s a world of difference between “I haven’t read it” and “I chose not to read it.”
Surrender to the Immensity of the World…
As I said: we are in an age of speculative fiction miracles. There are amazing books being published by all sorts of authors—groundbreaking, heartbreaking, devastating brilliance all around.
And there’s decades of brilliant books published by authors with lifelong careers.
And there’s accreted layers of influences, short stories and novels that flavored the work of your own favored authors, as well as stories that are embedded in the marrow of your friends and lovers, sagas they want so badly to discuss with you.
You have a choice:
You can have friends to discuss some of these books with.
Or you can retreat into your Reading Cave (you do have a reading cave, don’t you?), in a vain attempt to Read All The Books until a kind stranger comes across your cat-chewed corpse.
And oh, what a lonely life that would be!
Look, there’s a few speed-readers who can chow down a huge lap-breaking novel every lunch, but chances are you’re not one of them. This isn’t a race. Enjoy the books you can get to, be choosy in what you go for next, but honestly?
This is an ocean, and in your finite lifetime you will only be able to swim across a bay or two.
Enjoy the water.
And whatever you do, do not tear your eyes away from that comfortable delusion that one day, you will read every book on your to-read pile. You will absolutely do that. Keep buying books, it’s fine.
It’s fine.
Ferrett Steinmetz is the author of the novels The Sol Majestic and Automatic Reload from Tor Books, as well as the ‘Mancer trilogy and The Uploaded. He is a graduate of both the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and Viable Paradise, and was nominated for the Nebula Award in 2012, for his novelette Sauerkraut Station. Ferrett can be found on Twitter as @ferretthimself, and his new podcast, …And We Will Plunder Their Prose, analyzes the writing techniques of great modern speculative fiction.
It’s a sad fact there there are too many good books available. :)
Over the past ten years, I’ve read around 170 books a year. (More when commuting by train, fewer when commuting by car). And I still have 600+ books that I’ve actually paid for waiting for me to get to them.. And another 200+ freebies that I’ve picked up (legitimately!) over the years…
And then I remember the years when I had to haunt book shops to find enough books to read. Too few books to read is definitely worse than too many.
The last year has been tough for new books, especially from new authors because I just want something familiar. Reading is not a free action and even if you can find the time, finding the energy is something else. I
Nice piece. I’m feeling that right now. I read widely in SFF during my teens and college years in the70s and 80s, only to focus on nonfiction during my years being married and raising a family. I dove back into the SFF pond in late 2000s and have done a good job catching up on authors writing good stuff from the 90s and well into this century. But I’m finding I have read little to none of those who have been rising over the past 5-10 years and I’m feeling out of touch. Oh well, I’ll get to them at some point.
And….read Bujold ASAP if you haven’t already. LOL
too many books to read in one lifetime isa very good problem to have!
Oof, this really resonates with me! I fell really far behind in SFF reading around 2000 and have spent the last 8 years trying to catch up while also not getting even further behind. And yeah, it’s a huge job it feels like. I still have some 80’s authors I wanna read, as well as things like Riot Baby and other new things. But the new Murderbot from last week was excellent! At around 50 books/year I will NEVER be able to read it all, even though I’m not quite 40 yet. But trying to is gonna be fun-and conventions are gonna come back someday, I want to be more ready than last time lol. (Still haven’t read Stover, but Sanderson is fantastic if you find the time!
I finally found a trick for helping with my insomnia (there’s one particular podcast where the presenter’s voice hits all the right notes to soothe me to sleep), which has reduced the amount of reading I’ve done in Pandemic World. On the other hand, I’m getting more than four hours of sleep a night which is probably best in the long term.
A couple yours ago I realized I have more books in my “to be read” pile than I have actual life left to read them. That epiphany actually helped me cut down on video games and TV and get to readin’, which I enjoy far more.
i gave up on the guilt long ago. not only is there too much nee books to read, but i not going to stop re reading old favorites. i know i’m going to have a quarterly tolkien binge. a new murderbot came out, so i’ve reread that series (twice). i was watching masterpiece theater’s cadfael, and, brilliant as derek jacobi is as cadfael, i was missing the exquisite detail of the books. so now i have to reread the chronicles of brother cadfael. and so on. i’ll get to new stuff eventually, maybe. but i’m too old to feel bad about enjoying what i enjoy, how and when i want to enjoy it.
I appreciate the love for Matt Stover! I haven’t read Heroes Die or sequels due to trouble finding them when I looked many years ago, but he’s written a few (wish there were more) very good novels in the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, including the Revenge of the Sith novelization and a personal favorite of mine, Shatterpoint.
Even if I read from the beginning of my life to the end, I’d never hit all of the books I probably would want to read but I do hope I’ll get a decent chunk of them done. I am, however, exactly the kind of person who feels like he SHOULD read books in the genres I love. This year is my “Year of the Vampire” and I want to read Necroscope by Brian Lumley, the remaining Vampire Chronicles books I never read, Tanya Huff’s Vicki Nelson, Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin, and the Anno Dracula books.
Not because I have to but because I want to.
This is So True. And so delightfully written! I’m gonna save this essay and pass it around.
When the feelings of guilt or inferiority arise in me with regard to my reading, I try to remind myself that–whatever people may claim about sex, alcohol and driving (hopefully not in combination)–the most satisfying privilege of adulthood is that you can read whatever you wish, and you never have to read anything if you do not feel it is enriching your life. Unless you have to read it for work, but then it enriches your life via your paycheck. You don’t even have to finish a book you’ve started if it is not connecting with you. Even if your friend thinks it’s the greatest book ever.
There are so many books to read that anyone reading only a tiny subset of them could still be reading All Wonderful Books! And if I’m reading All Wonderful Books that also connect with me personally–and thus are able to expand my mind and heart–how could I be missing out?
I’m one of those speed readers, but I still only manage about 70 new to me books a year. Part of it is supply; I don’t have access to an English language fiction library, so my supply of fresh copyrighted books is limited.* I also re-read a lot – reading an old favourite is relaxing and comforting, while reading a new book is more invigorating, and shouldn’t be attempted at bedtime. I actually relish the fact that I’ve got books on my Kindle that I haven’t read yet, probably due to about a five year period where I didn’t have access to English libraries, very limited access to genre fiction in bookstore, and eBooks hadn’t really taken off yet.
* I highly appreciate the Tor free ebook of the month club, which has let me test out series before putting down money. I also have a complicated Amazon Kindle list system to monitor books on my to-read list for sales.
This is why I participate in reading challenges. I have to read a variety of types of fiction, but I’m reading only books that I’ve already bought – which is more than I can read in my remaining years. I’m sure Gideon the Ninth will be read eventually.
@noblehunter, Same here, I don’t think I read a single new author last year, and only two or three that were new to me. For me it’s more I’m not discovering new books and authors because I prefer to browse in-store. The pandemic is actually helping to shrink my tbr pile because I’m not adding to it as fast as I used to and I’m actually getting through some of what I already have.
I’m 32 and I’m already feeling like I might not get to everything I already own, lmao. 12 books a year is what I put down for my Goodreads goals now because I know I can make it, I used to put down 52, but that felt too much like an obligation, too much pressure, now I can actually take a month or two to read something dense and not feel like I have to hurry afterwards to catch up.
As a lonely reader in her 30s with social anxiety, this article really hit home for me. I blame booktubers who sit in front of their fancy shelves full of books for feeling like I not only need to read more but own more books. Lately I’ve found it too taxing on my eyes/neck to read more than a few chapters at a time, which makes me feel less guilty about dropping a book I’m not enjoying. I know I won’t get to everything I want to read but that’s ok.
#10. CT Phipps: The original Anno Dracula volume was very good; for me, the quality, and my interest, dropped off after that. Your experience may differ.
You may want to add Lucius Shepard’s The Golden to your list; underrated, almost unknown vampire novel.
The Guardian does an occasional series where they interview creatives, usually authors, sometimes celebrities, and one of the questions always bugs me: what book are you ashamed not to have read?
Where does shame come into it at all? I’ve never felt guilt at not having read something. I may try a book and not finish it: sometimes having short runs of 5 or 6 books, none of which click at the time. But there’s never any guilt.
There are many variations explaining why I read something and why I do not. I’ve recently been discovering and watching a number of Booktubers, particularly those focusing on fantasy. Some have led to interesting minor finds, like Stephen King’s recent novella Later. A major find has been the Malazan series, which is two decades old hat to regular fantasy readers, but new to me. I’m not averse to spoilers at all, so videos doing close reading and analysis of the series have helped me start out with much more understanding than I would’ve had when the series was new.
One easy way of filtering out what I don’t read is knowledge of the author, which is something Booktube talks about a lot sometimes. There are indeed too many good and interesting books being published to waste time with an authors that’s objectionable on some level. Social media makes it easy for some of them shoot themselves in the foot sometimes. A few cause their agents or publisher huge headaches when they seemingly can’t contain themselves.
Some authors deserve completion, but it’s relatively rare that the quality is so good that it warrants reading everything they publish. I’ve read about half of Pynchon’s novels, making it all the way through Gravity’s Rainbow on a third try; but only started Mason & Dixon ( didn’t like the style), and only about halfway into Against the Day. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve never seen the point of forcing a story, like force feeding yourself a meal you don’t like. It either works or it doesn’t. Maybe it’s just not working for you at the time and you’ll come back to it later.
One author I have no hesitation in recommending is Patrick O’Brian and his series of twenty Aubrey/Maturin novels. That is a high water mark for my entire reading life.
A last thought is about reading styles or methods. Since Jo Walton was mentioned, I’ll say that speed reading amazes me. I’d only be able to skim if I tackled ten, twenty, or more books a month. But then I don’t reread much… till recently. Reading that fast seem to me to require rereading, to pick up details and depth perhaps missed first time around. Then there’s the adage that since you’ve changed as a reader over time, your experience of a favorite book may change, hopefully for the better.
Thank you for a great article!
My reading life got much better once I stopped trying to finish every single book I started. So now I DNF with abandon. Sometimes I eventually come back to the book, other times I don’t. Sometimes the writing is great but just doesn’t click or hold my interest. I find that setting them aside and moving on also prevents me from getting into reading slumps.
There’s a great little book about reading and the joy it should bring: The Rights of the Reader, by Daniel Pennac. And yes, I did just suggest another addition to TBR piles. :D
most people’s definition of “the classics” mysteriously line up in a perfect Venn diagram with “the favorite books that person read in their teens and twenties.”
cf “The Golden Age of Science Fiction is twelve.” I note that for those of us getting on in years, books older than we were tended to be necessary because there weren’t that many new books coming out — but in retrospect their flaws are more visible. (Although not always overriding — reading one early Bester is worthwhile just to see that SF in the 50’s wasn’t all grey.)
OTOH, stepping up one’s reading doesn’t necessarily help shrink Mt. TBR; my log shows ~220 books/year after retirement, up to almost 300 during Covid (almost all genre — a handful of mysteries, and not nearly enough nonfiction) but the list still grows. (There’s a motto derived from Eppur si muove somewhere in there.) There is so much new that looks worthwhile — even mind-expanding/reorienting — which is good to prevent hardening of the oughteries, but makes it harder for authors to earn a living.
Matthew Woodring Stover is, indeed, a godsdamned genius.
High five
There are way too many “classics” to have to actually spend time reading all of them – I was given 23 boxes of SF several years ago, and though some of it is more modern stuff; a lot is older that the guy who gave them to me had collected over his lifetime – and despite many being “classics”, I’ve found that I don’t really want to spend all my time reading them just because they are! Many are extremely dated, and writing & plots have gotten much better since they were written – for example, I seem to have every single E.E. “Doc” Smith book ever written, but they are so simple that they become excruciating to read compared to more recent books – his characters could easily be aliens, for all the attributes they have.
So I’ll dip into one now and then, they are usually a fast read; but leaven them with recent books!
Tolkien aside, it’s hard to say what the fantasy classics are, but I’ve faulted myself for not reading Lord Dunsaney, visiting Lud-in-the Mist or exploring Gormenghast.
Classics are books nobody reads willingly because of the bad experience having to read/interpret them at school. SF may have escaped that because it isn’t considered “serious literature” that is worth talking about in school.
@birgit, Personally I find that only applies to books read for high school, I find that I quite enjoyed classics read for university–being able to choose which course and therefore which types of classics you read helped a lot with the interest factor.
@23. birgit: it doesn’t help when basically the only modern SF assigned seems to be Ender’s Game. Surely by now there are better options. But then high schools still assign Ayn Rand, so something’s been off there for a long time.
Maybe switch to Dune or Hyperion as the SF urtext.
I’m probably one of those unthinkable people who read twelve or fewer books a year, mostly because I work an outdoor job that doesn’t pay well, so my both my access to new books through the small local library system and enough downtime to read those books is severely limited. On the other hand, my consumption of short stories and serialized fiction — especially in podcast form that I can listen to on the job — is through the roof, and has introduced me to the work of so many more diverse and wonderful writers than I was able to spare time for back in my bookish years. The drawback, of course, is that not all authors write their best in short form (or write short fiction at all), and some of those that do don’t come across nearly as well in an audio format as on the page.
I don’t feel guilty unless I have done something wrong…and I haven’t…so 0 guilt, about anything. That being said, I get frustrated with myself for not keeping a good list of series where I am on book 1 or 2 and need to wait for 3….and without the list, I have to spend time in my attic boxes “remembering” series.
Just reading through the comments made me feel accepted if not vindicated! My bookshelves upstairs are divided between “have read” and “haven’t read yet”. Every time I go up to make a selection, I have to decide if I’m going to start another series or an author, or give in to the craving to reread one of my favorites….again. Like Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, which I’ve read at least 3 times through and listened to on audiotape–twice. And I have finally decided that if I don’t care for the style or contents of a book, I set it down before wasting too much time, and donate it out of my library.
At 65, I know that I will never get through the ones who haven’t made the journey from one bookshelf to the other, but there is one silver lining. Of all the items in our house, its my books that my three kids are going to fight over–they all are readers like me.
I feel like this post was written just for me!
Trying to stay on top of the latest and greatest is almost impossible; especially if you read multiple genres (which I do; but fantasy/sci-fi are my faves overall).
Last year I read 74 books and was super disappointed with myself as the year before I read 111. But two years ago (pre-pandemic) I commuted to work on the bus for 1.5 hrs a day, I didn’t have a puppy to take care of (and get cuddles from), and I didn’t have quite as many friends as I’ve recently made (like real in-person people, neat eh?!). And really 75 should be a good enough target right? Wrong. It’s not near good enough to clear my 500+ (and ever growing) TBR of print books; don’t even start me on my 1000+ ebooks and then all the library holds I have! There is no getting ahead or winning sadly. But I do remind myself that I should be reading because I love it (which I do!); not because my rank on Goodreads dropped for this week. ;)
Thank you for this reminder!!
This is me! I spent April reading a shorter book a day, thinking I would knock out some stuff I had been meaning to read for ages. Honestly my TBR list looks just as long. Focus on the enjoyment of each book I read, and move on from the ones that don’t connect for me. Great article! Thank you!
@25 I agree, Dune would be a good choice, but I see nothing wrong with students reading Ayn Rand or Enders Game. Schools in my area pushed kids towards Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Anyone else twitching at the way the red and green Loebs are mixed together in the picture?
No?
Just me?
Fair enough.
IRTNOG
There, all caught up, again.
Forever thankful for E. B. White
Fantastic article. So true! Though finding books I love and resonate with seems somewhat rare, and I get discouraged by that as well. My solution is to alternate between new and old–exploring new authors, alternating with rereading books I love. When I find a new author to love, I delve deep, and try to shut out all the “noise” of keeping up (but you haven’t read this and this and this!!!).
For instance last March when everything shut down, I listened through all 9 of Robin Hobb’s Fitz and the Fool books on audio (an OLD favorite, though I’d only read the first 3), and when I got Covid and was sick for weeks, I listened to all of Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, many which were free on audible (a NEW favorite–a name on the “best of” lists I hadn’t tried yet!). I re-listened to Maggie Steifvater’s Raven boys series, which I remembered loving, and now I am happily immersed in Gene Wolfe, who is new to me.
Finding those books which resonate is what it’s all about :)
You perfectly nailed it! Congratulations!
I feel, after reading your text, understood in my position against the tyrany of the “mandatory readings”
Cheers
I lost my ability to keep up with the field sometime in the 80s, and that’s just the books. People who also follow games and media are even more swamped.
I don’t know how you knew I needed this, but thank you!
What wasn’t raised in this piece, is the guilt over starting a book, realizing that it’s not your cup of tea (or just terrible), then doing the hardest possible thing and just letting it go. i.e. stop reading it.
I think I’ve only achieved that five or six times although there are a large number of books I should have added to that list as life is too short.
Something I’ve come to realize over the years is that no matter how wide read you feel you are, your readings will only intersect with others readings on occasion. An excellent way to discover this fact is to visit the List Challenges website and mark off the books you’ve read in those lists. No one’s list is exactly the same, and some of the books they found rewarding would probably put one to sleep out of sheer boredom, at the very least and vice-versa, of course.
Read what you like is my motto.
Great article! Also many great comments. I’ve shared it on my blog with mostly mystery/crime genre readers as it applies equally.
Okay, I’m 75. I’ve been reading since 2nd grade, and started SF with Tom Swift Jr. and then the Winston Science Fiction books. I’ve read steadily in the field since, and I’d say it’s been impossible to keep up, really since perhaps the mid-Sixties. These days I read a both old, usually rereading, and new, or newer. I have a lot of SFF on the TBR shelves, but since I also read as much mystery/crime genre as SFF, those TBR shelves are crowded with both. That’s okay, I’ll get to them.
The bookshelves in the bedroom, dining room, study, office…there’s a problem. I’ve read maybe half of those 5 or 6 thousand. I usually read about a hundred books a year (almost all print or ebook, very few audio), so do the math.
Nope, I won’t get them all read, plus there’s the library sending things my way. *SIGH* no guilt, though. Just joy that I can read, have lots to read, have free choice, and, being retired, free time.
@31. MB: ” but I see nothing wrong with students reading Ayn Rand or Enders Game”
Even setting aside the possible political indoctrination in questionable ideology, there is some very icky interpersonal dynamics between men and women in her books; if you haven’t read them, just imagine scenes where women are literally manhandled, as in very rough sex play.
It’s not the kind of stuff impressionable teenage minds should be reading. It could send a message that this is what adults do in relationships. Also do some research (you won’t have to dig deep) into how she treated her cult members and you likely won’t want her mind and what spewed out of it anywhere near your kids.
As for Ender’s, again setting aside any authorial controversy, I just think it’s overrated and some use sales goosed by these perpetual school assignments as proof that it’s great. I’d prefer if they went on to Speaker for the Dead.
Muswell, No. 32: “Anyone else twitching at the way the red and green Loebs are mixed together in the picture?”
Yes, I am. It’s as bad as people who mix their red, green, and blue Cambridge linguistics books. They’re colored differently for a reason!
I face three problems. First is trying to stay on top of what’s new. Second is reading books that are old. Third is re-reading what I’ve enjoyed. Let me elaborate by saying that I read my first scifi books in the early 50s. I have averaged a minimum of 2 per week over the years. (I’ve slowed down, lately, because I’m doing a lot of beta-reading.) My exposure to authors whose names are rarely, if ever, mentioned in even this site pretty much spoiled me in terms of what I look for and enjoy. Yes, I am a fan of “space opera” with super-science and vast distances and strong characters. The stories that appeared in the pulps are in my library because they are often predictive, sometimes thought-provoking and some just flat-out hilarious. Admittedly, Asimov’s Foundation is weak compared to, say, Niven’s Known Space but it still provides a pleasant reading experience. When it comes to thoughtful writing, I’ve yet to find anything recent that compares to the incisive presentation and elegant language of Simak. And, for pure fun, there’s always Laumer’s Retief or the multitude of stories by Gordon Randall Garrett (aka many names, esp. acronyms) and so many more. Finally, I admit to having discovered and read Gernsback’s seminal work in the summer of 1958. I own a copy, also.
I receive Goodreads, various publishing house, Lithub, CrimeReads newsletters. Subbed to r/Fantasy.
I have felt GUILTY about it. We are in a Platinum Age of both Sci-fi, Fantasy and Horror.
I end up reading all the best list for all 3 genres + Graphics Novels. And make a list. Also try to buy the annual anthologies.
My solution was to buy novels of authors that I really love ie Neil Gaiman, Catherynne Valenti, Jeff Vandermeer etc. The rest I borrow from the library.