The Evolution of a Reader

The other day, when I was lamenting my impending dearth of book review posts for January (because of last-minute Aurealis reading), the lovely Gillian suggested I instead write about the evolution of my reading habits. In particular, she suggested "a retrospective of the changes in your reading since you started focussing on women's writing".

Well my first reaction was that I've never not read women. Going back to my childhood, the big names that stand out are Enid Blyton, Tamora Pierce, Isobelle Carmody... Then Traci Harding, who was the bridge, for me, between kids' books and adult books when I was thirteen*. The only male name that stands out as starkly as those women I read in my formative years is Isaac Asimov, who I think I started reading at around age twelve. It was not long after, during high school, that I started reading a lot of Australian female fantasy authors: Jennifer Fallon, Trudi Canavan, Glenda Larke, Karen Miller... a lot of which was thanks to discovering the old Voyager Online forums from an ad in the back of one of the Traci Harding books. <waves to Purple Zoners>

* I remember the age specifically because I got The Ancient Future for my thirteenth birthday, from a friend who said "It was the most depressing end of the world book I could find," which... is both an interesting commentary on who that friend thought I was at the time, and the ability of a cover to completely confuse a not-quite-thirteen-yet year old as to the actual content of a book. (A year later we were no longer friends.)

It was around that time that I started to shy away from male fantasy authors, after being burned a few times. I have always liked my female characters to be actual people in stories*. For a while there I was of the opinion that men couldn't write decent (BFF) fantasy that I would want to read and that women didn't seem to write science fiction. The latter statement is easy to disprove, of course (it wasn't long before I became aware of the existence of Marianne de Pierres, but rather longer before I discovered Bujold), and as for the former, well there's Duncan Lay and Brandon Sanderson† and probably others I haven't read yet. These days I'm perfectly willing to pick up male-authored fantasy books, so long as they sound promising, much like with any other books I pick up.

* This is also the reason my "let's read classic SF other than Asimov and Clarke" venture didn't get very far at all. Unlike every other mid-20th Century (very loosely speaking, time-wise) SF writer I've attempted to read, those two have not offended me deeply with their fiction.
 
† Not an exhaustive list. None of them have been. This is a blog post, not a bibliography.

But all the above was, as I said, my first reaction. My second reaction was this: the Australian Women Writers Challenge, which was the impetus for me to start book-blogging in 2012, started a few months after I had moved across the world. I had brought a bunch of books with me (many of which are still on my TBR shelf, sigh) but I think it would have been easy to slip into the habit of buying more easily accessible books. What makes an Australian book accessible around the world? Well being published by an international publisher, for a start, and being available in ebook form for a finish. (Trust me when I say you do not want to cart paper books across continents.) Both those criteria cut out a reasonable chunk of the Australian oeuvre, but not enough to leave me completely bereft of books I want to read. (And going out of my way to eventually get a hold of my favourite authors is not that much of a burden.)

Enter the Australian Women Writers Challenge. I signed up to the challenge because I figured I read a lot of books by AWW anyway, the challenge part would be to review them. And as an added challenge, I would have to find at least ten science fiction books to read for the challenge. That and my subsequent addition of a horror sub-challenge the following year has certainly broadened my horizons in terms of what's being produced in Australia outside of Voyager. I was previously aware of many of our small presses but hadn't read a huge number of their books before the challenge. That definitely changed with the AWW Challenge. As did branching out in genre. Especially when it comes to horror, which I read very little of before (unless you count vampires, which we generally shouldn't any more). And I've definitely read more short stories, a form I hadn't delved into much after running out of Asimov collections, since reading small press output more regularly.

And there you have it. I have always read women, but the breadth of my reading generally has increased since I've, well, been challenging myself to branch out more. I've never made a secret of the fact that book blogging is something I'm doing for now and not something I see myself doing forever. But I'd like to think that having gone through this reading transformation, I will continue reading as broadly whether or not I have a blog or challenges to push me into it.

Bookish Musings

This is a sort of pre-round up post. Life has been very crazy-busy for me lately but that should be abating now... and morphing into usual end-of-year craziness. Sigh. But at least that's less stressful and leaves more time for books.

Anyway, I have been, in what few spare moments I've had, thinking about my approach to books. The past couple of years I've been trying to not buy too many books (because I have too many) and instead rationing along the lines of "read three, buy one". This year, I added the caveat that they should be three non-review books, that is only purchased or gifted books counted. That resulted in my not actually buying very many books.

It's not that I dislike review copies or that I have any intention of ceasing to review in the near future, but I don't like that I've ended up putting off buying books that I want read. There is an element of not having enough time to read all the books I want, but it's also hard to prioritise reading a book I haven't bought yet when there are so many already waiting. (So the more I buy books I want to read, the more likely I am to get around to reading them...) And, more importantly, I like the idea of supporting authors and publishers that I think are doing good things. (Reviewing review copies is also supporting them, of course.)

So my first resolution for 2014 is to not avoid buying books. (But not necessarily to buy them rashly and willy-nilly.)

The other thing I've been doing since I started reviewing is only reviewing books that I finish. Using not having to review as a "reward" for giving up on books I'm not enjoying. And in 2013 I did not give up on any books (and in 2012 it was only a couple). Why? Because if I'm not enjoying a book it's usually for several very specific reasons that I want to complain about on my blog. And that's kind of depressing. So I've thought about it and I've decided that allowing myself to drop books I'm not enjoying will make me happier, and so will blogging about why I didn't want to keep reading them. Not forcing myself to finish every book I start is my second resolution.

In terms of blogging about the reasons, I've thought about it and I've decided that I'll start writing monthly status posts. These will include (and replace) New Booksies, books I've reviewed in the past month, and books I'm currently reading. The latter part would also include mini-reviews (or maybe not so mini, we'll see) of books I don't think I'll finish and books I've put down but do intend to return to, although whether or not I do is another matter. Oh, and I should also include challenge progress in those monthly posts.

Regarding challenges, I see no reason not to keep on with the three I've done this year (Australian Women Writers — for which I'm also a blog contributor — and the two I instigated myself: the Aussie SF Reading Challenge and the Aussie Horror Reading Challenge. Round-up posts to come). I think I'll revert to just keeping a list of books read for them, plus a list of all Aussie fantasy books, since there were some authors that were being left out. I'm a bit sick of having to remember to update the progress bars, so I think I'll drop them for now.

My final resolution is an ongoing one and relates to the previous one; to not commit myself to reading books I don't like. This mainly applies to over enthusiastic NetGalley-ing, which I have already gotten better at but I don't think I should be letting my guard down just yet. If I'm not sure and it's not Australian, then I will not click on it.

So those are my bookish plans for the upcoming year. What are yours?

Reflections and Resolutions 2012/2013

I generally like to do a reflection post with resolutions for the coming year. Since this is my main blog at the moment, I figured I might as well do it here.

Reflections

First up, I had three short stories come out in minor markets. Which is a record for me within one year.

• “Chosen”, The Lorelai Signal, July-Sept 2012 Issue
• “Addiction”, Comets and Criminals, Issue #3, June 2012
• “Red Rover”, Infinitas Newsletter, January 2012 edition

~

Next up, reading progress. I like pie charts and statistics. I've been keeping track of all the books I've read, made easier by having reviewed all of them here. In 2012 I read a nice round 120 books, not counting 4 which I didn't finish. One of those was a collection from which I read the one story I bought it for then moved on and forgot about it. I might get back to it later. The other three were novels I got about half way through before putting them down in frustration. I want to get back to one of them (...eventually), but I can't see myself bothering with the other two.

For my statistical calculations, I included the books I didn't finish, since I did spend a significant amount of time reading them.

What countries were the authors I read from? Overwhelmingly from the US and Australia, with a few British, New Zealish and misc (Canadian, South African, Norwegian) authors thrown in. I'm glad I managed to read so many Australian authors, and I don't have plans to read fewer Aussies, but I'd like to read more widely outside of the US. I think I'm starting to run up against my limit of slightly generic US YA (not that all US YA is generic, but I've definitely read some that is), so that might be a place to start.

 What format (dead-tree, ebook, audiobook) were most of my books read in? Almost two thirds of the books I read were ebooks, which isn't entirely surprising given my current geographical location (much cheaper to buy Aussie ebooks than to pay postage), impending lack of space and aquisition of eARCs. Comparing this with my 2011 formats, the second biggest change is the dearth of audiobooks. This is primarily thanks to my finally unsubscribing from Audible (it was an ordeal, let me tell you), and a little bit due to getting sick of Ben Bova who makes up the majority of my backlog.

What ratings did I assign the books I read in 2012? I'm fairly good at choosing books to read that I know I'll enjoy, so I'm not surprised that 4.5 and 4 star ratings are the most common.

What were the genres of the books I read? I surprisingly, mostly fantasy and almost a third science fiction. Not a bad ratio. In future I'd like more of those science fiction books to be, well, not YA dystopias. Variety is good.

Finally, the gender breakdown. 83% of the books I read were by women, with 40% overall being by Australian women. Not an entirely surprising result. The genre distribution of Aussie woman-authored books followed the overall genre distribution fairly closely.

Resolutions

One of my standard New Year's resolutions is to write more and finish whatever novel I'm currently working on. However, right now I am not in the right mental place to do that, and I'm OK with that. Writing (especially novels) requires obsession, which means a lot of brain time spent thinking about it, even while doing other things. The other things I'm doing right now include a PhD in astrophysics, which itself requires periods of obsession. And it has to come first. It's the think with progress deadlines that will lead to bad things if I ignore them. Writing isn't.

2012 ended with a very busy period for me, work-wise, which isn't over. I'm not sure when it will be over, maybe mid-year, maybe when I hand in my thesis (though hopefully there'll be a break sooner than that). In the mean time, I'm travelling a lot and having all sorts of experiences which will prove to be good story fodder later on.

I would like to write/finish/submit more short stories, though. I started a few in 2012 that I didn't finish for various reasons and there are some I'm part way through editing or rewriting. I would definitely like to do more of that. And obviously, more acceptances would be nice (can I top 3 stories out in 2012? Can I place one in my mental list of goal markets?), but that's not the kind of thing one can plan for.

I'm still going to try to work on the current novel, I just don't anticipate finishing the draft I'm currently on. But maybe? The main thing is, I'm going to try to feel less guilty about not writing when I can't.

~

Reading resolutions are a bit easier, since I've already set myself some challenges. To summarise: read more Australian science fiction and read more Australian horror. Continue reading books by Australian women (more a default than a challenge).

And I'd like to read more of my existent paper books because that shelf isn't getting any larger to accommodate them. I have a tendency to prefer ebooks because they're easier (less RSI*) and more suited to more situations. I should also make at least a bit of an effort to get through my backlog of audiobooks, though I admit I'm not giving that a very high priority; it's good to have a few up my sleeve for sudden long drives or perhaps glasses fails.

*Yes, I get RSI from reading. Not from typing like a normal person.

Book-buying resolutions

This year, I stuck fairly well to a read-three-buy-one scheme (inspired by Tansy). It backfired a bit, though, with all the eARCs I read, which I counted as books read but which didn't count as books bought. My TBR shelf is more overflowing now than it was at the start of the year. Whoops. So in 2013, I'm going to not count eARCs as books read towards unlocking purchases. It's going to be read-three-paper-or-purchased-ebooks-buy-one. But I'm going to allow myself to buy books when they're on sale (which I already did, but felt guilty over), within reason. That last point might need a bit of fine tuning; I can see it backfiring. I'm also going to try to save up achievement unlocked books and spend them only when I'm intending to read the bought book immediately, so as to reduce TBR clutter.

~

On a non-bookish note, I'd like to do something interesting with some of the copious amounts of photos I've been taking. I'm not sure what, though (other than making banners and other decorations for the blog, which I've already been doing and doesn't really count anyway).

On an academic note, my goal is to have two papers written by mid-year. Hopefully nothing goes terribly wrong and upsets that.

~

What resolutions have you made? Have you perhaps also conducted an analysis of your reading habits? Let me know in the comments.

Reading Challenges for 2013

Those of you who have been paying attention will have noticed that I've been participating in the Australian Women Writers Challenge this year. If you were paying particularly close attention, you might have realised that the reviewing component of the AWW2012 is what tricked me into led to me becoming a book blogger.

In 2012 I aimed to complete two separate AWW challenges: read and review 10 science fiction books by Australian Women — a tall order, given the paucity of science fiction by Australian authors generally — and to read as many (OK, originally I think I said 10, but I always knew it would end up being more than that) fantasy/other books by AWW as I could. And I did. I sourced some rather obscure SF books, used the challenge as an excuse to buy even more fantasy books and off I went.

But the fantasy part wasn't exactly a challenge. In almost all cases they were books I would have read anyway. I did discover some new authors through interacting with others doing the challenge, which I might not have heard about otherwise (or not as much), but mostly I read books I expected to read. I probably would not have gotten a Twelve Planets subscription if not for the challenge, but by the time the ebook subscription became available, I was already sold on the series. The main thing I can conclusively say is that without the challenge, I almost certainly would not have become a book blogger and probably would not have read as many books as I did this year.

In 2013, I'll definitely be continuing to post AWW reviews — I am in fact one of the curators, now, for the challenge's review archives for speculative fiction — but I feel like setting a specific goal for number of AWW books read generally is superfluous. 44% of ALL the books I read in 2012 were by AWW (and, if you're interested, 85% were by women generally).

Instead, I want to set two separate challenges for myself in 2013:

• Read 5 horror books by Australian authors
• Read 10 SF books by Australian authors

(Note that I've said Australian authors without specifying genders.)

The SF part should be obvious: I like SF and I want to promote what little of it comes out of Australia. I already have some books to start with since I didn't get around to reading all the books I sourced for 2012, finding instead some unexpected new releases to make up the numbers.

Allow me to explain the horror part further. When I was compiling my statistics about gender in Australian spec fic publishing (post 1, post 2), I saw that the overwhelming majority of spec fic published in Australia/written by Australians is fantasy. I have already addressed the lack of science fiction, but it is the lack of horror that is most stark. In 2011 only eleven horror books written by Australians were published (according to the Ditmar eligibility list). So few were published that there wasn't even an Aurealis Award given out in the horror category. Looking at the Australian Horror Writers Association's page for the Australian Shadows Award, no award was given out in the novel category for 2011 either. They have a reading list of eligible books for the 2012 award and there are only 7 novels on it so far (incidentally, I've read two of them already: Slights and The Price of Fame and one more is near the top of my TBR).

I don't read much horror, but I'm not against it, it's just not much of it crosses my path. So I want to branch out a bit and read more of it. I already have another two Kaaron Warren books lined up, the aforementioned near the top of my TBR pile book Walking the Shadows by Narrell M Harris (yeah, it just got pushed back into 2013, although I didn't think it was actually "horror" but we'll see), an anthology from Morrigan, Scenes from the Second Storey, assuming I remember to grab it when I'm back home, and we'll see what else the year brings. Five books is a modest goal, and I hope I exceed it, but given it's roughly half the yearly novel output of Australian horror writers, it seems reasonable.

I've made some banners for the purpose, too. If you want to use one or both of them on your blog, feel free, just please link back to here.

I'll be adding them to my side bar with counters once 2013 rolls around.

What reading challenges are you setting yourself for 2013? Will you be participating in the AWW2013? Do you want to join in on one or both of my SF and horror challenges? Let me know in the comments!

New Booksies

An update on the books I've received since I last felt like doing a New Booksies post. But before I get to the books themselves, I wanted to talk a bit about the read three buy one restriction I've been following. I got the idea from Tansy (on Galactic Suburbia, I think).

The idea was for me to stop compulsively buying books every time I saw one (or a pile) I wanted. Especially with ebooks not requiring any effort for instant gratification, some book-buying structure was definitely useful. I've found is that I've gotten quite good at reading books as I get them, particularly since they mostly trickle in. What I haven't got the hang of is reading my TBR shelf backlog. My TBR shelf is overflowing, so I mostly have read new (paper) books as I've got them (or left them floating on the couch...) but I'm not actively making room on said TBR shelf. Ebooks are partly to blame since finishing an ebook, even if it's one I've had for a while, doesn't magically free up paper book space.

So from this I've learnt noticed that buying a bunch of books at once (for example when I was in Australia and dropped the restriction for Aussie authors or when I was in the US, the event which I believe prompted the restriction) reduces the chances of my reading them in a timely manner. On the other hand, buying a pile of books at once (especially paper ones which are physically stackable) does make me happy. Therefore, my new experiment is going to involve saving my +1 unlocked books up and buying multiple books at once. I'm not sure for how long this will work. Ideally until Christmas, but I can't not buy the new Bujold book when it comes out in November, so we'll see. Hopefully I'll be able to make a bit of a gap in that shelf, though.

On to my actual new booksies!

I got Harbinger by Peta Crake from Penguin Australia on Netgalley. I'm currently partway through it and enjoying it. It's not a "romance" novel as advertised nor YA as I had assumed for some reason, but that's OK. Messenger for the gods (all pantheons ever) and strange/abusive goddy shenanigans.

And All The Stars by Andrea K Höst, self-published and review copy via Netgalley. I normally don't pay much attention to self-published books that aren't by authors I'm somehow familiar with. This one caught my eye because the author was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award... last year? It's science fiction and the blurb sounded interesting (and it's probably less like a particular Sean Williams series than it sounds).

And finally, I got the Australian edition of Venom by Fiona Paul. It's technically historical YA but the plot sounds like it will appeal to my (more speculative) tastes. The tiny cover above is the only version of the Australian edition I could find. I've included the larger US cover below (where it's just been released — Aus release is December).