OCD, Reading, and Me

Hello, to anyone stopping to read this within the churning glut of over-information we call the internet. Some of you may know I’ve been a quasi-professional book reviewer for over a decade. No big deal, but I was paid in free books and received a small monthly salary, so it was real enough.

.

.

Well, after 11 years, this reviewing gig dried up, fizzled, and the spark of the two-decade old site spiraled into the obscurity of the web. This left me with less income but also has brought up two items of note.

1. I still have about 200 unread novels waiting for review.

• After only getting paid for reading Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror for so many years, it might be nice to finally allow some different reading genres into my life.

• Okay, maybe there are three things. I have read dozens of fantastic books over the years, but some have been… errrrr crappy, or average and life is short. So, if I were to read some Speculative Fiction now, I’d want at least some of it to be, well… awesome and professional.

.

.

So, this is what I’m going to do. I read three books at once these days. First off, I’m going to read three types of literature.

• The first group will be primarily for pleasure and will mostly consist of the novels I’ve already received from indie authors However I may throw some professional novels into that category.

• I’m also going to attempt something which might seem a little intimidating to some, but I think it will be worthwhile for a person like myself. One of the three books will be a classic American novel and I’m starting with James Joyce’s Ulysses. I really think that anybody who wishes to even pretend to call themselves a writer owes it to their own profession to read some of the greats. For now, I intend to focus on the more contemporary American authors of the 20^th century.

• The final category will be something I used to have as part of my reading routine for years and that is nonfiction books. I’m looking forward to diving into some nonfiction literature. Knowing me it will touch on politics and probably dive headfirst into atheism.

Yeah, this will be hard, but it will also be interesting. Perhaps it will motivate me to use a higher percentage of my day reading and find more time to do so. I love sci-fi, fantasy, and horror novels. They will probably always be my favorite but as I grow older, I think it would be remiss for me to leave some of these classics unread and not to attempt to become more involved with the current discourse which is trying to guide our civilization to wherever the hell it’s headed.

Thanks for listening. Perhaps I’ll give a little update in the future and remark on how well this is going. And one other thing; although I may not be a quasi-professional book reviewer, I will still review any books sent to me on my company’s site Southwest Book Reviews and I’ll toss them up on this blog as well. If you have sent me a book, don’t worry it’ll be reviewed, just not on the site which you sent it to be reviewed on.

Happy Reading

Link to Southwest Book Reviews

.

.

You can grab one of my novels here, if you like.

.