Please take a moment to visit the site of our sponsor, Shimmer Magazine. Okay, well, maybe they’re not really a sponsor per se, but they do have that nice shiny (shimmery?) banner ad up there, so they kind of are. It’s coming out in October or thereabouts, and I’m sure it’ll be chock full of spectacular content, not the least of which is a brilliant book review by me.
New this month: near-future dystopic SF from Paolo Bacigalupi, about immortality and the repurcussions it’ll have on society; the tale of an unusual man and an unusual cross-country race from Robert Reed; a second tale from Reed, this one completely different–a creepy SF tale about two female roommates and a young man who comes to visit…; an avian fantasy from Gene Wolfe; a new noosphere/Guth Bandar tale from Matthew Hughes; the story of a very selective princess by John Morressy; and a very short trip back to the days of the Cold War courtesy of Bruce McAllister.
I was talking to someone about my various reviewing gigs, and she mentioned that freelance work like that sounds like a dream job for someone who loves reading. That’s true to a certain extent, but at times it can also be somewhat of a nightmare.
See, the thing is, most reviewers are assigned certain books to review, and so you have to read and review it no matter what. If you absolutely hate the book, you have to finish reading it, and then write a negative review. Doing this can be cathartic to the reviewer, since the author made him suffer through such a dreadful book. But that doesn’t really make amends for the fact that several hours of the reviewer’s life have been wasted reading the dreck in question, and suffering through those hours can be exquisite agony.
On the other hand, of course, it’s always nice to be paid to read something you would have read anyway, and it’s always a nice surprise to read and really enjoy something you wouldn’t have picked up otherwise. That’s happened to me a couple times already since I started reviewing regularly, and for that I’m grateful.
In any case, the primary reason for my unplanned blog vacation has been that I’ve had to devote nearly all of my free time to getting my reading done, and reading bad books seems to take much longer than reading good ones. I’ve been reviewing two books per week for Kirkus, and that’s become too much, so I’m going to scale back to one per week. That should make reading–even the bad books–much easier to accomplish without devoting all my time to it.
In August, we acquired: a superb new contemporary fantasy about witchcraft from Peter Beagle; a humorous dog story from Albert E. Cowdrey; a new Maggot novella from Charles Coleman Finlay; and a new “Billy” short-short from Terry Bisson.
I do apologize for my rather lengthy and unplanned hiatus from blogging. I’ve been quite swamped with other things recently and blogging is usually the first thing to go. I hope to get back on the ball soon.
In Jenna Glatzer’s excellent book, How to Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer, I came across mention of a website called Ed2010. It’s “a group for young editors who are looking to reach their dream magazine jobs by the year 2010.” The book itself will only be of use to you if you’re interested in writing non-fiction, and probably isn’t necessary if you plan on sticking with SF & fantasy.
But anyway, the reason I mention it is to point out Ed2010, as I thought it might be interesting and/or useful to some of my readers. Lots of you probably wouldn’t mind getting a job in publishing, even if it was non-genre work; if that’s the case, there’s plenty of information and links there for your perusal.
Two more of my Kirkus reviews are now available online:
The Ultimate Adventure by L. Ron Hubbard
Also, in other good news: I sold a review of Peeps by Scott Westerfeld to Strange Horizons. Peeps, by the way, goes on sale Thursday, August 25. It’s Peeps week!
Voting for the Quills Awards is now open. Anyone and everyone can vote, so go do so. It’s like voting for president, but obviously, much much more important.
If you’re wondering what the heck the Quills Awards are, here’s a brief snippet from their website:
The Quills Awards are a new national book award that honors excellence in writing and publishing, including consumers in the voting process. Designed to inspire reading while promoting literacy, the Quills will honor winners in more than 15 different categories, including Book of the Year, Debut Author Of The Year, and Lifetime Achievement.
Niall Harrison has some interesting thoughts on Things Critics Should Not Do:
[My review of Accelerando] was the first piece I wrote for [Interzone], and the first time I tried to compress a coherent judgment into 400 words. I mostly stand by the content, but I don’t think I got the construction of it quite right. I don’t think it’s a bad review, as such, but for instance … given the readership of Interzone and the limited space available, I probably spent more time than I needed to explaining what the book is and what it’s about. And then there’s the last sentence, in which I descended to blurbing.
Welcome to millennium three, decade one: science fiction isn’t the same any more.
I cringe every time I look at it, not so much because I don’t believe it–sure, it’s an overstatement, but whatever you want to say about the merits of Accelerando I think you have to recognise its importance–but because I know I wrote that sentence to look like something that might appear on the back of a book. And that’s the first thing I was saying … that Critics Should Not Do. The review doesn’t need it (and publishers should be made to work for their blurbs, dammit!)
He also references this Caitlin R. Kiernan quote (via Gwenda Bond & Chance):
There are many words and phrases that should be forever kept out of the hands of book reviewers. It’s sad, but true. And one of these is “self-indulgent.” Whoever reviewed Neil’s new novel, Anansi Boys, for Kirkus calls it “self-indulgent” (though the review is, generally, positive). And this is one of those things that strikes me very odd, like reviewers accusing an author of writing in a way that seems “artificial” or “self-conscious.” It is, of course, a necessary prerequisite of fiction that one employ the artifice of language and that one exist in an intensely self-conscious state. Same with “self-indulgent.” What could possibly be more self-indulgent than the act of writing fantastic fiction? The author is indulging her- or himself in the expression of the fantasy, and, likewise, the readers are indulging themselves in the luxury of someone else’s fantasy. I’ve never written a story that wasn’t self-indulgent. Neither has any other fantasy or sf author. We indulge our interests, our obsessions, and assume that someone out there will feel as passionately about X as we do.
I blogged the above because I thought it was interesting and wanted to share, but while I’m at it, I just wanted to point out that the reviewer in question wasn’t me. I do review for Kirkus, but I would never call Neil “self-indulgent.” (Well, I shouldn’t say never, but I kind of doubt I would.) I haven’t read the book yet, but I do hope to review the audiobook for Publishers Weekly.
I was also not the Kirkus reviewer who reviewed Scott Westerfeld‘s Peeps, as was speculated on his blog. I did, however, write a review of it, and I hope Niall will like it, despite my rather blurby last sentence.
