I’ve been on a reading kick lately, digging through various sections of my To Be Read list. Right now I’m cleaning out my Music Bio shelf and blasting through a number of them; Chrissie Hynde’s Reckless (ridiculous and funny), Kim Gordon’s Girl in a Band (no f*cks given), Pat Benatar’s Between a Heart and a Rock Place (badass fun) Ani DiFranco’s No Walls and the Recurring Dream (a bit cringe for varying reasons and could not finish), Chris Frantz’s Remain in Love (fun and endearingly wholesome), and Graham Nash’s Wild Tales (quite the drug-happy horndog back in the day) are just a few recent reads, with more to go. I’m devouring those just as fast as I devour manga tankobon, so I should be able to hit my GoodReads year-end goal pretty easily.
It occurs to me that as a writer of science fiction and fantasy, I probably should read more of that genre. I mean, aside from rereading my own stuff for revision purposes! Heh. Seriously, I’ve been kind of lazy in checking out new titles over the last couple of years, and maybe a bit too choosy as well. Although I have been tempering that by catching up on a few older titles never got around to until recently (Marie Brennan’s Lady Trent books are absolutely amazing!), I really need to open my eyes to new stuff again.
I guess part of that is because I’ve been feeling a bit distanced from my own genre as of late. I still love writing in it, still like coming up with some great ideas, but when the only genre titles I’ve been reading are my own, then I end up in an echo chamber of my own making, and that’s not good. I need to look out there and see what’s going on, what other writers are talking about. Oftentimes I’ll be inspired, whether directly or indirectly, and I feel like I’ve been missing that.
I mean, not that I need more books in this house. But still.
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