Tag: On Reading

Back to Reading Genre Fiction

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I spent the last few months of 2020 speeding through the backlog of music biographies I had in Spare Oom, and before that I’d been catching up on a few comics (which I also did at the end of the year and start of this one, reading the entire Giant Days run by John Allison), so it’s been an absurdly long time since I last read genre fiction.

I’m trying to put a bit more thought into what I read this year. I’ve said earlier that I want to read more self-published and indie work — you know, to give my fellow writers a boost and all that. I also want to keep up with the pace I’ve been reading at as well. I’ve been finishing most smaller books in a few days, and the bigger ones usually take about a week. [Noted: I’m currently reading Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn and it’s a long one, but it’s quite a fun and excellent read so I’m zipping through at a reasonably good clip.] My current GoodReads challenge is at 80 books this year.

Thankfully I don’t have any current writing projects that need Yet Another Revision Read any time soon, so I can get ahead on clearing my To Be Read pile and not have new titles kicking around for months on end. I mean, I might reread the Bridgetown Trilogy at some point, just so I can get some inspiration and ideas for MU4, but other than that, I’ve got all the books to read and, finally, the time to read them!

Reading new books

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment
Source: Makoto Shinkai, ‘The Garden of Words’

Please I beg of you if you want to be a published author read one effing book published in the last 5 years. Just start with one. I’m BEGGING. — Sarah Nicolas on Twitter

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Last week a YA author posted the above tweet, but the reaction to it was quite unexpectedly divisive. While quite a few authors completely agreed with her, there were just as many who acted as if she’d took the lord’s name in vain or something similar.

To be honest, I totally get what she means by it, but it’s not something I can easily explain in just a few words. Personally, I’ll admit to reading a lot of books that have been published within the last five years, and hardly any that are older than that. It’s just my tastes, I guess? I did a ton of reading of the classics when I was younger; I was a middling Asimov fan and had a brief obsession with Vonnegut, but I kind of grew out of that in the mid-90s when I started reading more recent titles.

For me, it was never about trying to stay on top of whatever happened to be popular at the time. Even then I understood that it would no longer be hip by the time I got my own manuscript out there. It was more about checking out different voices and styles. Each writer has their own way of using and even subverting trusted ideas and tropes to make them unique to their own style. It’s informed not just by their imagination but often by their culture.

Sure, I’ll occasionally pick up an old book now and again. I still have to get through the last few books of Kate Elliott’s Crown of Stars series, nearly all the CJ Cherryh Union-Alliance books, reread Mary Gentle’s Ash books, and all those Robotech tie-ins. I’ve been wanting to revisit the Transmetropolitan trades, and I’m about to get caught up with John Allison’s Giant Days trades as well. So many books, so little time!

But back to that tweet. I mean, I can understand how some might have been upset by it (though to the point of trolling harassment is just a titch overboard, mind you), but let’s be honest: there really is a lot more out there nowadays. A LOT more, thanks to indie and self-publishing, e-books, anthologies, Kickstarter-funded publications, and even concerted efforts by big name publishers to introduce new voices.

If you want to write similar to Tolkien or Asimov or even George RR Martin or Stephen King, by all means, go for it. If that’s the style you’re best at, that’s cool. But this tweet isn’t about forcing you out of that style — this is suggesting that perhaps you should check out more recent books written in a similar style. Perhaps you’ll see that the genre has evolved in ways you hadn’t expected, giving you an even wider playing field for your created universe.

End of World Party

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

Just like anyone else here, I too read what’s going on in the world lately. I get frustrated. I get angry. I get riled up. I want to go on a long-winded Twitter rant. I want to start yelling and someone, anyone, about why the world sucks.

And then I step back and exhale. I delete the rant and close the app. I reconnect with what’s going on in front of me; the job search, my health, our upcoming trip to the UK, my pre-submission work for Diwa & Kaffi. I wind myself back down to a calm level and move forward again. I don’t ignore what’s out there; I just do what I can to keep it from consuming me.

I wrote Diwa & Kaffi in part because I wanted to write a story that was positive. That doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone is happy and cheerful and nothing bad happens and everyone’s okay in the end. In fact, the exact opposite of that happens. It’s just that this story could not be told in a dystopian way. This is about characters trying their best to be good people, and all the ups and downs that entails.

I used to read all kinds of dystopian novels, but now they exhaust me. Sure, I might return to them eventually, but right now it’s not the kind of book I want to read or write. I’ve got enough bringing me down; I need something that lifts me up and inspires me instead. If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that I’m much more productive, both creatively and in real life, if I use the positive as a goal rather than focusing on all the negatives I have to wade through.

It’s about going into battle knowing that I’ll win in the end.