Reading Challenge 2013: Read A Book A Week

While this is a post about a reading challenge, it is also the start of a challenge to write one blog post–besides Capsule Review and Screen Burn announcement–a week. I got side tracked with all my work for both InveterateMediaJunkies.com and for school. Time to get back on track.

I am not a fast reader. I tend to analyze every element of a story as I read, which makes a book most people can read in hours or days take me at least a week. That coupled with a horrible book addiction and I don’t have a “To Be Read” pile, I have a “To Be Read” mountain. And my bookshelves haven’t seen empty spaces in a while. To combat this, I’m going to try to read a book a week. Below is the preliminary list for 2013.

• Hell House – Richard Matheson*
• The Shining – Stephen King*
• Ghost Story – Peter Straub*
• The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson*
• The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold*
• A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens*
• Grave’s End – Elaine Mercado*
• The Amityville Horror – Jay Anson*
• Bad Monkeys – Matt Ruff
• Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States – Pete Jordan
• The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
• Damned – Chuck Palahniuk
• Rant – same
• Haunted – same
• Lullaby – same
• Choke – same
• Invisible Monsters – same
• Dairy – same
• Downtown Owl – Chuck Klosterman
• The Resurrectionists – Jack O’Connelly
• Feed – Mira Grant
• John Dies At The End – David Wong
• Sandman Slim – Richard Kadrey
• Grailblazers – Tom Holt
• Strange Flesh – Michael Olson
• Leviathan Wakes – James S. A. Corey
• City of Bone – Cassandra Clarke
• Vox – Nicholson Baker
• American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
• The Garden of Beasts – Eric Larson
• A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan
• Shotgun Sorceress – Lucy Snyder
• Switchblade Goddess - same
• Tempest Rising – Nicole Peeler
• Tracking the Tempest - same
• Sacré Bleu – Christopher Moore
• Lamb – same
• Practical Demon-Keeping – same
• Gil’s All Fright Diner – A. Lee Martinez
• Monster - same
• The Nymphos of Rocky Flats – Mario Acevedo
• The Atrocity Archives – Charles Stross
• Secret Talents – Olga Tegora
• The Rum Diaries – Hunter S. Thompson
• Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy – John le Carré
• Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
• The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides
• Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D. H. Lawrence
• The Menstruating Mall – Carlton Mellick III
• Deity – Vic Mudd
• The Psycho Ex Game – Merrill Maroke and Andy Prieboy
• Fat White Vampire Blues – Andrew Fox

Some of this will change since I will have three classes in the fall and I don’t know what I’ll be reading. The ones for my upcoming Reading in Genres class–marked (*)–are the only permanent ones. I had planned to use this year to go through Chuck Palahniuk’s books, so those will be the last to get axed. But A Memory of Light is coming out on the 8th, so I may get the urge to try to re-read the whole Wheel of Time series. I’ve also been thinking about going through all my Ramsey Campbell books too. So, we will see how this list evolves over the years.

So what about you all? Do you have any reading challenges or certain books that you getting ready for in 2013?

Update: This isn’t the only thing I’m doing this year. Check out the other plans I have for 2013 on my Facebook Page.

Anthocon 2012: Nov. 9-11

I am in the middle of getting ready for my only con of the year. The wonderful Anthocon! I’m only doing one panel this year as most of my time is filled with trying out a new Dark Fantasy RPG call Astonishing Swordsman & Sorcerers of Hyperboria. If you’ve read any tweets or blog posts over the last year, you know I’ve had the role-playing itch and I’m finally getting to scratch it. The fact that I will probably be playing with mostly writers is just going to be kick-ass.

The panel I’ll be taking a part of is “Tragedy and Personal Experience as Fuel for the Creative Fire” on Sunday. If you are someone planing to be at Anthocon, definitely stop by that panel. The dealer room will be open to the public all weekend, so you can find me there throughout the day if you can’t afford the price to get in for the panel.

I won’t update the blog while I’m there, but follow me on Twitter and Facebook for the fun and shenanigans that happens when a lot of writers congregate. But if you are in the New England area, you really should just come to the convention itself.

IMJ Capsule Reviews™ for the Week of 9.5.12

IMJ Capsule Reviews™ – All New Comic Book Reviews for the Week of 9.5.12!.

This week’s review are up at InveterateMediaJunkies.com! This week:

• I check out Harvest #2, The Phantom Stranger #0, and Transformer: Regeneration #83.
• Ian reviews Green Arrow #0, Venom #23 & #24, and The First X-Men #1 & #2.
• Jose takes on Dark Avengers #180 and Amazing Spider-Man #692 & #693.
• Tom enlightens us on Animal Man #0, Thief of Thieves #8, and Sweet Tooth #37.

Check them out and come back next week for more reviews!

Hazard Yet Forward Releasing August 7th

Hazard Yet Forward is a  charity anthology to help a fellow writer and Seton Hill Writing Popular Fiction graduate, Donna Munro, as she kicks breast cancer’s ass. This is anthology is a huge effort, with over 70 authors and over 70 stories totaling over 700 hundred pages of fiction. They’re examples of all genres: from Romance to Horror to Mystery to Fantasy. So there is something for everyone.

As a charity anthology, all the stories were donated. We all care about Donna and hope this helps her with everything that is ahead of her. All money that the anthology makes will go directly to helping Donna with her medical expenses. Having a brother-in-law that passed away from brain cancer and my liver transplant, I know how fast those bills start to get out of hand, even with health insurance.

Stars In Their Eyes

This post started out as a response of sorts from a Twitter reply I got from author Chris Bohjalian. Earlier that day I rated his newest novel, The Night Strangers, on Goodreads two stars. He was very polite and apologized for me not liking the book. As soon as I saw that, I had to reply back to say he had nothing to apologize for, because I knew many that enjoyed that book.

I mean, what kind of world do we live in when a writer feels he or she has to apologize to a reader that doesn’t completely enjoy a book and rates it on a murky spectrum of subjectivity and objectivity on a website?

Then, this morning, I read this article about a blow up turned flame war that engulfed writers, reviewers, agents, and worst, publishers and spread from Goodreads to Twitter and other social networks. It reminds me a lot about an incident I peripherally involved in a few years back involving the Twitter chat #Romfail and author Ray Garton, where I wrote a series of posts on the over all professionalism that such incidents lack.

If you wish to read them, they are the Calliope Wept: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

While the Goodreads blow up and Chris Bojalian’s response to my rating are very different, they both still stem from a problem with in writing: A unhealthy obession with ratings and reviews.

Yes, they are helpful–to an extent. Case in point: At Anthocon, during the MFA Programs panel, the topic of epublishing and “gatekeepers” came up, myself and Kevin Lucia agreed the lack of gatekeepers in the e-publishing world. At the end of the panel when we were open to questions, a man mentioned that the gatekeepers for epublished works were the customer ratings and reviews. The good books will get good ratings and the bad will get bad. And I called bullshit.

Yes, they can be helpful, especially in tough economic times, to help choose what book to buy. But, even the less perceptive people in the world can see that many of those 1 and 5 star ratings are shames. As I told the man, “If see simply, ‘This book rocks!’ or ‘This book sucks!’ or similar one sentence reviews, they don’t count in my mind.” I will expand on that in saying that those kinds of reviews are typically written by 1.) Friends or family trying to help get a good word out about the book or assholes being asshole or 2.) People with no real practiced skill at reviewing that they are going on base Pleasure Principle reactions which are the most subjective, thus invalid, methods of of ranking objective quality of a thing. It is those reviews that are at least a paragraph long that you always look for, because you know there is a better chance that the person who wrote it took the time look at it in an objective way and will use that toolset give to us all in 4th grade: Compare and Contrast.

But somehow, anyone who just decides to write anything, from the insipid to the intellectual, are seen to be endowed with a world altering power to decide the fates of books. I’m calling bullshit, again. I know the only book I can influence is the one I write, promote, and sell. I can use tools like ratings and reviews to help speed things along, but if all book blogs and site shut down, I can still build an audience and a fan base.

I think we, as a society, like to rate things a in the extremes. We want black and white, because the shades of gray get depressing and boring after a while. I had a friend in college that would go on those “Hot or Not” sites and only rate 1 or 10. She said, “If you aren’t gorgeous and decide to put you pic on here, you better be ready for harsh critics.” It the same thing here. So I wanted to share how I rate things. It’s not perfect, and that’s because it is still subject to my personal tastes. But I try to be as objective as I can.

1 Star – This is the ones where I wonder how they even got published. It the home of the books I add to my First Chapter Fail Club. There are intrinsic problems in the book that are apparent from the beginning would be hard to rectify by the middle of the book.

2 Stars – This is low end of most books. Now, this is not to say it is a bad book. Just that within the story, there were recurring elements that I thought were either weak, unnecessary, or one of the few pet peeves of mine. And those elements were enough to throw me out of the story. Not bad books, just not up to par.

3 Stars – This is where every published book is that gets the job done. Have good characters, interesting story, keeps the action moving, with a satisfying ending. If you are published by any kind of press with an editor, you should be here at the very least.

4 Stars – This high end of most books. They do everything the 3 Stars due, but crank it up a notch. So by the time I finish reading I am glad I read it and I know I’ll go back to it again in my lifetime.

5 Stars – These are the elite of my books. Either from a objective point of view, like Ulysses, that is just a literary masterpiece; or a subjective one, like The Hellbound Heart, that affected me both as a writer and reader and resonated with me and my own writing.

See, even I can’t keep the 1 and 5 stars from being heavily influenced subjectively. And there, in a way, I think is the fault of any kind of rating system: It can never be objective if left to the whim of humanity.