Skip to main content

Do I Still Want to Read Fantasy?

I was looking at my TBR shelf yesterday--the books aren't as neat as they were in the beginning of the year but they don't seem to be leaving the shelf, either--and it struck me that maybe I don't like to read anymore. Or...maybe I don't know how to pick my books. And then I saw an announcement for the 2021 SPFBO (a contest for self-published fantasy books) with a long list of 300 self-published fantasy books and I thought...maybe I could take a genre that I used to like but have fallen out with and see what's up with my taste in books.

And so I typed up the entries in my own list, looked each one up on Kindle, downloaded a few sample chapters and reshuffled the list into samples downloaded, samples I might want to download, categories I don't have any desire to read, and books not available on Kindle. Having followed SPFBO for the past couple of years, I'm well aware that my tastes don't generally align with the grimdark, longform tastes of many of the judges but the long list provides a collection of several kinds of fantasy and there's nothing that feels more productive than typing and organizing lists. 

Here are the samples I've downloaded:
  • A Troll Walks Into A Bar (Douglas Lumsden)
  • As I Was On My Way To Strawberry Fair (Raymond St. Elmo)
  • Blood Indigo (Talulah J. Sullivan)
  • Death by Miracle (Fowler Brown)
  • Emergency Shift (Daniel Potter)
  • Finnian's Fiddle (Chandler Groover)
  • Fool's Proof (Eva Sandor)
  • Fourth Sister (M.L. Farb)
  • Graves Robbed, Heirlooms Returned (Ashley Capes)
  • In the Jaded Grove (Kindred Realms #1) (Anela Deen)
  • King of the Hollow Dark (Cat Hellisen)
  • Order of the Magi (Christopher Scott)
  • Reign & Ruin (J.D. Evans)
  • Shadows of Ivory (T.L. Greylock/Bryce O'Connor)
  • Shift Happens (T.M. Baumgartner)
  • The Conjuring of Zoth-Avarex (K.R.R. Lockhaven)
  • The Deathless Ones (Niranjan)
  • The Museum of All Things Lost & Forgotten (A.R. Henle)
  • The Wayward Wizard (Alesha Escobar)
  • The Wrong Path (Jane Glatt)
  • Waking the Witch (W.V. Fitz-Simon)
I also have a few additional poetry zines in the basket. I'm curious to see what the notes & reading reveals about my tastes--are they changing that much? Are changing tastes at the root of my writer's block? Are lists the best way to feel productive?

Hope you're having a good week!

-- Chrissa

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To Blue Fields Far Below

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #228 , The Fashionable Twenties.  A sycamore fairy sits crosslegged in the road Dragons swim toward smooth hills above the storms Vines embrace the telephone poles  Someone washed the blue skies and she knows  It's time to dare the salty foam It's time to wade through the eternal fields' folds And gather golden apples for home.  Hoping this finds you with space to daydream and a good book in which to wander. Working on turning last week's prompt into a longer piece, as I found myself intrigued by the idea of tea in the garden as combat. Social situations are not my forte. As it's still Spider September, there will be a chihuahua-sized jumping spider that is none too happy about anything but hunting squirrels (that's for you, Mom).  -- Chrissa
6 comments
Read more

Flagrant

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #217. Come be part of the conflagration. :)  Oh, they called the mob to celebrate But only the fire heard They called the mass to congregate But only the dry grass bowed A conflagration Called to prayer Hungry for light Hungry for air Oh, they called the mob celebrate Wearing flames in their hair They called the mass to congregate Faceless in the burning air.  Greetings and salutations. I'm not sure what to say--we're not celebrating the 4th this year (not that I'm prepared to cede one holiday to the authoritarian idiots in charge of our state, but our grass is still dry from the heat and we have a dog terrified of fireworks...so we're celebrating by bunkering down and watching Howling 2  at the gleefully deranged suggestion of my sibling) and otherwise I've turned our dead corn plants into the basis for this year's Camp NaNo project...it's turning into a weird year, the kind of year where I'm reading more horror than norma...
7 comments
Read more

Not Slacking, Just Writing

 So. My actual screensaver called me out today. Have I been writing much poetry? Is the doggerel below P O E T R Y? Yeah, probably not. However. The real story is that I'm working my way through a few stories for Camp NaNoWriMo. At almost halfway through the month, I'm still not sure what will end up under the pen on a day-by-day basis but I've added to several.  My reading has been similar. Lots of initial chapters or initial handful of chapters but very, very few final chapters completed. I'm thinking about taking a day and just clearing out my zine basket. Summer heat settled in early, so I haven't been doing any outdoor reading, but zines are pretty quick and I should be able to finish several while the squirrels raid the birdseed. :)  Hope you're having a good writing/reading summer! It must have been a movie, black and white, Watched when I was younger, maybe sick, Glancing between Mom cleaning and the screen. A father and his daughter in a lighthouse New ...
Post a Comment
Read more