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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

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