Jeff VanderMeer just made an interesting post (after reading Matt Staggs' post) about the need to be sincere, transparent, and willing to own up to past mistakes and misunderstandings. Since this is to be a meme of sorts, I agreed to post a few things, serious and not-so-serious alike, in the interests of full-disclosure (and as practice for the semiannual Confessionals I do):
1. I am an inveterate slacker who covers his sloth-filled tracks with posts that manage to avoid reviewing more than a handful of books a month. Somewhere out there, Felix Gilman is threatening a poor kitty because I never did write the positive review of Thunderer that I have intended to write since February (and no, Felix didn't know of me until after I had read and enjoyed the book, so it wasn't blackmail until later).
2. I fear that sometimes I come across as sounding too negative towards this guy when I occasionally get irritated at reading certain comments that I feel could have been explored more at length.
3. I purposely avoid reviewing certain types of books that would tempt me to write more negative reviews. I have nothing against writing negative reviews, but rather it's hard to motivate myself to mention a book at all that was bland, overly derivative, didn't appeal to me at all, and which I'd rather see used as squirrel drey lining.
4. Speaking of squirrels, I must confess that they are some of the most amusing, clever, and cute I have ever seen. Plus, Sugar Bush scares me on occasion, not to mention the rabid, vampiric ones Dunja always threatens me with on MSN.
5. I need to spend less time reading during the summer months. It is almost 90ºF here and sunny, and I'm typing. Something's not right. I need to be brown, not glow-in-the-dark.
6. I ought to be searching for a job right now, but I'm subject to recall in the next few weeks and nobody's in right now.
7. William Shatner's SF books deserve to be read and reviewed by Nick Mamatas. Why? Just because...
8. It took me minutes to get OU812 when I was 11 or 12.
9. I recently told a Challenger joke. Yes, I still remember many of those.
And no, I'm not going to 10 or beyond. These are enough confessions for now, right? Which ones do you think were the serious ones?
Edit: I forgot one. I always wanted to kill a man in Reno, just to watch him die. Does that make me a bad person?
Knight Errant
4 days ago
Posts
2 comments:
I'm horrible about getting reviews up too. I have authors who are also giving up hope of ever seeing their books featured. I get ornery when I feel like someone is telling me I "have" to do something.
I didn't get 0U812 right away either.
Yeah, I know the feeling. I am pretty straightforward about when I think I'll have the time to work on something. That being said, that SH review needs to have its draft complete by this weekend. Thankfully, I have the outline down pat. It's just tricky writing a dual review and have both books receive a fair shake and even more difficult when each riffs off of a classic like Vergil's Aeneid in different fashions.
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