The OF Blog: So I've been quiet for a spell

Friday, September 18, 2009

So I've been quiet for a spell

Hrmm...ever since I reactivated this blog back in May 2007, I don't recall being this quiet except maybe during September 2007, which incidentally was one of the two roughest months of my life. Thankfully, things are not as dire this September, although dealing with job-related stress combining with some minor physical ailments (I am 35 and sadly my body does not heal as quickly as it did even 5 years ago) has not been fun at all.

But I do plan on being a bit more active this weekend. Planning on reviewing at least two books (Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, which wasn't the most exciting of reads for me, and David Anthony Durham's The Other Lands, which was a better read) and maybe as many as four (still want to review Daniel Abraham's The Price of Spring and I may have something to say about Lavie Tidhar's anthology, The Apex Book of World SF) reviews, and maybe even five (if I decide to review The Atlantic's 2009 fiction issue) if I'm insane enough.

Also, I'm toying with the idea of posting a rough sketch of books, stories, and categories that I'm considering for my annual Best of Year posts in late December. Seeing that I just passed #350 for this year's reading, there is a chance that I will read close to 500 books this year and I think there'll be a lot to discuss before the year ends. Toying with the idea of adding a "pleasant discovery" category to represent authors that I discovered this year, regardless of the year in which their book(s) that I read/loved was released.

So...what have I missed while I've been largely gone from the internet this week?

2 comments:

Fabio Fernandes said...

2009 is definitely not being such a good year for me healthwise - a bunch of kidney stones put me down for the past two weeks. Still in pain but recovering now.

I´ve seen that you already read the Brazilian Stemapunk antho. Good! (Now I must send you the other books I´ve told you about!)

Larry Nolen said...

Sorry to hear that, Fábio! My dad has suffered from kidney stones for years now and I worry that I'll contract them in the next few years, as it's less than 5 years until I'm 40! Hope you get better soon - I guess you ended up having to spend time in the hospital until it passed?

Yes, I did read the book and sometime this week I'm going to feature it (along with three others) in an article about non-Anglo SF anthologies - the others being Lavie Tidhar's The Apex Book of World SF, plus two anthologies of Filipino SF that Charles Tan made me aware of several months ago). For the most part, I was pleased to see how similar (and how different!) the approaches were to the stories found in the VanderMeers' anthology from last year.

As for those books, bring them on! Are you still including that copy of Steampunk, as I did promise a friend of mine in El Salvador that I would send him the copy I have now if you were sending that one to me. If not, I think he can survive on the Anglo-American books (and Saramago in Spanish translation) that I'm sending him :P

 
Add to Technorati Favorites