The OF Blog: 2008 Resolutions

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

2008 Resolutions

So this is the time for millions of people in the US and billions elsewhere (depending on their calendar, of course) to make all sorts of resolutions for the new year. Although my personal resolutions shall be listed elsewhere, I do have a few semi-professional ones in regards to this blog and my spec fic reading. Listed below are certain goals that I've made. Let's see how many of these I manage to keep.

1. To review a wider variety of books that fall within the broadest definition of the "speculative fiction" genre.

2. To review not just the newest works coming out, but older books that I feel deserve a new generation of readers.

3. In relation to #1, to review more books written by female authors and by people of color, in hopes of learning even more about the various perspectives that people have about each other and humanity in general.

4. To read more books written in non-English languages, either in English translation or in the original language whenever possible.

5. To review at least 50 and hopefully 100 books this year, with 50% of those being late 2007 or 2008 releases.

6. To do more author interviews for this blog and also for wotmania's Other Fantasy section.

7. To get more readers to at least consider reading at least one of the following authors: Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco, Ursula Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, José Saramago, Edward Whittemore, Jeff VanderMeer, Nalo Hopkinson, and R. Scott Bakker.

8. To discover at least one new author's works and to promote those works here in hopes of that author gaining a wider audience.

9. To engage in more conversations with authors and with genre fans/bloggers on more blogs and forums, in hopes of learning more and sharing more.

10. To have even more fun running this blog and to challenge myself to continue this activity in light of personal/professional plans for later in 2008.


There, those ten ought to be achievable, no? And of course, if you're reading this and have a blog/forum that you think I ought to visit, do feel free to list it in the Comments, provided of course that it isn't already listed in the Links to the right.

3 comments:

Joe said...

You've already accomplished part of #7 with me. I have New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson out from the library solely due to your mentioning it.

In other news, I am working on The Darkness That Comes Before right now.

Graeme Flory said...

Put me down for another slice of resolution #7. Thanks to your Gene Wolfe series the first story I read in the 'Wastelands' anthology was 'Mute' and my Christmas book token will more than likely be spent on at least one of his books.

Happy New Year Larry!

Anonymous said...

Although I didn't hear about the authors on your blog I did get a chance to read books by Umberto Eco, Gene Wolfe, and Jose Saramago this past year. I hope to get to something by Jeff VanderMeer this year...

 
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