One of the things I miss the most about editing is the opportunity to share the exciting things I’ve read. When you edit a fiction magazine, you can point out the great new authors, or the marvelous short story by a master of the form. I lost that platform when I gave up editing to concentrate on my writing.
Of course, the difference here is that I’m not limited to short fiction or fiction at all. What you’ll find under each month’s heading are the stories, articles, essays, novels and non-fiction books that impressed me in the preceding four weeks. I’ll try to provide links whenever possible.
What you won’t find here will be critical commentary or negative reviews. There are too many good things to read in this world; I generally don’t finish something I don’t enjoy.
So anything I list here, with or without commentary, is something I enjoyed. I hope you will too.
I mentioned in January’s list that I had fewer books to recommend in February and March. I read a lot but didn’t finish some of the books, and the ones I did finish, I didn’t really like well enough to recommend. As I tell my writing students, you have to stick the landing. And some […]
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I read a lot in January and liked a lot of it as well. Some truly marvelous books (which is not what I could say for February & March. More on that in those lists). I also finished my reading for the in-person space opera workshop I was conducting in the middle of the month. […]
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December allowed me to have some extra brain time. Some of the crisis events of the previous six months had passed or been dealt with or are (even now) being dealt with. We’ve reestablished a rhythm in life, so I was able to read more in the midst of the usual holiday craziness. I read […]
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I’m still catching up on the Recommended Reading Lists for 2024. After August, I have to finish September’s (and December, of course), and then I’ll be caught up! Yay! I remember August better than I remember July. (Whew.) We held a successful anthology workshop. We learned a lot. We made a lot of progress on […]
Continue ReadingI barely remember July. We were reorganizing our business, repairing a lot of damage that we found, and trying to catch up on work that was due and wasn’t even started. Dean was still in PT…and then our air conditioner decided it would rather spit water at us than cool us down. (This during a […]
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A good reading month. I managed to read a lot of outside stuff while reading manuscripts from students as well. So, I’m back to making time to read for pleasure. It took a while to get there because my schedule has been so hectic, but I’m getting there! I read a lot of fiction, but […]
Continue ReadingBecause I had such a crazy weird hectic 2024, I got behind in posting—and even writing up—my recommended reading lists. I finally jumped ahead and posted October’s earlier this month. I’m nearly done with November’s. But I still needed to catch up on all the good things I read over the summer. I don’t remember […]
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I started the Holiday Recommended Reading List when I realized that I point out all the great holiday stories in January, after the season has passed. I am always a month behind in reporting what I read, and that will continue as I catch up on the Recommended Reading List. I got behind this year, […]
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May was when some crap hit the fan at WMG, and I found myself working 18 hours per day and getting very little sleep. Consequently, I didn’t read much in May. What I did read was in bits and pieces, spread out over the entire month. So I don’t have a lot to recommend here…but […]
Continue ReadingStill playing catch-up from our incredibly weird year. I’m not sure it was a bad year, because we got rid of a huge ugly problem in our lives, one we didn’t even know we had until January, and our business is thriving. Dean is healing, and we’ve made some good changes. So the year will […]
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