365 Books: Halfway
Mar. 1st, 2011 04:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksWell, that was the six months that was. Halfway is actually 182.5, but I don't think you can round a book down.
Some things I have learned:
-- I can read a new book every day, no matter what else is going on in my life. In point of fact, there have been a couple of months here where having to read something and write about it as a daily obligation has been a lot of what has been keeping me sane.
-- However, I have to read whatever I feel like reading. Planning ahead farther than tomorrow hasn't worked, and sometimes planning for tomorrow doesn't work. If I try making myself read something I don't want to, I get the most extraordinary feeling of mental toothache.
-- I have no idea what books other people find interesting. At least, as far as the metric of how many people comment on the entries. I get it wrong every single time. People are interested by the things I thought were probably only me, and I don't get as much discussion on books that I know a lot of people read. May have something to do with my timing.
-- I do have some idea whether a review is any good. Which is a relief. I don't post them until I no longer think they're actively terrible, but I can tell that some are better than others, and people do seem to like more the ones I think are better.
-- I am better, at the moment, at reviewing nonfiction. I have concluded it is because I have not worked out an internal metric for how much information about fiction I ought to give in a review. I seem to feel that such pieces of information as genre of novel and name of the protagonist would be sufficient for everyone reading to go 'I can't read that now, the reviewer told me too much about it'. In short, I seem to have an over-sensitive spoiler-field, which is ridiculous, because I read fiction reviews myself and know about how much I would like to be told in them. It is just very difficult to make myself write that way.
-- On the other hand, reviewing nonfiction is much more tiring. If I am writing about a book of essays with many contributors, I seem to feel I have to go into really thorough detail, because I don't want to leave out any significant contributions, so I practically go essay by essay. If it's by one person, it's still not as intuitive to me as talking about the shape and structure and effectiveness of fiction. I can talk about structure till the cows come home.
-- Writing every day improves your writing. Yes, yes, who knew. Honestly, I knew this anyhow. It's just good to have the reminder.
-- If I could make my living this way, that would be a fine thing. ... I would in fact rather like to be a paid book reviewer. I had not been certain of that before starting this. I would not want it to be my only job, because I need to do something for large chunks of my time that does not involve sitting, especially sitting in front of a computer. But I enjoy this so when I'm not paid for it that I ought to try to figure out how to be paid. I mean, aside from collecting these into a book, which I have always fully intended to do. I suspect that money could get me past the mental toothache of not-wanting-to-read-xyz-now.
-- The more I read, the more I want to read. All right, I knew that already too.
-- This is awesome. I would still rather be writing fiction, at any given moment. And I knew this. But it's very useful to have it confirmed.
I think that about wraps it up for the moment.
Questions? Issues with my Oxford commas? General commentary? Please, please, more book recommendations?
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
comments over there.
Some things I have learned:
-- I can read a new book every day, no matter what else is going on in my life. In point of fact, there have been a couple of months here where having to read something and write about it as a daily obligation has been a lot of what has been keeping me sane.
-- However, I have to read whatever I feel like reading. Planning ahead farther than tomorrow hasn't worked, and sometimes planning for tomorrow doesn't work. If I try making myself read something I don't want to, I get the most extraordinary feeling of mental toothache.
-- I have no idea what books other people find interesting. At least, as far as the metric of how many people comment on the entries. I get it wrong every single time. People are interested by the things I thought were probably only me, and I don't get as much discussion on books that I know a lot of people read. May have something to do with my timing.
-- I do have some idea whether a review is any good. Which is a relief. I don't post them until I no longer think they're actively terrible, but I can tell that some are better than others, and people do seem to like more the ones I think are better.
-- I am better, at the moment, at reviewing nonfiction. I have concluded it is because I have not worked out an internal metric for how much information about fiction I ought to give in a review. I seem to feel that such pieces of information as genre of novel and name of the protagonist would be sufficient for everyone reading to go 'I can't read that now, the reviewer told me too much about it'. In short, I seem to have an over-sensitive spoiler-field, which is ridiculous, because I read fiction reviews myself and know about how much I would like to be told in them. It is just very difficult to make myself write that way.
-- On the other hand, reviewing nonfiction is much more tiring. If I am writing about a book of essays with many contributors, I seem to feel I have to go into really thorough detail, because I don't want to leave out any significant contributions, so I practically go essay by essay. If it's by one person, it's still not as intuitive to me as talking about the shape and structure and effectiveness of fiction. I can talk about structure till the cows come home.
-- Writing every day improves your writing. Yes, yes, who knew. Honestly, I knew this anyhow. It's just good to have the reminder.
-- If I could make my living this way, that would be a fine thing. ... I would in fact rather like to be a paid book reviewer. I had not been certain of that before starting this. I would not want it to be my only job, because I need to do something for large chunks of my time that does not involve sitting, especially sitting in front of a computer. But I enjoy this so when I'm not paid for it that I ought to try to figure out how to be paid. I mean, aside from collecting these into a book, which I have always fully intended to do. I suspect that money could get me past the mental toothache of not-wanting-to-read-xyz-now.
-- The more I read, the more I want to read. All right, I knew that already too.
-- This is awesome. I would still rather be writing fiction, at any given moment. And I knew this. But it's very useful to have it confirmed.
I think that about wraps it up for the moment.
Questions? Issues with my Oxford commas? General commentary? Please, please, more book recommendations?
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
