Kerry Allen's Blog

Nov 12 2007

Fall Cleaning

Tag: Reading — Kerry Allen @ 1:00 am

My little book “reviews” come in handy when I can’t come up with any inane babbling for my regularly scheduled post, but those “reviews” are even harder to come up with because I will only write one for a book I not only liked but liked enough to take the time to jot down my thoughts about it and organize them in a semi-coherent manner and track down a cover image and the ISBN and type it all up… It’s just not worth the effort for a book that only reaches the “it didn’t suck” bar—definitely not for one that falls short of that.

I was reading a book last night, a SF romance, and it was giving me a headache because it seemed like there were 50 non-English words on every page, and I wasn’t in the mood to keep track of a whole other language. The story itself was interesting, and I want to know what happens, so it’s a Put It Down For Now rather than a Do Not Finish.

I picked up a different book, a vampire romance, and while there were several things about it I found intriguing, there were also a number of things that had me groaning and rolling my eyes. I want to know how it shakes down, but not right now. Put It Down For Now.

I realized: In one evening, I had removed two books from the unexplored frontier of the TBR shelf. I know what they’re about, I know what frame of mind I’ll have to be in to finish them, and I know they’re not great enough to make it worth my time to “review” them. If they had really sucked, I would also know by this point they were discards.

I also realized: I waste a lot of time lingering over books I’m just not in the mood for. I’m in the middle of this one, so I don’t want to pick up another one, but I don’t really want to read this one right now, so I won’t read anything at all—hence the backup in the TBR pile.

These newfound realizations prompted a decision: I will no longer make a “til The End do us part” commitment to a book that doesn’t grab me and squeeze me and refuse to let me go.

This will enable me to: expedite the garbage purging process, more rapidly discover those rare unputdownable books, and sort everything in between into Read It Later When… categories.

If I can sort out two books a day, I’ll have that shelf cleared off and hungrily awaiting fresh meat well before New Year’s.

I’m particularly eager to do this now because at the end of December, I plan to hold the First Ever Annual Squeeie Awards honoring the best reads of 2007, and I would love to find a few more to flesh out my thus far emaciated list. (Have I mentioned it’s been a pretty sad year for books? The good ones have been outstanding but few and far between.)

4 Responses to “Fall Cleaning”

  1. Angela James is SO pretty.
    November 12th, 2007 at 3:49 pm

    Have you tried CL Wilson yet?

  2. Kerry Allen is SO pretty.
    November 12th, 2007 at 4:04 pm

    I’ve had Lord of the Fading Lands on my wish list, but I keep ordering around it because it comes so highly recommended by people I never agree with, I’m concerned it may be too highbrow for my “trailer park taste.” Perhaps I’ll weaken with my December order…

  3. Angela James is SO pretty.
    November 13th, 2007 at 4:37 pm

    I don’t think it was highbrow at all (in a good way, lol) which is why I think the sequel hit the extended USA list. And why I enjoyed it. Because it’s easy to relate to and read. With the exception of the prologue which is, for some reason, hard to wade through.

    If you’ve ever read Shana Abe (her dragon books?) or Warlord trilogy by…Elizabeth Vaughan, I would put it along the same lines as those, for readability.

  4. Kerry Allen is SO pretty.
    November 13th, 2007 at 4:56 pm

    I love Shana Abe’s dragon books, so I guess I’ll move Wilson up on my list!

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