Monday, April 23, 2012

Adding to the list

I'm currently reading an anthology called Warriors edited by Gardner Dozios and George Martin.  There are some rather liberal takes on the theme but thus far the writing has been fairly consist in this mammoth collection with only one story leaving me questioning it's inclusion.  I've got five-hundred more pages of fiction left before I have any final thoughts on this collection, but in reading last night I reminded myself of a boring task that I always say I'm going to do every time I read a multi-author collection: I need to flag the authors whose works I really like so I can track down more of their stuff.

I kinda do this mentally, and while my current wish list for books is comically large I need to sit down and add to it further by going through the collections and I have and putting some authors names down for further investigation.

For instance, in reading Warriors I came across the name Joe Haldeman.  I've never heard of him but he has apparently been being awesome without my knowledge for a very long time, hence the need for me to chronicle my favorite writers from the collections I've read in the past.  When a collection such as Warriors crest the seven-hundred page mark even the stand-out stories and writers get a bit lost by the time the end is reached.  This is particularly true for me as I rarely read anthologies straight through to the end.  

It sounds like a boring exercise and in my case a bit of an unneeded one considering how much I have to read and how long my wish list already is but I'm gonna go through with doing it in hopes of remembering to check out some of those 'new to me authors' and not just relying on the old familiars.   

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