(no subject)

Today and possibly tomorrow and maybe even Sunday is all about bibliographies. This will be derailed (and back to research proposal) if life demands. I need to sort out what's around and start working out what I need of what's around and how I'll access it.

I've been champing at the bit to get started on this for a while. My initial checks were all very well, but they didn't help me with my thinking past a certain point. And this is where I admit that looking at lists of books and scanning half-relevant articles hidden in obscure databases is one of my mechanisms for thinking. If paper is my external brain, then databases and bibliographies comprise my reptile brain. It's been a while since I fully exercised my reptile brain and I was surprised to discover it was still functional.

My reptile brain is a ponderous dinosaur. I could use a quick technical means to sort everything and have everything finished in a flash, but it's the going through slowly that shapes my thoughts. Dinosaurs have their place. Besides, I would never have found out (about an hour ago) that Guy Gavriel Kay once prepared for a conference by working out ways to amuse fjm if I hadn't taken the plodding route, with all its sideshows and divertissements.

After a few more hours work, I'm expecting my master file to be nearly a hundred pages long (excluding most of the worldbuilding - this is the scholarly side of things, not the creative). When I've broken it down and worked out what I need, it will be just the right size.

(no subject)

Another reason I like writing for Bibliobuffet. Today's "Behind the Words" column talks about why it's important to look for books that don't get the big attention.

This is something I care a fair amount about. That's why it's one of the subjects that keeps appearing on my blog.

It's easy to work out that the Hugo or Aurealis finalists are worth reading. It's easy to find out about books that get wide publicity in major newspapers and on major review sites. Then we can read them. Or not read them, if we've checked them out and decided that they're not our thing.

Finding enough information to make decisions about books from smaller presses or less-well known writers is much harder. That's why I jump up and down and wonder why when lists of "You've gotta read this" cover the same small group of writers and titles. They're not telling me anything I don't already know. They don't help me make choices beyond the obvious.

I think it's time to ask my friends again. What books have you read in the last little while that you think deserve more attention? Why should we read them?

Convince me (and anyone else reading this blogpost) to put your favourite new books on our To-Be-read piles. If there are enough books in the comments (more than ten, I think) then I'll compile them and put them in a post so that they can inform our reading choices. The books can come from any country, be by any writer. You can tell us about as many books as you like. The only restriction is that they not have received much attention within the industry. No starred reviews. No shortlistings for major awards. No household names.