![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leahbobetInterestingly mixed writing day yesterday: sent out two stories before lunch, came home to one of the nicest rejections I've ever seen, and was ready to pack up the story to go elsewhere when my printer cartridge died. Seven pages from finishing the print job. *sniff* Will have it back with the refill tomorrow, I'm told, but this did screw up my Master Plan of mailing the story on my way into work. And got back from work (a shift filled with relationship psychodrama) to find the new Internet Review of Science Fiction in my inbox, and to see that Sonnets Made of Wood had been reviewed.
Did manage to get a story to Polyphony just in time (Towers, actually), and did sell two poems to Aoife's Kiss last week: they're tentatively slated for the March issue, one in print, one online. Also got contributor's copies of the current Aoife's Kiss, which has one of my poems in it. I haven't had a chance to read it through yet; report later.
Otherwise, all's been quiet. Have been spending too much money on Commercialmas, had some money spent on us (we now have a coffee table and a verrrry nice standing lamp from Ikea, which lights up the whole apartment by itself), and working. The![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sandwichboy has a cold. I was wise enough to take some echinacea, and do not. I'm down to five days a week for the time being -- had a bookstore shift cut, and was so tired I was happy to oblige even though it's disorienting to only be in there once a week -- so I'm getting more sleep and feeling more sane. That might not last for long, though: at the Second Job, the person with seniority is leaving at the end of January, and several other people are making noises about leaving. I won't be surprised if they ask me to pick up a shift when that happens.
Still thinking about reading habits right now: what kind of reader one is, and how that changes. I'm starting to think that some of how we perceive ourselves as readers is tinged with bias, as is everything else to do with self-perception. When I was picking out a book off the new releases shelf a few weeks back, the better to read and review it for the store, I found myself wanting something fantasy to diversify a little. In my head, fantasy is what I read. It's what I write. It's what I do.msagara, however, pointed out that maybe I should take an SF book (Spin State, actually, which I was kind of helplessly drooling over and going No! Should read something fantasy!), as I seem to be the store's resident SF reader right now.
This stopped me pretty short. I don't consider myself an SF reader. I grew up on a steady diet of McKillip, Eddings, Athuriana, and Beagle, and still reread way too many of those early '90s elfy books when I'm feeling in need of comfort. Then I looked at the stuff I've reviewed for the store since I started there: Neal Stephenson, Elizabeth Moon, Karen Traviss (both books), Peter Watts. I looked at my staff picks for Christmas, and then thought of what they would have been if we could get the first books of certain SF series in right now.
Dammit, Leah, I said to myself. You're an SF reader. When did that happen?
I really don't know the answer to that one. SF-readerness kind of snuck up on me in the night a few years ago sometime, I couldn't say when. However, this is the first time I've been aware that my perception of myself as a reader and the reality of my habits don't actually match. I could have gone forever happily reading SF and claiming to be a fantasy reader. On a side note, the two fantasy books I've reviewed for the store were not nearly as enjoyed as the SF ones, but that's probably because someone beat me to Sunshine.
I'm applying this idea to a number of avenues right now. Bookselling: no, people don't know what they like until you put it in front of their faces sometimes. This is actually the function of the capsule reviews on the shelves at the store: there are customers who navigate new releases by knowing their tastes are like or unlike those of certain staff members.
In terms of critique, I know this is important but I'm having trouble figuring out what to take from it. We've already established (long ago) that there are times when a critter is saying one thing and meaning another thing, and interpretation is required. This gains a whole new level when we take into account that the critter might not know what they mean. Obviously this won't apply to all cases, or even most cases. But this means something or other. The biases I walk into when critiquing SF, the standard maybe-I-won't-understand-this and a certain wariness of dry characters, dry settings, flatness and overexposition and things I consider staples of a certain old-style school of SF...they aren't even mine, really. They don't exist. I read this stuff anyways, and have proof these biases are unfounded, and still hold them.
I'm having real trouble knowing what I'm trying to say here (ironically enough). But I think it's something important. I'll know when I find it. *grin*
Did manage to get a story to Polyphony just in time (Towers, actually), and did sell two poems to Aoife's Kiss last week: they're tentatively slated for the March issue, one in print, one online. Also got contributor's copies of the current Aoife's Kiss, which has one of my poems in it. I haven't had a chance to read it through yet; report later.
Otherwise, all's been quiet. Have been spending too much money on Commercialmas, had some money spent on us (we now have a coffee table and a verrrry nice standing lamp from Ikea, which lights up the whole apartment by itself), and working. The
sandwichboy has a cold. I was wise enough to take some echinacea, and do not. I'm down to five days a week for the time being -- had a bookstore shift cut, and was so tired I was happy to oblige even though it's disorienting to only be in there once a week -- so I'm getting more sleep and feeling more sane. That might not last for long, though: at the Second Job, the person with seniority is leaving at the end of January, and several other people are making noises about leaving. I won't be surprised if they ask me to pick up a shift when that happens.Still thinking about reading habits right now: what kind of reader one is, and how that changes. I'm starting to think that some of how we perceive ourselves as readers is tinged with bias, as is everything else to do with self-perception. When I was picking out a book off the new releases shelf a few weeks back, the better to read and review it for the store, I found myself wanting something fantasy to diversify a little. In my head, fantasy is what I read. It's what I write. It's what I do.
msagara, however, pointed out that maybe I should take an SF book (Spin State, actually, which I was kind of helplessly drooling over and going No! Should read something fantasy!), as I seem to be the store's resident SF reader right now.This stopped me pretty short. I don't consider myself an SF reader. I grew up on a steady diet of McKillip, Eddings, Athuriana, and Beagle, and still reread way too many of those early '90s elfy books when I'm feeling in need of comfort. Then I looked at the stuff I've reviewed for the store since I started there: Neal Stephenson, Elizabeth Moon, Karen Traviss (both books), Peter Watts. I looked at my staff picks for Christmas, and then thought of what they would have been if we could get the first books of certain SF series in right now.
Dammit, Leah, I said to myself. You're an SF reader. When did that happen?
I really don't know the answer to that one. SF-readerness kind of snuck up on me in the night a few years ago sometime, I couldn't say when. However, this is the first time I've been aware that my perception of myself as a reader and the reality of my habits don't actually match. I could have gone forever happily reading SF and claiming to be a fantasy reader. On a side note, the two fantasy books I've reviewed for the store were not nearly as enjoyed as the SF ones, but that's probably because someone beat me to Sunshine.
I'm applying this idea to a number of avenues right now. Bookselling: no, people don't know what they like until you put it in front of their faces sometimes. This is actually the function of the capsule reviews on the shelves at the store: there are customers who navigate new releases by knowing their tastes are like or unlike those of certain staff members.
In terms of critique, I know this is important but I'm having trouble figuring out what to take from it. We've already established (long ago) that there are times when a critter is saying one thing and meaning another thing, and interpretation is required. This gains a whole new level when we take into account that the critter might not know what they mean. Obviously this won't apply to all cases, or even most cases. But this means something or other. The biases I walk into when critiquing SF, the standard maybe-I-won't-understand-this and a certain wariness of dry characters, dry settings, flatness and overexposition and things I consider staples of a certain old-style school of SF...they aren't even mine, really. They don't exist. I read this stuff anyways, and have proof these biases are unfounded, and still hold them.
I'm having real trouble knowing what I'm trying to say here (ironically enough). But I think it's something important. I'll know when I find it. *grin*
