At the risk of repeating ourselves, we invited new Perth resident and fabulous writer Amelia Beamer, our very first guest, to join us to chat about taking time away from the field, reading science fiction and much else of tinterest. As always we hope you enjoy the podcast!
Pure Coode Street gold.
I really enjoyed this broadcast and its angst on reading and reviewing in the field.
I can empathize a little with your situations. I’ve been an unpaid reviewer in a couple of venues in the last year. While the free stuff is nice, I’ve also got lists of classic books I’d like to read to say nothing of entirely non-sf stuff. Sometimes you come across enjoyable stuff you never would have heard of otherwise. But, sometimes, you resent slogging through 500 pages of fine print. And I don’t even have the pressure of somebody expecting to get there money’s worth out of me.
One of the places I review at lets me do old stuff as well as new. You are absolutely right that there plenty of readers, maybe most of them, hitting decades old classics for the first time and reviews of that old stuff can serve a purpose. I’ve been surprised how many reactions there are to some of the reviews of older stuff.
As to the wild success of certain books, yes, it often is the writer’s skill in at least one aspect of telling the story. But, sometimes, a book gets published at just the right time. Often, then, its glory fades, and it becomes the answer to a trivia question. (Yes, that includes award winners.)
Two final thoughts. First, Tom Wolfe once proposed that it was status seeking, not sex, that was a prime motivator of humans. I think that, in certain circles, this has a big effect on reading habits as well as some people’s natural abouliance when it comes to choosing books. Second, Schoepenhauer supposedly said “We buy books because we think we’re buying the time to read them.”