For someone who loves words and pretends to make a living by writing books, I am astoundingly ill-read, especially if we’re talking about anything written after 1950. Case in point: I just spent an hour watching Bob’s Burgers reruns instead of looking for my Kindle and reading literally anything. And it’s not for a lack of having things to read. In fact…
… here’s a list of everything I should be reading right now.
DangerRAMA, Danger_Slater Danger gets top billing here because I am very much in man-love with him and I’ve been looking forward to this book ever since I heard he was writing it. Every story he writes is the greatest story ever, and this has THREE of them. I am both ashamed and appalled that I have not yet picked up DangerRAMA.
Scattered Together, Stephen Schwegler To be fair, I did read Scattered Together a couple times… when I was editing it. I haven’t actually picked up a real finished copy yet, though, so it’s kind of like it never happened.
Swear, Hakim Bellamy I’ve only actually heard Hakim read once, but it was enough to make a permanent mark. I picked up Swear as soon as it came out, started reading it, and then misplaced it during the move. Definitely something I need to finish. As sweet as he is in person, Hakim is angry as hell on the page and I love it.
And now, with apologies to the authors below, I’m just going to list the rest because, quite frankly, I am not Samuel Snoek-Brown — I think he might be made of magic — and I’m running out of ways to say “these people are awesome and I really need to read their shit.” And, let’s face it, if I was any good at following through on things this wouldn’t be a list of books I’m totally gonna maybe start reading soon, now would it?
Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb, Ally Malinenko
White Space & Other Stories, Sawney Hatton
Zombie/Apocalypse 2012: A Political Horror Story, Ian McClellan
Whatever Don’t Drown Will Always Rise, Justin Lawrence Daugherty
And now, just to give some hope to those listed above, here’s a book I did actually read.
Murmuration, Ryan Werner For the record, though, Ryan mailed me a copy and then I read it in an airport when my flight was delayed for two hours at midnight. Because I apparently need to be forcibly given books and then trapped somewhere without cable if I want to actually read them.
Take a lesson from that, all you other writers out there.