I’m a bit conflicted about this. First, I’m glad more took up the challenges that you and I have made in separate places to read/review these classics (even if some might need more prodding to get more diversity at the SFF Masterworks blog, as only 3 people have posted in the past five weeks or so ), but I think the “diversity” should expand to more than just backlist titles.

After all, one of the more experimental reprint anthology series, Best American Fantasy, had to be discontinued due largely to lack of support from readers. Not that I’m bitter about that

In the past few weeks, I’ve picked up several books by DG Compton, and I plan to write about them on my blog. I’ve also managed to find copies of some of the more obscure authors – such as Rex Gordon – on my list, and I plan to write about those too. Although I may well find they were obscure for good reason…

I’ve been putting the I’m-a-blogger-and-need-to-stay-on-the-cutting-edge-of-new-releases behind me and trying to replace it with the I’m-a-writer-and-a-reader-who-wants-to-know-more-about-the-roots-and-breadth-of-the-genre’s-history. But, like Larry, I think diversity is about more than just digging into the past. My past four reads have been Daniel Abraham, Peter S. Beagle, M. John Harrison and Ekaterina Sedia – a nice little list, if I do say, and I’ve been much happier and more invested in reading than I was when I’d jump from major epic fantasy release to major epic fantasy release.

Just wait, though, the next few weeks are going to bring an endless deluge of review for Mockingjay, The Way of Kings and The Black Prism. The blogosphere will look more sycophantic than ever.

Thanks for the link, Mark. I’ve also been enjoying Larry (and others) work on the SFF Masterworks blog, largely because I’ve read a stupidly large number of the books and am pretty interested to see what others have to say about them. Also, the “F” bit of it is interesting, as I know a lot less about that side.

I think you’re right that it’s worth looking at back list stuff. I don’t have any particular bias towards one side or another in my own blogging (er, all 7 posts, so far).

The only sensible thing that I ever remember reading in the NME was that “every year is the best year for music. You have all your new music PLUS everything that’s come out this year.” You can easily apply that to SF/F, I think.

A more recent example of this with the review that I wrote of Counting Heads. It came out in 2005 but, partly I suspect because it hasn’t been published in the UK, it passed me by. I then read one of Marusek’s stories in an anthology and was intrigued enough to have a look into him. And…I was glad to do so. He’s an excellent writer, and if only one extra person has a look into his work, I’ll be happy.

Good to know that some people are interested in reading about older work – it’ll help me keep my posting frequency up anyway!

“This is what the internet should be used for – not to prop up the titles that get decent amounts of marketing spend on them (mine included) but exploring niches and discovering range.”

This is a curious statement. You’ve previously been very open and honest about how important the online review scene was to you when you were launching your career, yet now you appear to be saying that reviewers should explore older genre fiction at the expense of supporting new fiction – isn’t that a bit of a contradiction?

Anyway, I agree that diversity is desirable. But the simple fact is that new releases will always take priority, for a number of reasons that have already been mentioned in the comments section of your first post.

I also think it’s worth pointing out that only certain blogs are really in a position to review older books – for new bloggers it’s not really a viable option if they want to build their readership.

The blogosphere is a very crowded place these days, and if you’re trying to establish a new blog it’s vital to attract readers by reviewing titles that people are going to be looking for reviews of – frontlist titles. You need to tap into the buzz, the genre zeitgeist. You won’t achieve that by reviewing old books.

For more established bloggers, this need isn’t so great, so these are perhaps the folk that can add some diversity to their reading habits.

I’m totally behind this kind if thinking. I would also love more attention being brought to the short story, how many sites review shorts?

Mark, I’m thinking of “diversity” of styles, authors, and thematic elements. Read not just a William Morris, but also a Sherri Tepper (helps that I’m alternating between his The Well at the World’s End and her Beauty), or Raymond Queneau’s Saint Glinglin alternating with John M. Ford’s The Dragon Waiting. Toss in a graphic novel, such as the anthology series Flight (currently reading vol. 7). Add some short fiction collections (right now, I’m reading two collections that Brendan Connell sent me, metrophilias and Unpleasant Tales).

All that makes for a diverse read, or so I’d hope. Just so happens I had all seven books with me outside while I was enjoying the sun for the past two hours. Reading 50-100 pages of one and then switching to another certainly creates a nice reading experience. Helps that these works have some interesting narrative approaches.

Diverse enough for ya?

Oh how convenient. I just posted my review of David Eddings’ Queen of Sorcery. My plan is to read the new releases, and listen to the classics as audiobooks (which I can do at work). Doesn’t always work as my next audiobook is a Peter V Brett.

But then I’m not so much a book blogger as a writer and fantasy fan. My motivations are as much about understanding the market as personal enjoyment.

I also think it’s worth pointing out that only certain blogs are really in a position to review older books – for new bloggers it’s not really a viable option if they want to build their readership.

Like Mark, I think this is really worrying. Since when is building a readership the aim of a blog rather than a happy side-effect of having worth saying?

Blogging about the latest releases is fine so long as that is not all that is reviewed. Not everyone receives ARCs so personal buying habits has to influence review choices.

There are so many SFF books from the last 40 years alone, no-one could possibly have read them all. I think it is important to read and review a mix of new and classics as this gives depth to the blog overall.

Personally I try to cover a range of books though I seem to be attracted to older works at the moment, which helps me better understand what has influenced new writers (and pick up on references and in-jokes too). I recently posted this http://templelibraryreviews.blogspot.com/ in which I write about 10 books I plan to read over the next few months, all of which are classics.

Looking at my last three blog reviews they’re all for books that have been out a year and I’m currently reading ‘The Stars My Destination’ for SFFMasterworks and I’m really into Sherlock Holmes stories and have been since before the TV series.

And I’m always a little surprised that bloggers don’t go chasing and sharing their new find authors. I’m very slowly catching up with Neal Asher for example. Some blogs like Walker of Worlds are great for seeing his fandom in action.

But I can see why they do have a new book fetish and why I do it now now and again. We like the buzz. Blogging is a lonely pass time on the whole. And hitting the new books is exciting. You join excited publicists, other bloggers, fans etc in a shared experience. Plus getting an ARC early does make you feel special.

To go out and blog about lesser known and less crowd pleasing books is a big leap. The writer Paul Magrs is a amazing blogger for showing the most diverse range of reading but most of us would never have time to read that widely unless we had his type of job.

I think as we get more bloggers and wider range of individuals the ones that want to stand out will be showing their reading through more personal selections rather than crowd surfing.

I’ve seen enough Way of Kings reviews already but I’m sure there are going to be a few hundred more. Though I haven’t seen enough reviews of books of some books that I’d expect to be pounced on by enthusiastic bloggers.

Sending out a review copy or ARC no longer a guarantee of lots of reviews. The book to exciting blogger ratio is high. And the choice for the blogger of books to read is mindsmashing. Choosing a hot book is just easier than weighing up things and making a choice out of everything that could be read.

The books I bought this month are 1 short story collection and 3 books to explore more EuroCrime. And sticking to my reading of SS and EuroCrime is feeding my own needs as a reader.

And I’m happy to see Short Stories are starting to appear more and more on blogs. Now that’s where the real chances are taken by writers,

In the end their is going to be a rebellion by older bloggers I think when they realise that they can’t live of New Shiny Alone

@James… and the nature of consumerism – we’re always being told that the new is better than old – we’re made to feel excited by the latest series or sequel to a movie. Books are no different. So we use the same tricks on blogs to make them exciting.

If a blogger thinks about hits – they are thinking about building an audience just like a writer does – what’s the point if you don’t connect to people. Hits are needed both to know that you are saying something people are coming back for and as motivation.

I tend to review small press titles, but that is largely based on what I receive and what I can get through. Sometimes the small presses have some really great stuff that I can read, and sometimes they have things that others probably would love, but that aren’t up my alley.

That said, I agree with you. The small presses deserve a lot of love, and so do smaller titles from smaller authors. I’m planning to review a couple of those soon enough (waiting on one to arrive in my mailbox).

I don’t get a great deal of hits, but people tell me they like the blog and I talk about what I want to talk about which is good enough for me.

The key thing for older titles is discussing books that have aged well and still have something relevant to say. I do think there are people who are looking for books outside the mainstream new releases and those are the people I see as my audience.

Frontlists may build hits, but how many reviews saying The Way of Kings is great do you really need to read? How many Mockingjay reviews will pop up this week? Variety is a good thing and I like to think in some small way I provide an alternative.

I think (generally speaking) there are two sorts of blogs, each of which is equally valid.

There are those that deal with the new and shiny, those we trust and go to because we want to know if the new Mark Charan Newton book is any good. We don’t want spoilers or deep analysis, we just want to know whether it is worth buying.

And then there are those types that take a text, engage with it, take it to bits and consider it. This is the sort of thing Paul C Smith does so well, and I’d read his review of a book even if I personally hated the text… just because he always has something interesting to say (Note: he now owes me alcohol for that comment)

In reality though, these types aren’t mutually exclusive and the best blogs mix these types up to different consistencies.

Because I’m a lazy man, even by the low standards of the truly effort-challenged among us – I haven’t read all the replies before mine. This is also why I’ve included no links. I’ll lazily apologize if all this has already been discussed, and covered, mea culpa, mea culpa.

I’ll get around to reading the whole thread, possibly.

Here’s my thoughts on the subject uncluttered by all your previous discussion:

I get what Mark is saying, but I’m not sure I agree – not wholeheartedly at any rate and for the following reasons.

New books are important, be they right at the heart of the movement or lurking out there in the fens at the fringe. We’d miss some great ones if we ignored one camp entirely in favour of the other.

That said, there are no blogs at the moment that are both more cherished and more of use to *me* (our esteemed Mr. Newton aside) than Larry’s of OF Blog of the Fallen and Paul C. Smith of Empty Your Heart Of Its Mortal Dream.

Now partly this is because they’re both erudite, engaging, and wide ranging, dare I say catholic, in their tastes. They take scholastic care to dig deeper than covers and ARCs giveaways – and they do discuss new and up and coming books.

But, they seem to focus on older works, works recently translated, or seminal yet overlooked examples of the best in the genre (that word is starting to make me wince, but let us leave it there as a readily understood marker for the sake of clarity).

Are they unusual? I don’t honestly know, they seem to be – even among the many other (very good) review and discussion sites that I follow, such as Punkadiddle, Speculative Horizons, Strange Horizons, NextRead, and A Dribble of Ink to name and shame but a few.

However, I think they’re exactly the sort of book site which I most benefit from – but perhaps not others – as they’ve helped me a great deal to catch up with elements of fantastic fiction I have to my shame, long overlooked.

One thing which I find helpful with the older titles is showcasing *why* they are so important and of course, the lovely pictures of bookporn and links to places to buy them (such as the Book Depository). I love a good cover especially from some of the smaller presses.

This has not been good for my bank account or my shelf space but I’m happy all the same that people have helped to push me out of my comfort zone of reading mostly nonfiction and “literary” novels (past and present) and pointed the way to things which I’ve really enjoyed but wouldn’t have picked up otherwise.

But these works of the past and the margins are not just good reads, they’re very useful to compare, contrast, and show how they influenced the books of the moment (and the future).

In conclusion, that is why I’d not want to see only the rare, the old, and the obscure, being championed online. They hopefully represent a past and a fringe movement which in the ideal world, continues to influence and enrich the present mainstream.

And obscure, old, and rare, are after all, not to everyone’s tastes so keeping both sides active in the debate seems the way forward if the whole of the species is to survive. Hybrid vigour then, if you will.

E.

“Admittedly, when you’re seduced by ARCs and free reads, it’s difficult to keep splashing out on older stuff”

I like this. Perhaps for transparency, more bloggers should post the provenance of the book they are reviewing – it might fill out the picture for us readers if there’s a line along with all the nuts’n'bolts that says “provided in ARC form by Gollancz” or “I bought this from Waterstone’s!”

I agree that bloggers should mix up some older stuff with their new shinies – perhaps a monthly “classics spotlight”.

As for reviewing the indies – with two novels and a collection from a very small press out, and a third novel coming out from Pendragon Press this December, internet word-of-mouth has been vital to the continued existence of my stuff. Small presses usually can stretch to free review copies, but marketing budgets usually end there.

I’m not a book blogger, although I do post the occasional review on my blog. But it’s chiefly there for me to write about stuff which interests me – which is science fiction. (I have another blog for the space exploration stuff.) I’ve noticed, however, that my most popular posts have all been book lists. And the more controversial those lists, the more popular they are.

Martin: definitely not a substitute for having something to say which is why I said that you can be both critical and passionate.

AS for what Niall posted yesterday: I find it cool, I think it shows he likes the series. I don’t see it as an advert (although yes, it can be), more of a shout out to other fans of the series.

YOU might not like it (maybe you don’t read the series)but why do you presume that you know what his readers want? Maybe the majority of them had the same reaction that I did: cool, another fan!

I don’t know what you mean by “large amount of complicity with the publishing industry” , it sounds like another judgemental comment to me, as though we are committing a vile crime when we,god forbid, even mention a publisher.

why do you presume that you know what his readers want?

I don’t think I did. I asked a question – Why would any of his readers want to read an advert? – because I genuinely didn’t understand. You’ve now answered this question so thank you. That said, I still don’t really understand the thought process. If someone wrote a blog entry that said in its entirety “I LIKE CHEESE” I wouldn’t go “Cool, I like cheese too!”, I’d be more likely to go “Er, what?”. But I guess that is my problem.

As it happens I have read The Hunger Games. I thought it was a nice, quick read that was also glib and manipulative so I didn’t have the urge to continue the series. I didn’t feel the need to post a Mockingjay banner with a cross through it to signal this fact though.

I don’t think the fact lots of blogs provide unpaid publicity for publishers is a vile crime but I do think it has negative effects – “when you’re seduced by ARCs and free reads, it’s difficult to keep splashing out on older stuff”, for example – as well as more insidious ones relating distance and perspective that people often aren’t aware of.

Review what you want to review. If you don’t want to review it, you’re not being honest and thus you’re not being a good reviewer.

Yes, once again I have summarized everything and rendered myself the salvation of this blog.

Joe Abercrombie beats up kids. Don’t listen to him.

Sometimes what we want, is bad for ourselves and others. Other times, it’s downright toxic.

E.