Science Fiction-Free September XV1

Been a while. When I said I would be updating this blog more frequently, I didn't mean every nine months as opposed to every two years. Nonetheless, there's the letter of the law and there's the spirit . . .

It's September, albeit a quarter of the way through. That means it's again time for Science Fiction-Free September, in which I place a temporary moratorium on reading science-fiction novels, my preferred genre, and generally stretch my boundaries a little bit by reading something I wouldn't normally pick up. Over the past few years, though I haven't blogged about it, I've still held to it, if only by the technicality of happening to be reading something else at the time. Again, there's the letter of the law.

The particular challenge this year is that as part of my planned reading, I'm going through all the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novels chronologically, starting in 1953 with Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and most recently wrapping up with 1969's Hugo winner, Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner. It so happens that the next book on my to-read list is Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin, the 1969 Nebula winner. Alas for Mr. Panshin, it is not to be.

Let me say in passing, and by way of closing off discussion of SF for the remainder of September: Three of the last five SF novels I've read were boring. The late 60s were, apparently. not good years for science fiction. Well, at least after Panshin comes selections by le Guin, Niven, Farmer, Clarke, and Asimov, so for a time I'll be in familiar territory.)

This month, after wrapping up my current book—The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, which is nearly finished and quite short—I plan on tackling something on my backlog: The Storm of War, a 2011 history of World War II by Andrew Roberts. This is a book that's been on my planned list for years. (In fact, if, heaven forbid, you've been paying attention to the sidebar on this oh-so-active blog, you'd have seen it listed as "In Progress," practically for ever, until I decided a book I had returned to the library and never borrowed again for two or three years was not, in any meaningful sense, in progress.) Assuming 700+ pages aren't enough to keep me occupied till October, I'll probably read something by an author I've never read before, to be determined later. (Update: I've settled on Allan Bloom's venerable translation of Plato's Republic.)

And at least I'm posting something rather than nothing. That's also a good start to the month.

Footnotes

¹Well, let's call it that, since I've been doing this since 2004 anyway.