Science Fiction-Free September, Episode XX

In September 2004, after realizing I had read nothing but a steady diet of science fiction for about the previous two months, I instituted a month-long moratorium on the genre. Instead, I used that September to stretch my reading habits a bit, opting instead for an eclectic reading list: The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight by Jimmy Breslin, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Here I Stand by Roland Bainton, and Keep in Step with the Spirit by J. I. Packer. I didn't get through my entire list, and some of the selections were a bit dodgy, but overall the experience was a good one. I wouldn't have read Life of Pi otherwise, for example.

Since then, even though my reading is now a lot more diverse—and science fiction is arguably no longer even the majority genre—I've kept up the tradition of Science Fiction-Free Septembers. This is the twentieth SFFS.

Each year in the latter half of August, I select enough books for roughly one per week—sometimes according to a theme, sometimes not.

Since 2014, I have maintained a list (which I have named, creatively, The List) of books that I want to read, in a number of categories: certain authors, certain series, notable works in a particular genre, and so forth. The List also includes a number of individual, uncategorized books: recommendations from friends or online acquaintances, something interesting that someone else was reading, or just other items that I might enjoy and get around to someday.

I started this year's SFFS list with the three books that I believe have been on The List longer than anything else, and which I have never read previously:

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

To this I added An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro and Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey, two books that I had planned to read earlier in the year, but put off. At some point the library will notify me that my hold on Stephen King's Joyland is available, so that is the sixth book on the list.

I'm currently two-thirds of the way through the supernatural thriller War in Heaven by Charles Williams, and so I'll finish that off before getting into To Kill a Mockingbird.

To encourage both more reading and more blogging, my plan is to post at least 250 words about each book as I finish them. My goal for the year is always to read 50 books of any kind. If Science Fiction-Free September goes as planned, I'll have reached 47 at the end of the month.

And then, somewhere around the beginning of October, I'll fall off the wagon and finish off a volume or three from The Expanse…