That blogger would be me, btw 
I can’t help it I have a few ideas about what I want to write about but the idea’s don’t seem to land in anything resembling a coherent post so you’re going to get a ramble, sorry.
I see the old vs new debate has flared up again (and no it’s not the PC vs Mac thing). The new is me. A blogger who happens to post reviews. There a very good post on Vulpes Libris about the whole thing (thanks to . Susan Hill has it bang on when she says that we (for the most part) are unedited, undisciplined (we don’t review to release dates), and sloppy. I try not to be but without an editor it’s hard to get everything polished though I do try to get reviews done to release dates if I have a book far enough in advance.
On the plus side because we are raw and our reactions are little bit freer, or that’s how I find it. The other thing is that the books that I read about on blogs rarely appear in national publications though SFX, and Deathray magazine do a sterling job in the space available. John Self said somewhere that his reviews have mellowed a bit as he knows that his review might be read by the author and doesn’t want to be too negative.
That’s funny as sometimes I want to write xxx really should step away from the keyboard and then have their fingers chopped off. Though I don’t ever write that. What would be the point? Whoever it was didn’t work for me but it obviously worked for the people produced it so it’s not the right book for me. There are books that aren’t perfect but well worth reading like Debatable Space by Philip Palmer because you know that as they progress they’ll get better and what they’ve written already is pretty good.
I do wonder if all this positivity can be confusing? I’m a bit a of a cheerleader I admit. I do tend to gush, and I’ve written about that before. But then I think that I’m giving readers of this blog a better idea of what a book is about and whether it’s the type of book for them than if I hadn’t written the review and even if I don’t get chance to do a review I might mention a book that sparks your interest and you can follow the links or look it up on google (or any other search engine of your choice). So in the end I’m not to worried about the gushing as long as it comes over as genuine (which it is)
OK, changing subject but sticking with old vs new. This time I’m thinking of books vs books or more exact glue-bound paper vs electronic screen read words. This is because publisher are giving PDFs away for free, free, free. This is quick a sensible idea to see if people find this a good way of read. I don’t. I can’t imagine anything more uncomfortable than reading and entire novel glued to a screen, maybe I’ll change my mind when I see a Kindle, Sony Reader, etc in the flesh but until then I’ll stick to my TBR pile of books. Though strangely I do by PDFs of non-fiction like Zen to Done, How to be a Freelance Rockstar, 2dArtist Magazine, and boring web-related textbooks. The types of books that don’t need to be read from beginning to end and don’t need undivided attention.
Moving on, I had a look at the outermost level of my bookshelves the other day and got slightly disturbed by the number of supernatural, detective, urban fantastical titles there are. I wonder what sort of impression that gives out? I need to get some more straight titles on there pronto. But I can’t see that happening that soon as much as I do like the odd literary tale I’m more captivated by the extra-ordinary.
And I’d better now
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