http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFi27PQ2bxo

Two of the most common pieces of advice you’ll hear about writing are:

* Write more

* Read more

I’ve also read many interviews where writers say they no longer have time to keep up with other novels published in their own genre.

Sturgeon’s oft-mentioned law is that 90% of everything is crud.  These days even if you only concentrate on a particular sub-genre (e.g space opera), the amount of reading material available means that the 10% is far more than anyone has the time to read.

In the pre-Internet days it was much harder to get recommendations for books.  Now it only takes a little bit of web surfing to uncover a slew of interesting sounding books.

Add to this the amount of free online material (magazines, blogs, podcasts, discussion forums, etc).

Another factor is that the more serious you get about writing the more likely it is that you’ll make friends with other writers.  It’s only natural to want to support your friends and read their books.

I keep a file on my computer with list of books I want to read.

There are now more than 600 books on that list.

It’s no longer the case where I’ll read a book simply because I want to read it.  I have to want to read it more than I want to read a lot of other books.

I used to decide which book on my bookshelf I wanted to read first, with the understanding I would read the other books later.  I own at least a couple of hundred books I haven’t read.  Given on average I read around 50 books a year, even if I stopped buying books and going to the library, it would take me a few years to clear my backlog of books to read.

With all of the information and book recommendations available online sometimes less can be more.  The more recommendations available, the strength of each particular recommendation can diminish.  They get lost amongst all the noise.  If someone gives you a list of their 100 favorite books how likely is it you’ll read a particular book on that list versus a book they place in your hand and tell you that you have to read?

Another factor I’ve noticed is that once writers are published they tend to read less fiction and read more non-fiction.

If you’re writing science fiction or fantasy it pays to do a lot of technical or historical research.

I’m working on a novel set in a monastery in an alternate-world feudal Japan and so I’ve been reading books about the history of Japan and  a book written by a Japanese salaryman that spent a year studying to be a monk in one of Japan’s strictest Zen monasteries.

The amount of available reading material has also changed how I read.  I’m a lot less patient.  If a short story hasn’t grabbed me by the first page I move on to something else.  I’m quite happy skimming non-fiction books looking for the parts that interest me.

I’ve also noticed I’m less inclined to read novels by authors I’ve read before.

One of the reasons I read is to encounter new ideas (hence my preferences for science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction).

Of course I still try and read books by my favorite authors.  But if I enjoyed a novel by an author and it’s not one of my favorite books, well maybe I’m more likely to try something from a new author I’ve heard good things about.

There is also the consideration of timing.

Controversial new books (especially non-fiction) can get bumped up my reading list, because it’s fun to read them while others are discussing them.  There’s also the sense of not wanting to be excluded from the conversation when people are talking about books that have made a big impact, such as Harry Potter.  But it would still take a lot more than that to get me interested in reading the Twilight books though.

What you’re currently writing can also influence your choice of fiction reading.
Some writers don’t like to read works in the same genre as they’re working on because they feel they might be influenced too much.

I’ve noticed it can be distracting for me to read works in a different genre from the one I’m working on.  If I read a great dystopian monkey comedy of manners novel, that makes me want to stop my current project and write my own dystopian monkey comedy of manners.

The Death of the Slush Pile
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703414504575001271351446274.html

For The Love of God, People, The Slush Pile Isn’t Dead
http://therumpus.net/2010/01/for-the-love-of-god-people-the-slush-pile-isnt-dead/

A long, but interesting article on James Patterson (who has more NY Times bestsellers than anyone else).
James Patterson Inc.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/magazine/24patterson-t.html?pagewanted=all

Mystery visitor to Poe’s grave is a no-show
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100119/ap_en_ot/us_poe_mystery_visitor

The monetization paradox (or why Google is not my friend)
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/01/the-monetization-paradox-or-wh.html

The Future of Air Travel

The Secret Cities of Yemen
http://trifter.com/asia-pacific/the-secret-cities-of-yemen/

The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu
http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=7612

Do You Thinking Teaching Fighting Skills Could Honor the Lord?

Video game success may be in the mind, study finds
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8471182.stm

I read Freakonomics early in the year (it was published a few years ago) and loved it.  Full of fascinating details about human behaviour.  The book sold a lot of copies and many similar books followed on its heels.  Levitt’s and Dubner’s follow-up book, Superfreakonomics came out this year and caused a bit of controversary due to a lot of accusations that their research on climate change wasn’t the most accurate.  Superfreakonomics wasn’t as good as Freakonomics, but the first two-thirds of the book still has a lot of fun details.

My favorite non-fiction books of 2009:

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
Jake Adelstein
Not the best written book ever, but the subject material is fascinating.  An American reporter got a job as a crime reporter in Japan and ended up breaking a story about the yakuza paying for liver transplants in the US.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Dan Ariely
One of the books that followed in the wake of the success of Freakonomics.  Fascinating stuff.

Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell
Why some people succeed and others don’t.  Lots of interesting stuff in here.

The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World
Tim Harford
Another freaky behavioural book.

Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions
Christian Lander
The funniest book I read this year.  Lots of telling observations in here.

Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
The book that opened up a new publishing niche.  Examines why do people do what they do.

The Last Lecture
Randy Pausch & Jeffrey Zaslow
Randy Pausch shot to fame when he gave a lecture about how to live a good life.  He was a professor of computer science and had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He died last year

Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded
John Scalzi
The collected amusing and insightful blog rantings of science fiction writer John Scalzi.

Born on a Blue Day
Daniel Tammet
Tammet is an autistic savant who experiences numbers in a different way from most people.  Details some of his accomplishments such as reciting pi to more than 22,000 decimal places and learning to speak Icelandic in less than a week.

Booklife
Jeff VanderMeer
I’ve read lots of books on writing and this is one of the best.  There are plenty of writing books that give advice about how to write, but this book focuses on how to be a writer.

I also enjoyed Alex Kerr’s Lost Japan, where he talks about some of Japan’s disappearing traditions and Paul Theroux’s Riding the Iron Rooster, his travel book about riding the trains in China.

Anything that happens in December is irrelevant.

That’s the impression you could get from the fact that swarms of best of the year lists were released in November and early December.

It seems just a tad presumptious to chronicle the best books or films of the year when the year hasn’t even finished.

Publishers Weekly published their Top 10 Books of 2009 at the start of November!
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6704595.html

And even organisations that you might suspect would be a bit more accurate in defining what they meant by “year” didn’t have the patience to wait.  Google released their list of search terms that had increased the most in popularity in 2009 (this is different from “most popular” search terms) on December 1st.

2009 Year-End Google Zeitgeist
http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/press/zeitgeist2009/

The abundance of best of the year lists ranged from the widely inclusive:
Time’s Top 10 Everything of 2009
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1945379,00.html

to the more specialised:
Best Lesbian Films of 2009    
http://www.shewired.com/Article.cfm?ID=24057

And since (depending on what point you start counting from) it’s the end of a decade, there are more lists covering the 00s.

The 100 Best Films of the Decade
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6902642.ece

The 100 Best Books of the Decade
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_reviews/article6914181.ece

20 Best SF Books of the Decade
http://io9.com/5423847/20-best-science-fiction-books-of-the-decade

20 Greatest SF Movies of the Decade
http://io9.com/5426147/20-greatest-sf-movies-of-the-past-decade

Is this just another symptom of our impatience?  When you can get information so easily, why do you want to wait until it’s relevant?

I don’t buy the argument that nothing significant is released in December (or indeed November).  It isn’t all just family Christmas fare.  Just a couple of days ago,  a small film called Avatar hit cinemas.  Many of the early reviews haven’t been favorable, but excluding a new James Cameron film sight unseen from consideration for a list of best SF films of the year strikes me as a dubious practice.

I enjoy reading best of lists and indeed making my own lists.  But since the Christmas/New Year period is often a time when I get a lot of reading done, you’ll have to wait until 2009 is over before you can get my opinion on what I thought were the best books and movies of 2009.

I’m sure you all can’t wait.