February 2010: A New Year

I'm designating this month the start of the new year rather than the one all the calendars and whatnot follow. The reason for this is that I spent all of January reviewing Asimov's Science Fiction for the 2009 Reader Awards and so this will be the first round of new reading I'm really doing.

I read more than I reviewed, so I'm going to take a month or two to go back and review all the 2009 Asimov's and Analog stories that I missed, but it isn't going to be this month. To be honest, although they are both lovely magazines, I'm a bit sick of them after powering through 2 years worth (collectively) in 2 months.

But I don't want to do the same thing next year, I want to actually stay on top of things. So for this year I'm going to read and review all of the January and February magazines I get right now, and then leave it alone until next month. But first, or possibly concurrently, I'm going to read and review a whole bunch of H.P. Lovecraft. And I might even read a novel or two.

Lovecraft is one of several famous historical authors whom I'd like to extensively cover here. With these historical authors I worry that reputation, and personal prejudice may influence me overmuch, and honestly I am often going to go for the most famous or important works. The best of an author who is long dead will tend to beat a lot of the stuff found in magazines, by virtue of extra levels of selection. But I'm still going to keep them on the 1 to 5 scale. I may add some extra gradations between x.0 and x.5, but I'm going to keep comparing any short story to any other short story. And I'll try to be as harsh on the Great Old Ones as I am on the New Guys.