Yearlong Read-a-thon

Here’s a crazy thought I’ve been entertaining. Once I get all this war stuff out of my system (“war stuff” meaning this weird sudden fascination with literature pertaining to the Civil War and WW2), hopefully by the end of this year, why not spend a full year reading only one author. How would that influence me as a writer? As a thinker? As a creative force (albeit a poor and unpublished one)? As a man who sticks to a plan and sees it through?

I must admit the idea is tantalizing. Especially since it would cut down on this insane tendency to hop back and forth between authors and subjects, fiction and nonfiction, that at times – lots of times – drives me batty. (Hence that last sentence in the preceding paragraph.)

Here’s the fun part: Who would I select?



Well, obviously, if you’re going to spend a year reading one author reading as much as I do, you’ll be reading 25 to 50 works. So, first off, the author needs to be prolific. There has to be a bountiful fountain to sip from.

Next, the author needs to be someone you enjoy reading. Otherwise, the whole exercise becomes a study of sado-masochism.

Third, and perhaps most important, the author needs to be someone who can offer you something. Why spend 250+ hours doing something if you’re not going to learn from it? Life goes round but once, so let’s not waste a minute of it. Or at least not 250+ hours of it.

So …

I’m a niche reader, dozens of niches. Still, my first and foremost love is science fiction. So it would also have to be in that genre.

Science fiction … prolific… enjoyment … example …

The first writer that popped into my mind was the obvious choice. Asimov.

Buttttttttttttt … I just read two of his works, and although he’s written something like (I’m guessing) a hundred fiction novels, I’ve read the top ten or twelve, going way back to my youngling days. So, let’s put him aside for a moment.

Since I’m digging the hard SF lately, Arthur Clarke also bubbled to the cerebral surface. And although I respect him immensely and give him all sorts of kudos, I never experienced joy reading his stuff. Arthur, meet Isaac.

Heinlein. I’ve read my share of him, too, and he is also prolific, but I never really bonded with his adult stuff. Great writer, just slightly out of alignment with me. Rob, play nice with Arthur and Isaac awhile.

What about PKD? Well, I went through a Phil K. Dick phase about six years ago. Read Ubik, The Man in the High Castle, VALIS, an anthology of his short stories, a biography of the man. Read Time Out of Joint last year. So though he’s the SF-author-du jour these past decade (at least in Hollywood), I’m a little PKD’d out. Again, props and all.



Thinking back over my reading history, I come up with five authors that fit the above criteria and that appeal to me for this one-year-read-a-thon –

Brian Aldiss

Philip Jose Farmer

Frederik Pohl

Robert Silverberg

Roger Zelazny



All have their pros and cons. I’ve read a bunch of Silverberg and Zelazny off and on over the past couple of years. Currently really digging Roger, but I’m itching to read Rob’s Lord Valentine’s Castle (and finishing it, this time). I like Farmer but sometimes you drown in detail reading him, no matter how slim the work may be. Aldiss’s short stories electrified me as a kid, but I’ve never read any longer works of his (other than the pulpy paperback, Moreau’s Other Island). Pohl is great and awesome but intimidating in that reading him makes me despair of ever writing anything of greatness.

Oh, dilemma of dilemmas! What to do … what to do …