Not a Resolution

All over the blogoverse, people have been making resolutions. Read this, don't read that, do more of this and less of the other.

I'm not a fan of New Year's Eve to begin with -- it's the world's most pointless holiday, you all know that, right? -- so I've never been one for the whole soul-searching, making-huge-plans-for-the-rest-of-my-life kind of resolution. But it is the time of year to think about life and tinker a bit with it, and I'm nothing if not self-obsessive.

So I've been thinking about this blog, and how I keep talking about books I've read but insisting that I'm not "reviewing" them. I haven't changed my mind; reviewers should be unbiased and disinterested, and I'm very rarely either. I'm never going to start calling these things reviews (except maybe by accident). But I'm also going to keep writing about the books I read, and what I think of them.

I worry equally about being too tough on books (because they're not exactly what I thought they would be, or because they're not as ambitious as they could be, or just because I've read so damn much of the stuff that Just Another Decent Epic Fantasy looks like crap from here) and too easy on books (because I don't want to offend anyone unnecessarily, or because I like the author personally, or just because I'm in the business of getting people to read books). And I'll keep worrying, since I do that.

I used to love the magazine SF Eye, in my younger and more callow days, because it would run long, well-thought-out, solidly written reviews that utterly trashed books. The SF field, and the book world in general, does need more reviewers who are willing to stand up and say "this book is not good at all, for the reasons I will delineate hereafter." I'm not going to be that person, though: I'm not nearly arrogant enough to trust my own taste that strongly, and I also hope to continue working in this field. But I think I can talk about books that didn't work for me -- and books that have problems -- without being insulting or nasty. (Goodness knows, on rasfw there are probably people who still think of me as the Guy Who Wants to Punch Up the Beginning of The Lord of the Rings.)

So that's all a very long-winded way of getting to my new mantra: Honest and Fair.

I might not talk about some books I read, or not talk in detail about them, but if I do write about a book, I'll tell the truth as I see it. Whatever I say will be my real reaction to that book. (And not talking about a book doesn't mean anything in particular -- sometimes I can't talk about a book for legal reasons and sometimes I just don't have anything in particular to say.)

And I'll try to be fair to all books; not everything is to my taste, but that doesn't make them bad. (And, on the other side, just because a book plays to my prejudices doesn't make it good, but that's harder to keep in mind.)

There's my gauntlet; let's see how it goes in practice.