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Decisions made
I just resigned from Reviewing the Evidence. When you have to spend that much time forcing yourself to even look at the books, much less read and review them, it's time to admit that you've got massive burnout and to let it go. At this point, I have no plans on even any pleasure mystery reading outside of Julia Spencer-Fleming and Mary Stanton's angel series. There's little pleasure left in the genre for me.
I'd already resigned from Firefox News a couple of months ago (which explains the dearth of articles about the regeneration, if anyone had wondered).
This leaves Unreality SF as my last opinion job. The good news is, it takes less of my time than RtE did (the audios are only a couple of hours long apiece) and after all these years in fandom, I'm hardly going to burn out on Who now.
The bad news is, the main part of it is reviewing the back Big Finish monthly catalog, and I'll have caught that up by the end of the year. Well, by then, Dan & I will have hopefully worked something out so I can carry on into 2011. And I'll have had a nice year off before I look to branch out into other areas.
In other decisions being made, I'm not going to Gally, although I'm making tentative plans to get there next year. (The whole point of this year is to spend itdead for tax purposes pulling finances, house, and life together so that next year I can think about other things than the mess in this place.)
I'm also not doing Media*West (for the first time in 20+ years; that's still stinging) or Malice Domestic. I keep flip-flopping on NY TARDIS. On the "go" side, I'll be seeing people that I don't often get to see and more attendees mean more likelihood of a regular Who convention that won't require my hauling ass across five states on a major holiday weekend. (It's run by the same competent concomm as ChicagoTARDIS and that means it'll be a good time with good guests.)
On the "don't go" side, I've got to worry about my finances before the concomm's, and while I have already bought a membership for next year's ChiTARDIS, I haven't put down a dime for NYTARDIS. And a year without conventions would mean both time off and money for other purposes... and I'm starting to preliminarily kick around a return to England around New Year 2011.
I'd already resigned from Firefox News a couple of months ago (which explains the dearth of articles about the regeneration, if anyone had wondered).
This leaves Unreality SF as my last opinion job. The good news is, it takes less of my time than RtE did (the audios are only a couple of hours long apiece) and after all these years in fandom, I'm hardly going to burn out on Who now.
The bad news is, the main part of it is reviewing the back Big Finish monthly catalog, and I'll have caught that up by the end of the year. Well, by then, Dan & I will have hopefully worked something out so I can carry on into 2011. And I'll have had a nice year off before I look to branch out into other areas.
In other decisions being made, I'm not going to Gally, although I'm making tentative plans to get there next year. (The whole point of this year is to spend it
I'm also not doing Media*West (for the first time in 20+ years; that's still stinging) or Malice Domestic. I keep flip-flopping on NY TARDIS. On the "go" side, I'll be seeing people that I don't often get to see and more attendees mean more likelihood of a regular Who convention that won't require my hauling ass across five states on a major holiday weekend. (It's run by the same competent concomm as ChicagoTARDIS and that means it'll be a good time with good guests.)
On the "don't go" side, I've got to worry about my finances before the concomm's, and while I have already bought a membership for next year's ChiTARDIS, I haven't put down a dime for NYTARDIS. And a year without conventions would mean both time off and money for other purposes... and I'm starting to preliminarily kick around a return to England around New Year 2011.
Good for you!
I could feel your growing irritation/dissatisfaction
with reviewing so many horrible books.
As for the rest - dropping back & regrouping is
never a bad idea.
Re: Good for you!
I need a year off for good behavior, and then I'll see.
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Of course, it is the weekend after Steampunk World's Fair, which is the one convention in years I have had any interest in, but as I'm doing a daytrip to that one, perhaps I'll do a daytrip to this one too.
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... which I totally enjoyed and am now hell-bent on purchasing the lot. Sadly I can't buy it on Kindle in Australia yet, but I'm hoping soon. Or I'll just keep buying the paperbacks (which are cheaper anyway, ironically).
I'll reveal my ignorance and ask what it is that you actually do/did with these books?
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what it is that you actually do/did with these books?
With the physical book or why I was reading them? For about 5 years I was an online mystery critic - one year for I Love a Mystery Newsletter.com and the entire time for Reviewing the Evidence. I also attended Malice Domestic (a local convention for mystery writers and fans) and - when I could - Bouchercon (a bigger convention for mystery writers and fans).
Between the reviewing and the convention swap tables, a LOT of mystery books have been passing through my hands! (I think my first Spencer-Fleming was from a swap table.)
It's a year off from all conventions, so no Malice and no Boucher in 2010, and I've *seriously* burned out on the cozy mysteries that Reviewing the Evidence specializes in. (To steal an old Carol Burnett joke, I've seen every [book] and I know all three plots by heart.)
Physically, I keep the ones I like - hey! Free book! - and either swapped the ones I didn't at the next convention or took them to The Book Thing.
One golden once, I'd tossed in an unscheduled review to RtE for a book I'd bought and really liked, the author read the review, and he sent me the next two in the series for free. *That* I miss!
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RtE does hardboileds, but it started out as an almost cozy-only site. Malice bills itself as a cozy mystery con, while Bouchercon considers itself far more hardboiled.
There is slopover; Lord Peter and Sherlock Holmes are both arguably professional detectives, but the tone of the stories is cozy all the way. There's also a surprisingly successful blend of the two genres in the Haunted Bookstore mysteries, although only the first one is really recommendable: The Ghost and Mrs. McClure.
Theme mysteries - tea, knitting, cooking, whatever - are inevitably cozies (which are, I think, THE most popular lit genre after romance. It's just that they're also really, really predictable after a while. And these days, there's so much focus on the heroine's love life that it's hard to tell if there's a line between them at all.)
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