It is a pretty paradox. Every day we have more things to read, but less time to read them in. Every new book you read (if it is worthwhile) enriches your life but also deprives you of another (potentially as good or better) book that you will, assuming you miss the advent of the singularity, never read.
5200: that's the number of books you may read in a lifetime spanning a century averaging one book per week. And that is not just a mean but a ceiling, folks. It provides a toddler seat to help stretch your reach by including years 0-10 when you were more likely to be interested in fruit roll ups and Duck Tales than the printed word -- which is not to denigrate either, the former being delicious and the latter more delightful and incisive social commentary than not a few disappointing books I've read.
You could quibble about the rate of 1 book per week -- but that rate is representative (if not generous) for the average reader who (choose one or all) works, raises kids, takes care of one or both of their elderly parents, fixes the house, or "other". It also assumes a library that, product of an adventurous mind, stretches not only from A to Z but from brief (The Old Man and the Sea) to beyond-belief (Atlas Shrugged). We can all read half a dozen or more books a week if we are so blessed as to be (choose one or all): on vacation, speed readers, independently wealthy, or professional book critics. But those fortunate enough to find themselves described above are the true 1%. The rich are different from you and I. They have more money, but the most important thing that money can buy isn't anything you can touch; it's time.
So until the singularity saves us all by according us immortality via an upgrade to digitized consciousness and nanotech refurbished bodies, we will need some way to know what we will enjoy reading before we read it. There are a variety of ways to do this in person and the internet: book clubs, Barnes & Noble recommendations, Amazon preference prediction algorithms, annual top-ten lists, etc. Dip your toe in the web and a thousand book related blogs will come to nibble.
One fish I haven't found yet though is a blog dedicated to anthologies. These are the tasting menu (often of buffet proportions) of good book dining. Sample a bit of Hawthorne's dark, bitter fruit compote paired with a minimalist Raymond Carver white in Joyce Carol Oates's The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Discover whether you prefer the bright, exuberant wonder of the golden age of science fiction or the cold metallic glint and cerebral fugue of cyberpunk by leafing through Brian Aldiss's A Science Fiction Omnibus.
That's what you'll find reviewed in this blog. Anthologies of every type (fiction, non-fiction, and in between) and genre (science fiction, fantasy, crime, literary, Victorian, drama, contemporary, etc.). Short stories, novellas, essays, articles, memoirs, poems -- if it's in an anthology, it will be in here. All the major publishers I can find as well: Oxford, Norton, Cambridge, Penguin, Best American.
I do think there is an objective element to literary value, but I also believe there is a wide scope for difference in taste that is purely subjective. Jane Austen is objectively better than Danielle Steele, but if Regency comedies of manners leave you cold, there's nothing wrong with your good taste. I think anthologies are a good way for helping us as readers become more familiar with authors whose works we still read decades, centuries, millennia after their deaths. I remember when I was just entering into my teens and started looking at what books other people read and what movies they watched rather than just what was available at home or my library. I read about Jean-Luc Godard, and how his films were a breakthrough in cinema in the 1960s -- equivalent to Tarantino in impact in the 1990s. I watched Alphaville and was bored. I watched Breathless, but was still too young for the posing angst to pose any interest. Two strikes. Then I watched My Life to Live -- it struck me then as one of the most humanistic, empathetic stories I have ever heard and remains today one of my favourite films. When exploring new writers, directors, painters, any type of famous artist really, the three strikes rule is a good policy. It's a rule that helps guide our reading practices around the timeless judgment of the ages while letting our personal preferences choose the paths that most interest and entertain us.
I hope my posts help you find your next favourite author -- in three (or fewer) strikes.
