Category Archives: Reading itself

What a Messe

I spent three days at the biggest book fair in the world, the Frankfurt Buchmesse. A ‘messe’ is a fair, which is different from a ‘fest’. I guess; dunno, don’t speak German. A messe celebrates a thing, while fests just … Continue reading

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Where It All Began

I’ve told the story, well past the point of boredom, as to how I became a reader. Not how I learned to read, that was from Marvel comics, but an actual reader. In 1962, I was a second grader in … Continue reading

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Ten Best Anthologies I’ve Read

I think anthologies are the Chinese buffet of writing. You can choose from this or that writer, some of them you’ve never heard of, and, if you like their stories, give their other works a shot. It’s also the midnight … Continue reading

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Top Ten Best Stories I’ve Read

I don’t know how many short stories I’ve read in my life. It’s well over the number of books, so, using 8-years-old as a starting point, figure 2-5 books a month for 60 years, time off for good behavior, maybe … Continue reading

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Top Ten Novellas I’ve Read

Call them really long short stories or too-short novels, there’s some good reading in them even as they defy an exact category. Novellete? Yeah, yeah, there’s agreed-upon definitions but who gets to decide that? So I will: if you can … Continue reading

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Ten Best Characters from Books I’ve Read

The criteria for this is very simple: someone from a book that I still remember to this day, no matter how long, or short, ago I came across them. They are memorable. Every once in awhile, I’ll recall something about … Continue reading

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Ten Best Trilogies I’ve Read, so Far

I love trilogies, stories so big they need three novels to complete. Which is the big difference between a series and a trilogy- the story ends. Or, at least, ends one thing to start another. A series goes on and … Continue reading

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Top 10 Thrillers I’ve Read So Far

I have a rather broad definition of a thriller. It’s any exciting, violent, conflictive combative story that doesn’t involve the supernatural or science fiction. In other words, pretty much everything that isn’t romance or a mystery or literary fiction. It … Continue reading

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Top 10 post-Apocalyptic Books I’ve Read So Far

T I consider post-apocalyptic books as a subgenre of science fiction. After all, some fairly science fiction things have to happen before the world goes apocalyptic: meteor strikes, nuclear war, zombies. But it’s such a specific category that I see … Continue reading

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Ten Books that Scared Me

These are not necessarily horror novels or monster ghost stories. At least one of them is non-fiction, and the rest are all over the genre pallet. With, yeah, a couple of ghost stories thrown in, but it doesn’t have to … Continue reading

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