Monday, February 23, 2015

Thanks Jeff VanderMeer!

It was great to see Jeff VanderMeer's Area X books rampage across the book universe last year.  I've been following him and his work for more then a decade and this level of acclaim and popularity is well deserved. But today I just wanted to take a moment to thank him for his years of book recommendations. He wrote an Amazon Listmania List! (remember those) called Entertaining But Different: Strange Fiction that came along at the right time for me and opened up my eyes to new books and authors. Around that same time he wrote an article called The Shadow Cabinet (which I stole for my Mulholland Books article) that again pointed me towards many books and authors that I just wasn't that aware of.

Authors are told to read read read if they want to write. This means read widely and deeply. I think this is good advice for anyone regardless of any writing aspirations that may or may not be present. I try to do both of these things as a reader and I think that, in part, it's a philosophy I owe to VanderMeer.


So thanks Jeff, for all of the book recommendations over the years.

A selection of the books and authors that Jeff VanderMeer put me on to (or made me bump further up my TBR) plus his latest work which you should read if you haven't yet.

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