Not a Puppy, but I still eat Nutty Nuggets from time to time.

[sbisson]

As a left-of-centre voting European I'm pretty much the Sad/Rabid Puppy definition of a SJW, a definition that owes more to the US Culture Wars than anything else. And yet, looking at the pile of books I brought back from a recent trip to the US, it's clear that my mix of Nutty Nuggets and other cereals (for a balanced diet) make my reading habits a lot closer to the Puppy ideal than they think...

The more I think about it, the more I'm sure that the Puppy position is pushing people away from their view of the Hugos. Most of us readers read widely, and read for different reasons. I read some books to be challenged, some to be entertained, some because friends recommend them, some because I liked a review. My recent reads are easy enough to find, and they cover a wide selection of the genre, from milSF to fantasy to humour to crime to, well, the uncategorisable.

You can see a selection of my recent purchases below. There's a lot that there that I'll enjoy, and a lot that I wouldn't consider to be awards quality. Some will be books for the bath, some will be my Hugo voting reading, some will be because it's the latest instalment in a saga I enjoy, and some because, well, just because. And yes, some because the cover caught my attention as I walked through a bookstore



Because I don't read because some shadowy cabal makes me read. I read because I love reading. And dear Puppies, you're not making reading much fun at the moment.

Comments

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Firefox thinks your photo of your stack of books is a video. Not sure why.

[andrewducker]

Looks fine to me!

(FF 38, Windows)

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Yeah, image embed and OneDrive are broken. Fixed now...

[andrewducker]

Yeah. The idea that I filter my reading based entirely on political leanings seems...odd to me.

[timill]

You still buy printed books? How C20...

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Never liked e-paper...

[landsmand.livejournal.com]

As I think I may have commented on Dave O'Neill's LJ, even as a lifelong reader of all sorts of speculative fiction, I'm still only hazily aware of the whole fan thing and really, really, couldn't give a toss about any of the SJW/Sad Puppy nonsense. It's clearly important to some people (on both sides of the argument), whose opinions I usually respect but the idea that one should tune one's reading according to the perceived politics of the author is mad. That would mean I couldn't read the excellent Edinburgh School, for example and that just *wouldn't do*.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Exactly.