SF, steampunk, horror, fantasy, and all the hybrids and crossovers of these genres interest me at many points in time. Overall, horror has been a genre that I have read since as long as I can remember. SF, maybe as much, though my early SF was related to tie-ins to games like Battletech and movies like Star Wars. I’ve always been a fan of SF) more so in the movies than books) but I have found my affinity for them has grown over the past few years.

What usually happens with how I think and operate is rather obsessive I suspect. Ok maybe not obsessive but definitely on the weird side. About a year ago I wrote this entry A Gently Mad Blog » History Books about how I get entangled in a subject and read as much as I can. It happens in fiction as well.

I think this tendency to obsess over something fits well with someone that is a bibliophile. It is a sweet obsession and something that really isn’t self destructive. So this past week I picked up Steampunk edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer and I am enjoying it. It has also set me on a course to pick up a handful of steampunk books. I don’t think there is a huge back catalogue of steampunk books (I am probably wrong) but I think with a few suggestions from the essays contained in Steampunk, I can get a little collection going for my reading pleasure.

I still have the SF bug and the cyberpunk bug. I have three shelves with newly acquired books to read through. And this coming summer I’ll be down at the shore on the weekends with the ability to read.  I can’t wait.

With such a focus on a specific genre to the point of full immersion, I get bored of it after a set amount of time.  Usually around the five book mark.  But it really isn’t”I’m never going to read that stuff again” boredom but more of a having your fill of chocolate cake and you can stand not to look at it for a few weeks or months, type of feeling.  It happens but I end up going back to a specific genre after a few months of being away.

So right now it’s steampunk and hard SF prior to that.  Horror is an underlying current, the one thing I go back to consistently. I end up doing the same thing with nonfiction as well.

The bibliophile tends to do the same thing with their collections. I have a goal to put together an excellent horror library. But during the search for those volumes that I want to add I run across little subsets horror to collect. It might be a run of Peter Straub books or soon Clive Barker first editions. IT might be obsessing over first editions of MR James’s works and his contemporaries and how to put together the funds to finish that off. I find it easier to build the collection in small blocks. It helps me to focus and not waste money or time on those volumes that might not be worth it.

So here I am looking over a list of possible purchases of steampunk (and wondering if I can stand reading Alan Moore, I’m not a big fan) and I know that in about a month or two I will be moving to the next obsession. But during those two months I’m going to enjoy the hell out of what I am reading. This, when it comes down to it, is the point. Why confine yourself to only one or two genres when there is so much more out that to read.