Reading again. And it feels good.

For Christmas/Birthday (take your pick) I got a Kindle. I’d been in a rut where most of what I’d been reading has been military history and game rules. Not bad, and frequently interesting, but I needed a jump start to get the enthusiasm back.

The Kindle has been it. It’s an absolute joy to read. The text is very easy on the eyes, and as I can choose font size and margins, I’m finding that I read 20-30% faster. And that’s a good thing as I’m not a very fast reader.

I’ve also converted the OCS and Korea game-specific rules to Kindle format. I’ve been using them during my games with Mike over the last few weeks, and I’ve been very pleased. Yes, the Kindle now supports PDF natively, but you can’t scale the pages – this means even in horizontal mode you’re talking 4pt type or so. But, after conversion it’s just like any other Kindle book. Text resizable, searchable, and very readable.

Back in the late 80s when I worked at Tower Books, and earlier, I read voraciously. Mostly sci-fi/fantasy, but a fair amount of mystery and other fiction as well. I’ve read Agatha Christie’s entire catalog, for example. So, heading back and catching up on what I’ve missed in science fiction and fantasy over the last couple decades seemed like a good idea. Basically all I’ve read in those genres over the last couple decades is the Song of Ice and Fire series and most of Neal Stephenson’s work. Time to branch out.

I figured the best place to start was with the Hugo and Nebula award winners. As opposed to some awards (*cough*grammies*cough*) these awards actually have some merit. I wanted to start with an author I’d never read. So, I scanned through the award winner lists since 1980. One trilogy stood out: The Mars Trilogy from Kim Stanley Robinson. The first book (Red Mars) won the Nebula, and the next two (Green Mars and Blue Mars) won the Hugo.

So, off I went. The first book I read on my new Kindle was Red Mars. Quite good, if you’re curious. A bit contrived in places, but the guy knows Mars.

I’ve been surfing around various sci-fi sites over the last few weeks and just ran across a reading challenge. I’m on board. I’m taking on the Moon Voyage and the Slingshot Back to Earth. The Moon challenge is reading 6 Hugo Winners during 2010, and the Slingshot back is three Nebula winners. Shouldn’t be difficult as many (around 20) books won both.

As I’ve already read Red Mars (1993 Nebula Winner) and am partway through American Gods (2002 Nebula and Hugo Winner), I’m on a good pace.

Guess I’ll have to add a “What’s Eric Reading Now?” widget to the blog or something. For those of you still reading…