While I Was Gone...

I took almost a month off from blogging.  Various factors contributed to this absence. 

1.        I went to the 4th Comic Geek Speak Super Show.  It is one of the conventions that gives me the opportunity to spend time with my roommate from college.  This small con is run by the Comic Geek Speak podcast gang.  Definitely a fun, low key, relaxing weekend.  The deals from Wild Pig Comics make it hard to not stock up on back issues and graphic novels.  The one downside to it is that my to be read stack of graphic novels exploded.  One of collections I bought, and already read, was “Green Arrow Year One”.  I keep hearing that it was one of the books that inspired the television show “Arrow”.  “Arrow” has become one of my favorites so I was glad to find this collection.

2.       March Madness:  I am a big college basketball fan.  This year my favorite team, the Maryland Terrapins, did not make the NCAA tournament but they did very well in the NIT tournament.  My love of college basketball started at a young age when I would watch the games with my father.  My mother grew to love the games and became a Duke fan.  When the tournaments are on it consumes a lot of my time.

3.       Work and life also demands more time.  I am at the point in my life where I realize I can’t do everything.  While attending a convention, watching ball games, and spending time with family, I find time to read.  I did not have the time or energy to put write reviews.  What does this mean?  I now have a list of books to review so I plan on doing a bunch of short reviews to get caught back up.   Once I am back up to speed, I plan on writing longer reviews.

As usual, I am always looking at things to change about the blog.  One of the things I saw and liked at the It’s All Comics to Me blog was the way Nicola numbered her reviews.  She numbers her reviews.  Between her various blogs, you will see books and graphic novels lumped together and numbered for the year.  I am adopting her idea.  From now on I will number novels, anthologies, magazines, and graphic novels together.  I decided to include the science fiction magazines in my book tracking because they contain enough pages for me to consider them the same as a short novel.

The other debate is whether to include my graphic novel reviews on this site.  To make it easier on me, I am just going to post on one site.  I will probably change the name of the blog.  Science Fiction Times does not sound like a blog that includes fantasy and graphic novels.