0267E: Robot Army Obligations


Ever since I had signed up for Angry Robot Books' Robot Army review program, I've been fortunate enough to receive a steady stream of science fiction and fantasy books for free in exchange for reviews. This sort of opened things up for me to gather a good number of free books for review purposes so much so that I have quite the queue of books that I feel rather guilty about.

As much as there have been some major gems from the publisher, it's hard to get into a new author or fictional world in succession. Reading for pleasure often ties to a desire to go to familiar worlds or follow-up with authors you already know that you like. And while books for review are great on their own and potentially interesting, you still want to go back to titles you already love.

I've organized my life by trying to alternate things. The main lines I'm still reading for fun are The' Dresden Files, Battletech and Star Wars. Then I try to slide in a review book somewhere in-between those. Ideally I should read one review book between a book I like but in reality I tend to read one from each of those queues and then I finally go back to a review book. If things work out it may be a book that is part of a trilogy or series that I can focus on for a while but then I'll pivot back to the books I like.

My NetGalley profile shows that I've reviewed only 41% of the titles that I've been given copies of and most of them have been via Angry Robot Books. NetGalley also provides the option to review books from other publishers but I'm not auto-approved for anyone else, so my options are limited. And I feel like I still have a good 50 something titles to be reviewed including a few I received copies of via email.

What a weird non-problem to have. And I'm still occasionally blitzing through digital comic books on my phone, audio books via Audible and wondering when I'll move my queue for physical books (all these review books are on my Kindle) and my still stalled efforts to finish reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

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