A Bunch of Info

This blog was born out of an old idea to read a bunch of books. My friend Trace introduced me to Moxy Fruvous way back in 1997, and I've loved them ever since. Their first album, Bargainville, is a cracker; it's mostly topical stuff they wrote for a radio show while busking, but they were canny enough to write with the future in mind. Asked to write about a writer's festival in their home town of Toronto, they came up with "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors", a song lamenting the narrator's girlfriend's preference for reading rather than spending time with him.

I had heard of many of the authors in the song, but apart from Margaret Atwood, I hadn't read a book by any of them. Perhaps I could read one by each? After all, it's very easy to just keep reading the authors you know and love, until of course they retire or die or you switch to spending too much of your time playing games instead (too much, in this context, being a hell of a lot; games are one of my other passions). The idea resurfaced every few years, but it wasn't until 2008, at a Christmas party I think, that my friend Aiden endorsed the idea and suggested it was worth starting a blog.

Well, I finished the original nine authors in 2009 - by the skin of my teeth! - and the blog is still here. There was a "gap year" in 2010 when I neglected to write about many of the books I read; I'm catching up on the ones from the end of the year now. 2011 will feature both a list drawn from reader suggestions, and my forays into Victorian literature with a book club Aiden is starting up amongst a few friends.

I hope you enjoy my bookish adventures, and please, comment if you have anything to say; I love to hear what other people think about books, and my writing about books. And please, if you've never tried reading a book for no reason other than you've never tried reading that author before, I implore you: give it a try. You never know what you might find.