I’ve begun expanding the Resources and Bibliography sub-page to my Provisional Conclusions, this past week, and have discovered how compiling such a bibliography helps to focus my thoughts about what books, out of my sizable library, are most relevant to my ongoing project. (Note that in this bibliography there are a few titles I have not actually read yet, but intend to, before drawing any conclusions.)
On the same note, Sunday, yesterday, while busy with family matters, I realized I needed to re-examine and sort my shelves of sf/f-related nonfiction. (There’s a certain benefit in moving the focus of one’s daily activities from the matter at hand; somehow the mind processes issues in the background and presents conclusions one might not have reached deliberately; which is why weekends mostly away from my desk and computer can often result in conceptual progress (as well as, of course, providing attendant worthwhile virtues.) There is a section of my library, occupying not quite two full bookcases, of some — let me pause to do a typical shelf count and multiplication — 500 volumes ranging from author biographies and studies, to encyclopedia, to histories of sf/f/h, to books about how write sf/f/h, to collections of reviews (Blish, Knight, Clute, Wolfe), to bibliographic compilations and reading guides, to — finally, what I think I’m most interested in currently — general studies about the meaning and intent of the literary forms of sf/f/h. It’s these last, currently, that I find most relevant to my exploration and expansion of my Provisional Conclusions. Though I think that, unlike the nonfiction references on the Resources & Bibliography page, I will not post partial in-work bibliographies of SF/F/H fiction works, and how they relate/illustrate/inform those PvCs. That will be a slow and steady long-range project.
