Read, constantly. If your primary influences are cinematic and you are a writer of prose, you need to adjust. Who is the GOAT of your genre? What writers do you most admire? Are they the same names that get mentioned in your favorite subreddit, over and over?
Dig deeper.
Read old Year’s Best anthologies, works in translation, or the books mentioned by writers you enjoy. Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks From Hell, influences from author interviews in the NY Times Magazine or those published in the New Yorker. They often mention more obscure books than reddit or booktok.
Subscribe to a general literary journal and a zine that publishes your favorite genre.
Browse at a locally owned book store or Half Priced Books and find a clutch of promising reads. Even bad books empart gifts to the attentive mind. Force yourself to seek out diverse voices. Observe how difficult that can be.
Ask other readers what books they love. Get out of the algorithm.
Many have read the Dying Earth books, but what about the Planet of Adventure series? Alice Sheldon was recognized as a fantastic writer of short stories, but have you read Brightness Falls from the Air?
If you would like to expand your reading but are unsure where to start, here are some recommendations:
- Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinburger
- The Etched City by K.J. Bishop
- The Solace of Open Spaces by Erlitch
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
- On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
- What is Otherwise Infinite by Bianca Stone
- Far From the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson
- Cardiff, By the Sea by Joyce Carol Oates
- The Deep Sea Diver’s Syndrome by Serge Brussolo
If you enjoy weird fiction and SF, they compose about 30% of the list. But the rest includes nonfiction and fiction from a range of points of view and subject matter. Missing are the classics or classics of a particular genre, or the latest must-reads: these are easy to find.
I’m reading East of Eden, Neuromancer, and Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen: each a gap. But I'm also reading Janet Kagen's Star Trek book, Uhura's Song. Because Kagen rocks.
I haven’t read everything by Octavia Butler: another oversight. I'm on the lookout for her stuff on each trip to the bookstore.
Buy or improvise a bookself. Snag physical books on the cheap. Get more than you can reasonably finish.
Be unreasonable in your reading habit.
