Book Bans and January Plans

January. The time for resolutions and in the book reading/reviewing community time for a Book Ban. What is a Book Ban you may ask? Exactly what it sounds like a temporary or permanent ban on purchasing new books. People in this community have a tendency, myself included, to purchase books even when we have an already gigantic To Be Read pile. To curb this many of us choose to go on a sort of book buying fast to induce the reading and clearing out of our collective TBR's. So in that spirit I am committing to a Book Ban until my birthday Month in May. The only new books I will allow in my life are free digital ones I download on my Nook since they don't take up physical space and any books gifted to me/ won in contests (I recently won a free copy of Black Ambrosia from Valancourt Books). Saying this that is why I probably will not undertake reviewing V.C. Andrews' actual catalogue or review more Shirley Jackson until this Summer. But I do have plans to review many books over the next few months including proto YA genre series.

The 1997 Archway Paperback Omnibus

What are proto series? These are explicitly series I view as precursors to the oversaturated modern YA market that is currently full of series like Twilight, The Hunger Games etc. to show that sexy vampires, death games, and love triangles have literally always been part of the genre. The difference being that these proto series were some of the first to package these themes to a teen audience. They also did so during during the early to mid 90's teen horror boom where the market for horror paperbacks for adults imploded but teens especially teen girls, began to devour cheaply accessible series like Point Horror. I will be covering whatever YA horror I can get my hands on but I will also be reviewing quite a few L.J. Smith books since she was that era's Stephanie Meyer. The other books I plan on doing reviews of are more paperback original horror novels.

Zebra Horror's 1988 First Printing

Once again paperback original's are books only published in paperback format for the mass market audience and they made up a crazy amount of so called Paperbacks from Hell that have been discussed by Grady Hendrix. Featuring insane, dynamic covers and crazier plots these books are more often than not a blast to read. I have been able to amass a tidy pile of them so I'm going to try and review a decent chunk of them in the coming months. I'm especially looking forward to reading and reviewing more William W. Johnstone after how much fun I had reading Night Mask. Outside of that I'm also going to try and read more classics and female authors. Well those are my plans for January and the coming months. Are any of you participating in book bans? Are their specific genres or attributes you will be looking for in your reading? As always the comments are open and to be alerted to the latest on this blog give it a follow or subscribe. 'Til next time!