Do you glom? Yes, I'm aware that glom has a multitude of meanings, but in this case we're discussing the one that involves a reader obsessively reading all of an author's backlist. I am a big time glommer. I confess that when I read a book that I love, it is a certainty that I will immediately set about locating and reading other books by that writer. I think that glomming is an activity that has special appeal for genre readers. Genre reading, by it's very nature, involves looking for some consistency from writers. Whether you read, mysteries, science fiction, romance or any other genre, you've most likely identified consistent elements that make a book work for you. So, it follows that if you love police procedurals and you find a writer who writes a fantastic procedural, you'll want to check out their backlist.
In my world, glomming can also involve reading an entire series, rather than the entire author backlist. This is especially true of genre writers who may have three or four very different series running at once. For example, I've recently been laid up recuperating from some minor surgery and I sort of stumbled onto a historical mystery series by Rhys Bowen. Now Bowen writes three series and they appear to be quite different, so rather than glom her entire backlist, I limited my glomming activity to her Molly Murphy series. I had tried one of her Constable Evans mysteries years ago and found it a bit to cozy for my taste (I can only read a cozy if there is a cat in it, it's a terrible personality flaw), but the MM series worked for me. A big part of the charm was the setting of NYC at the turn of the century. An author could not ask for a more exciting, tumultuous time or place and I'll read almost anything that uses this backdrop. I decided to glom the series on the strength of setting and I've since worked my way through six of the nine titles available and I have the other three waiting at the library. While I have a few qualms about this series, it has consistently delivered on the elements that appealed in the first title I read and that is really all a glommer can ask for.
So, any other glommers out there?
I'm a glommer! But I wish there was a better word for it than one whose primary meaning is to steal.
ReplyDelete-aravis
I agree. We need a better word than glom. Although, I'm going with one of the alternative definitions of 'to seize or latch onto', rather than steal. Still, there should be a cooler word for this. I'm sort of surprised that someone out there on the internetz hasn't come up with something snazzier.
ReplyDeletevp