After casually searching several times for a comprehensive list last year, I recently stumbled across a link for a pdf titled “Environmental Novels: An Annotated Bibliography.” It was compiled by Lauren Bordson and Laura Barnes and lists almost 140 novels with environmental themes.
I’m encouraged by this because while there are several short lists out there, I hadn’t come across a list that was exclusive to novels and had over 100 entries. Since environmental themes underly much of my fiction, this is an area I’m interested in developing a focus on over time. Having a more well-rounded starting point is helpful. I found I couldn’t build much steam examining the theme from including both nonfiction and fictional books over time, nor was it helpful to look at both short stories and novels simultaneously either. The distinctive focus of environmental themes in novels while mentioned frequently in passing among various sources, hasn’t found a specifc sustained home on the web that I’ve encountered.
So, environmental themes in novels, along with my adventures this year in self-publishing (more on that after February 24th), is the planned focus I have for my blogging efforts in 2012. Between the two topics, that should provide more than enough for regularly having at least two posts a month throughout this year.