Am siebten Tag unseres Fantastischen Adventskalenders geleitet mich Dalibor mit der Kutsche ein Stück aus der Stadt hinaus einen sanften Hügel empor, wo das Gefährt stehen bleibt. Dalibor öffnet die Tür.
„Das gibt mir Hoffnung, Autorin“, sagt er mit einer ausladenden Bewegung.
Mein Blick schweift über verschneite Gehöfte in einer baumlosen hügeligen Landschaft ...
#JustFinished Empire in Black and Gold, by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Excellent, as with all I've read by him, but I prefer SciFi over all, so not as amazing as his SciFi. Still, an interesting world with interesting characters. Lost magics, technology rising, and fascists on the horizon. A mixed band (young and old, different motivations and philosophies) sets off to save everyone from their blinders. I'll read the second one.
My son has downloaded Discord, which means I really can't put off having a comprehensive discussion about online safety with him anymore. We've had lots of small conversations about not trusting everything you see online and stuff, butI haven't been very good about more comprehensive education. I do better with a book to guide the convo, but all the ones I'm finding are from 2019 or earlier. Surely there are more recent books for kids? #OnlineSafety#Bookstodon@bookstodon
Why yes, I will completely avoid the present this evening by tucking into my nearly 70-year-old edition of 7 Types of Ambiguity. Appropriate that it arrived today when, to rephrase #Shakespeare, I've been feeling quite out of joint in time.
This year I have read ten novels, and two collections, by Grand Master Robin McKinley. The last is also the last one to be published, ten years ago. Shadows is enjoyable, if not up to the level of my overall favorite, Sunshine.
The #WriteTalkWednesday show has posted it's upcoming themes for 1Q 2024. If you're an author and would like to speak on one of our upcoming themes - reach out!
January - finding joy in our writing/writing what we love
February - finding comfort in our writing, feel good stories of all kinds
March - writing action and adventure
Read THIS COULD ALL BE DIFFERENT by by Sarah Thankam Mathews if you love first jobs, immigration narratives, queer love, building community, restaurants, fishing for memories, terrible landlords, recessions, navigating white America as a POC, lofty dreams & planting seeds.
The wait is finally over. My gay romance/gaylit short story collection Love & Limitations has arrived, just in time for the holidays (with three holiday stories too):
It's the first picture of the new Arboreality in the wild! The new version has a silky matte cover, gold foil title text, and aged and distressed Ursula K Le Guin Prize and Philip K Dick awards medallions + more!
I gave Happiness Falls to a library guest to borrow and then realized I hadn’t finished it and that I didn’t know the solution to the mystery, but that I no longer cared. HF was a lot of consciousness raising, and in the time it took me to read that novel (except for the last two chapters) I could have read both a better mystery and some better nonfiction to get my consciousness raised on the primary topic. Mysteries need structure. #bookstodon@bookstodon#Mystery
One area in which the USA is excelling: the quality of novels being published. 2023 killed it. Absolutely excellent books. 2024, from what I’ve foretasted of winter and spring fiction, will be as great. We have that much to be proud of. #bookstodon@bookstodon
I'm reading The Tombs of Atuan, second Earthsea book, and although I'm still early in it, I feel like it's better than Wizard of Earthsea. It's been a bit since I read Wizard but from what I remember, the MC was kind of whiny (though MC in Atuan is not a charmer, either). But most of all, the ending of Wizard felt abrupt and not at all satisfying.
I know the books are well loved, but is there something to the idea of book to book it can be a little uneven?
10 out of 10. THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride is my favorite book of 2023 so far. It's a saga, a mystery, & a tale about racism and ableism. From Penguin Random House on August 8. #ewgc@ewgc#bookstodon@bookstodon
I saw some of his art online and thought it looked like “Invisible Hands” from Liquid Television, which I LOVED. Same artist! This didn’t have quite the same level of twisted, creepiness as that animated series, but I was so happy to find his work in comic form. There’s more too.
The second title in The Craft Sequence, I didn’t like it as much as the first. Gladstone doesn’t hand-hold in his world-building, which I prefer, but I felt I missed a lot of subtleties with the new characters, time period, and location. This is the kind of thing a re-read will address though, and I look forward to that.
I do love every part of the world across these books, just certain parts more than others.
Book 26: “The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet” by #BeckyChambers.
Wow, not what I expected: actual character development in a sci-fi title with lots of new species, cultures, and morphologies. How refreshing to take the time for this and not just plot plot plot! It does drag just a teeny bit: I wanted more to happen at one point. But I have faith Chambers can calibrate plot and character development for the rest of this series. Excited to read the rest.
Book 27: “Performances for Waiting in Line: Performed Alone or in Collaboration with Others” by #PaulShortt.
Shortt’s print work “plays with, mocks and appropriates cultural norms, authority and rules”. I like his stuff. It’s accessible and brings art into everyday life. First encountered it in “How to Art Book Fair”: straight up advice.
This book has 60 performances. I’ll let you know if I ever attempt any. 😅