The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2025, pt. 12: Tansy Rayner Roberts

 

Theatre and Other Pleasures in 2025

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

 

My year has been a difficult one, and so as always I have turned to the cozy and the funny to get me through when I have time to sink into a little pop culture.

Costume dramas remain my favorite escape. I’m enjoying the new adaptation of The Forsytes, not least because I’m so familiar with the text (and the two previous, plot-accurate TV adaptations from the 60s and early 2000s) that I’m finding the changes to the story-line in this version fascinating rather than infuriating.

On the other end of the media spectrum — my family and I just finished a rewatch of GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling), with my 16-year old watching it for the first time, and my 20- year old having (apparently) learned about wrestling since the last time we saw it. It’s a fun, crunchy, complicated show filled with interesting women and indulgent '80s nostalgia. It’s been five years since COVID made Season 4 impossible to shoot, bringing the show to a sudden end, and it’s still upsetting that we didn’t get more.

Back to costume drama — I’ve been a Downton Abbey tragic for so long, it felt momentous to watch the final film in the cinema. I didn’t even rewatch to refresh my memory (ahem, my last rewatch was less than a year earlier), but I did give my husband a crash course so he could join me at the movies.

I loved it — indulgent fan service from end to end, and so many lovely hats. It is an epilogue, of course, not a real story — as is true of all three Downton films, given that the show had a properly satisfying end — so it’s basically a hat on a hat on a hat. But the in-jokes were fun.

What I did discover, in my craving to revisit the show, was my new favorite podcast. Up Yours, Downstairs is a husband and wife (I believe later episodes will be friendly ex-spouses, but I haven’t reached those yet) podcast that first began around Season 2 of Downton (2011 but also, 1914) and recorded its most recent episode this year for the finale.

As well as their passionate, loving, and anti-aristo American takes on the show — hilarious, chaotic, and sometimes devastating — the co-hosts focus on their mutual love of Edwardian history, researching key aspects of the show, and later broadening to reviews of other works including Mr Selfridge (which they love even more than Downton!), various Merchant Ivory films, Parade’s End, Anne of Green Gables, Gosford Park, and pretty much every Titanic film ever made.

Their research starts out at reading-off-Wikipedia levels and grows more complex, reviewing specific history texts and deep-diving into racial and LGBTQ+ perspectives. It’s a joyous romp, but you also get to witness history being absorbed.

Another sheer joy of this podcast is the community of “cousins” who send in telegrams and letters (Twitter & Email) to share their own love, lore, and specialized knowledge of Downton Abbey and Edwardian history.

This has been another wonderful year for cozy fantasy (how I adore and celebrate the rise of cozy fantasy!), with new releases from many of my faves. A.J. Lancaster released How To Find a Nameless Fae, a gentle romantasy retelling of Rumplestiltskin with a middle-aged princess, a grumpy nemesis, and a sentient house with pure Diana Wynne Jones vibes all the way down.

Speaking of middle-aged heroines, Rosalie Oaks brought her Matronly Misadventures series to a close with Lady Avely’s Guide To Guile and Peril, a cozy mystery set in a crumbling Cornish castle with illusion traps, espionage, tiny vampires, and a hot amnesiac Duke for our heroine to contend with… not to mention a reunion with one of her wayward adult children who has no idea she has been sleuthing and flirting her way across the country!

Tilly Wallace released the first two books in her new Regency botanical magic+tiny dragon cozy fantasy series, starting with The Stormborne Vine — a spinster heroine contends with a carnivorous creeping plant (and deep magical roots) at a country manor, in a story can only be described as Mansfield Park meets Rosemary & Thyme meets Little Shop of Horrors.

Closer to home, I wanted to share a few gems of local theatre with you. My little coastal city of Hobart, Tasmania has a thriving independent theatre scene with so many small companies and some powerhouse young people producing really interesting work. I’m a little biased because my son’s ongoing work in art design and stage management makes a lot of our theatre ticket-purchasing decisions for us… but I was raised on loving and appreciating live theatre, so it’s something I am delighted to share with my family now.

Some highlights from this year for me included Emma (Bijoux), which was a lovely production of the classic novel with a pitch-perfect cast and costumes that honestly kept me almost as riveted as the dialogue. (It didn’t hurt that I was in the second row and could enjoy all the bonnets up close)

I also loved a 48-Hour Shakespeare production of Macbeth (Bad Company), which had great, raw performances and also really stood out for its design choices, including a stage wrapped in Christo-style floaty plastic sheeting (illuminated gorgeously with lights and moving with the breeze) and literal interpretations of the blood on the hands of Lady Macbeth and her husband, smeared casually on their white clothing.

Speaking of fake blood, I don’t think I’ll ever forget the recent production of Evil Dead: The Musical (Big Job Productions) — in which “splash zone” seats were charged extra! This one was especially interactive for our family because our son Bailey was art-directing and prop-building: he made several puppets including a giant moose head, a dynamic chainsaw (that can be worn as a hand), multiple weapons, a wearable forest of trees, and two severed heads. 

In this case, he also needed to be a prop doctor, cleaning liters of fake blood off the props every night (and in the case of the chainsaw, fixing/rebuilding it). By the time we actually saw the show, we felt like we’d experienced it many times over — but OH it was wonderful. Tight, talented cast with amazing comedic, dramatic and musical talents… armed with squirty bottles for that extra random joy. I particularly admired how many people who bought those front row seats came wearing white for the full splash zone experience…

I started noting all of the shows I’ve seen this year because of Bailey, or because of Inigo (a borrowed son!), and the list got incredibly long! They worked together (B stage-managing, I directing) on Clue: On Stage (Big Job Productions), which used the tiny but wonderful Hidden Theatre stage rather brilliantly, considering that the show is designed for a much bigger space. Our boys worked well together to pull this off with a killer cast.

I also saw fantastic plays like Hedda Gabler, Folk, and Sunday Roast, which I might not have considered if Bailey wasn’t working on the production or Inigo wasn’t performing, because I knew nothing about them going in. A real stand-out for the year was The Master & Margarita (Bad Company & Old Nick), a hugely ambitious, gorgeously staged phantasmagoria using the quirky Peacock Theatre (with cliff-face back wall) to great effect, so intense and strange and beautiful.

When COVID hit and our world shrank around us, one of the first arts industries to be taken out was live theatre. Watching our local community figure out how to stage shows safely and come back stronger than ever over the last 5 years has been really inspiring. Having glimpsed a little of the behind the scenes work happening locally, I’m also impressed to see how indie theatre is growing, while prioritizing cast safety, intimacy co-ordination and accessibility alongside innovation and creativity.

My new attitude is very much “you regret the shows you don’t see more than the shows that you do.” That was what led me to take my 16-year old J to Melbourne for a show of their choice for their birthday (Beetlejuice, starring Eddie Perfect), which was an unforgettable shared experience. It was also what led me to hit an impulsive BUY on tickets when Adjoa Andoh came unexpectedly to Hobart.

Visiting friends in Tasmania, this wonderful actor (whom at the time I only knew as Martha’s Mum, Lady Danbury, and the voice of the Chateau show) decided to throw a one-night only fundraiser for our Hobart Repertory Theatre Society with the loose theme/premise of “celebrating 400 years of Shakespeare’s First Folio.” WELL. This was one of the most interesting, generous performances I have ever witnessed. Adjoa talked about her own long history as an actor, producer and director of Shakespeare, including an all-women-of-color staging of Richard II at the Globe Theatre and a recent opportunity to read from one of the original Folio manuscripts. In between her inspiring and funny and off-the-wall anecdotes, she regularly dropped into full, intensive character readings of her favourite scenes and characters from the Bard.

One woman, her career, her thoughts, her performances, one chair on stage, and she held us all mesmerized for two full performing sets.

Then, Adjoa gave the audience full permission to leave if they needed to go… and opened up for an unexpected THIRD set, this time a more casual Q&A about her career.

I came away buzzing and inspired and elated, and I’m pretty sure the other 300 or so people who got to sit in that theatre for that one-night-only experience felt the same way. Not to get all political as we teeter on the verge of the silly season, but… this is something AI can’t take from us. We’re seeing so many creative industries under attack from slop and copyright theft and most of all, a systematic and deeply mean-spirited devaluing of what we do as artists, as makers, as creators.

Live theatre may have been the first industry to topple under COVID, but there’s no replacing it with an algorithm.

While the enormous big city productions make for incredible experiences — I still dream about the set from Beetlejuice — you don’t have to spend Broadway bucks to see something really fun, or great. Community/independent theatre is an extraordinary gift to audiences, and there’s a reality to it — imperfections, messiness and beauty all squished in together—  that is undeniable.

The moment when a prop breaks but the scene goes on without missing a beat, or the comic timing between two actors just hits, or a performer manages to convince you he is being actively murdered by his own demonic hand… or the cast includes an in-joke one of their friends sitting in the front row… and you realise, this is the only time you or anyone else will EVER see this specific version exactly like this. It’s incredibly special.

If you’re lucky enough to have theatres, however large or small, within a reasonable travel distance of where you live, support your local shows! And when you find a company or a performer or a venue that creates work you enjoy… keep going back.

 

 Tansy Rayner Roberts is a Tasmanian fantasy & SFF novelist, critic, podcaster and -- thanks to her extensive commitment to buying all the theatre tickets -- a patron of the arts. Tansy's recent releases include These Valiant Stars, Crown Tourney, and Time of the Cat. You can also read her essays about masculinity in the Discworld novels at Speculative Insight. Find Tansy at patreon.com/tansyrr

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2025, pt. 11: Nancy Jane Moore

 

 

New Ways of Reading 

by Nancy Jane Moore

 

In mid-December 2024, I embarked on a reading practice unlike any I have ever done before: reading for about 15-30 minutes every day, usually in the morning, and making notes or writing down quotations from what I read. The motivation for the practice was to give myself a period of sitting quietly after doing exercises before checking my blood pressure, but it soon became something I loved on its own, a new way of reading.

 Certain kinds of books lend themselves to this sort of practice. I began with Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, which is a great example of the perfect book: beautifully written (and/or translated, since Rovelli writes in Italian), philosophical, and complex. You really don’t want to read more than a few pages, or at most a chapter, because there’s so much to think about in the book.

 Most novels do not lend themselves to this kind of reading practice. If you get really engaged with a story, you don’t want to stop reading. Rather you need books that make you want to stop and digest what you just read instead of ones where you have to know what happens next.

 I went to a program in the fall where Jenny Odell was interviewing Cory Doctorow and got to talking to the people sitting next to me before the presentation. They had never heard of Jenny, so I waxxed enthusiastic about her most recent book, Saving Time, and explained that it was the perfect book to read for a short period every day. One of them observed that it was “a very specific recommendation.”

 And it is, because I have tried reading some of the books that were best for this practice the same way I read a novel, and it didn’t work well. They are not meant to be read straight through at one sitting.

 Poetry is well-suited for this practice. One of the books I read was Jean Le Blanc’s Field Guide to the Spirits, an Aqueduct Conversation Piece. I’m sure I’d looked through it before, but reading poetry is so different from reading fiction. Read several poems – maybe read each one several times or even out loud – and then stop.

 Rebecca Solnit’s books are also perfect for daily reading. I read both her recent essay collection No Straight Road Takes You There and her older Wanderlust: A History of Walking.

I did read some more reportorial non-fiction as part of this practice, including Ed Yong’s wonderful book on the way animals (including humans) sense the world, An Immense World, but in general I tended toward books that I would define as philosophical – not as works of official philosophy, mind you, which as I learned from reading Solnit are more about arguing with other philosophers – but philosophical writing, the sort of books that both Solnit and Odell write.

 The other reading activity I did this year that was different from my usual pattern was to read for the 100 notable small press books list that was recently published on Lit Hub.  [https://lithub.com/100-notable-small-press-books-of-2025/] I was reading science fiction and fantasy for this list, which included many genres, and was allowed to recommend three books for the final list.

 My choices were Nisi Shawl’s Making Amends, Theodora Goss’s Letters From an Imaginary Country, and Margaret Killjoy’s The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice. I read many other good books as well; it was hard to narrow it down to three. You can find my capsule reviews on the Lit Hub page.

 It interested me to discover that my favorite books were collections (though Nisi’s is a collection of connected stories that make a novel on its own). I haven’t been reading as much short fiction in recent years and I think I had forgotten how vital it is to the science fiction and fantasy genres.

 I wanted to participate in this list because I normally read a number of small press books and, like Miriam Gershow, who organized the project, feel like they’re all too often overlooked in “best of” lists. I don’t think I’ll do it again, in part because I’d rather read a little more randomly. They are seeking readers for next year, however, and I recommend the practice. 

 One of my very favorite books of the past year was Pat Murphy’s The Adventures of Mary Darling, which does a fabulous job of challenging and reimagining Peter Pan and raising interesting questions about Sherlock Holmes as well. Since this was published by Tachyon Publications, it qualified for the 100 small press list, but given that I am in a writing group with Pat and even rated a mention in the acknowledgements section of the book, I could not honorably consider it.

 However, one of the joys of this report for Aqueduct is that I can freely recommend books by friends and fellow writers from workshops without a shred of guilt, which brings me to another one, or, in fact, a series: Madeleine Robins’s Sarah Tolerance books. She reissued the first three books this year along with a fourth: The Doxies Penalty.

Many people know that I am fond of swordswomen, so it is perhaps not a surprise that I would take to the adventures of a young woman with a sword in Regency England. But I recommend these books even if you care nothing for a good swordfight or the era. Madeleine has tweaked the Regency period just enough to make these alternate history, and they are also good mysteries with compelling characters and complex stories.

 They also make excellent comfort reading in our exceedingly complicated times. Start with the first one, Point of Honour.

 I read a great deal of nonfiction at all times. My favorite this year was Adam Becker’s More Everything Forever, which completely destroys the silly dreams of the broligarch crowd. Becker is an astrophysicist and a science writer, and takes apart such absurd notions as living on Mars and the singularity, not to mention so-called AI, in devastating ways. 

 Becker himself reads science fiction, but, unlike the people he is writing about, he comprehends that the genre is not intended to inspire people to invent the torment nexus or develop a dystopia. If you regularly run into people who rave about AI and the broligarch future, this is the book for you.

 Air-Borne by Carl Zimmer is another important book, especially if one lesson you learned from the pandemic was that good indoor air quality can keep us from constantly sharing respiratory viruses. Zimmer dug into the history of studying the air we breathe in schools and crowded spaces, and provides clear detail of what needs to be done.

 As someone who carries around a CO2 meter – the level of CO2 in a room gives you a good indication of whether you are likely to breathe the lung exhalations of others – and wears a mask when that level starts climbing to about 800, I greatly appreciated Zimmer’s careful analysis of what should be – and can be – done.

 I grew up reading a daily newspaper and have always loved magazines. Although I still pick up the occasional print newspaper (and read others online) and subscribe to New Scientist (which piles up around here way too fast), I have ended up with subscriptions to various kinds of online publications these days, including both individual newsletters and nonprofit or collectively owned publications.

 Two of the publications I subscribe to are national, even international at times: ContrabandCamp, which covers Black issues, and The Flytrap, which is feminist. Otherwise, I’ve just started reading two new publications in my area: Coyote and Oakland Review of Books. And I keep up with local news from Oaklandside.

 My most indispensible newsletters are those from Rebecca Solnit, who is capable of being positive about the current chaos without being foolish, and Dave Karpf, who reads some very bad books by tech broligarchs and skewers them beautifully. I couldn’t read those books, but it’s important to know what those people think and why they’re wrong.

 It is possible that I am getting a skewed view of the world, for which I am very thankful.

 

 Nancy Jane Moore is the author of three Aqueduct books – Changeling, The Weave, and For the Good of the Realm – along with a lot of short stories and a small but growing quantity of poems. She is currently working on the sequel to For the Good of the Realm, which is finally shaking out. She blogs weekly at the Treehouse Writers blog. [https://treehousewriters.com/wp53/] Lately she has been contributing to the work of Unbreaking [https://unbreaking.org/] by digging into relevant litigation. Otherwise she can be found walking around her Oakland, California, neighborhood in the company of many local crows.

 

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2025, pt. 10: Cat Rambo

 

2025 Reading Pleasures

by Cat Rambo

 

2025 treated me well, and there was a good bit of travel, including Barbados, Spain, and Alaska. That meant a lot of extra reading time! Here are some of the titles I’ve really enjoyed this year. I’ve sorted them a bit:

My Top Ten Reads, not in order, because I could have spent hours ranking them:

1. September House - Carissa Orlando (is domestic abuse any different when your abuser is a house?)

2. Hell Heist - Robert J. Peterson (Ocean’s 8 meets Hellraiser)

3. The Raven Scholar - Antonia Hodgson (have recommended this to multiple people)

4. Dungeon Crawler Carl (and the subsequent series) by Matt Dinniman

5. The Book of Love - Kelly Link (just wonderful, best book of the year for me)

6. The Rook - Daniel O’Malley (I love people tracking down supernatural menaces, ancient cults, secret societies, and a side of weird and this book delivered it in spades. Looking forward to the rest.)

7. Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me - Django Wexler (funny, bawdy, and awesome)

8. Cahokia Jazz - Francis Spufford (just splendid)

9. I'll Make a Spectacle of You - Beatrice Winifred Iker (Southern gothic)

10. Six Wild Crowns - Holly Race (not just one strong female protagonist, but six!)

Other notable books are:

In alternative history, a shout out for: Ring Shout Or, Hunting Ku Kluxes in the End Times - P. Djeli Clark: The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead; and Harry Turtledove’s work, since I read a good ten or so of his books.

 

Grimdark and full of sly humor is one of my favorite jams, and there were two excellent reads in this area: The Devils - Joe Abercrombie and Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead - K.J. Parker

Horror yielded some excellent reads, including: Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zheng - Kylie Lee Baker; The Library at Hellebore - Cassandra Khaw (Carnivorous Hogwarts); and Don’t Sleep with the Dead - Nghi Vo (fabulous continuation of the Great Gatsby story)

Science fiction gave me: Fearsum Endjinn and Excession - Ian M. Banks; The Folded Sky - Elizabeth Bear (I will read anything Bear writes); Your Behavior Will Be Monitored - Justin Feinstein; Rose/house - Arkady Martine; The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling (gorgeous cave terror); Bee Speaker and Days of Shattered Faith - Adrian Tchaikovsky (another writer I would follow into any genre.)

Fantasy was my main reading area, and luckily that house holds many subgenres. Among my favorites were: GIfted & Talented - Olivie Blake (Urban Fantasy meets Succession); The Tainted Cup - Robert Jackson Bennett; The Enchanted Greenhouse - Sarah Beth Durst (lovely cozy fantasy); A Harvest of Hearts - Andrea Eames; Forged for Prophecy and Forged for Destiny - Andrew Knighton (fun Chosen one riff); Gradchanted - Morgan Matson (fluffy and delightful); The Butcher of the Forest - Premee Mohammed; The Ghosts of Rose Hill - R. M. Romero; The Unkillable Frank Lightning - Josh Roundtree; Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die - Greer Stothers (another fluffy treat); Ink Blood Sister Scribe - Emma Törzs (books about magic libraries are always a treat); The Naturalist Society - Carrie Vaughn

I run a monthly short-story discussion group and this year we read and discussed “Captive Audience” by Anne Warren Griffin, “Poor Little Saturday” by Madeleine L.Engle, “Women’s Work” by Garen Drussai, “From the Days of Perky Pat” by Philip K. Dick, Flatland by Edwin Abott, “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick, “Water Bringer” by Mary Rosenblum, “The Faery Handbag” by Kelly Link, and “Sand Kings” by George R.R. Martin. I try to pick older works that we look at from a craft perspective as well as how they fit into the flow of science fiction history, and this year’s stories were all rewarding, as were our guest speakers, Karen Lord and Harry Turtledove. In a related craft book discussion group, we started the year with Henry Lien’s excellent Spring Summer Asteroid Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling and currently are finishing up Ursula K. Le Guin’s equally stellar Steering the Craft.

A notable collection I read was The Essential Peter S. Beagle, published by Tachyon Press, and I highly recommend this well-curated and absolutely delightful two volume set.

In nonfiction, these all stood out for one reason or another. Sue Monk Kidd’s Writing and Creativity; Uncanny - The Origins of Fear - Junji Itō; Arrest-proof Yourself: An Ex-cop Reveals How Easy It Is for Anyone to Get Arrested, How Even a Single Arrest Could Ruin Your Life, and What to Do if the Police Get in Your Face - Dale C. Carson (so freaking timely it hurts); Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller, the Man Who Created Nancy - Bill Griffith (graphic novel) and Spent - Alison Bechdel (graphic novel).

 

 

 Cat Rambo’s 300+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. In 2020 they won the Nebula Award for fantasy novelette "Carpe Glitter." They are a former two-term President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Their most recent works are space opera Devil’s Gun (Tor Macmillan, 2023) and anthology The Reinvented Detective (Arc Manor, 2023),  co-edited with Jennifer Brozek For more about Cat, as well as links to fiction and popular online school, The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, see their website.