tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53608140200568711562024-03-04T22:28:45.238-08:00Ambling Along the AqueductConversation about all things AqueductianTimmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.comBlogger2023125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-58927610601720371722024-01-15T06:00:00.000-08:002024-01-15T06:00:00.130-08:00Tales from Mnemosyne by Dennis Danvers<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXajdOwUDkt30U8J2-ArvRQhG4leL-zEKYYpLi_qqjviMf6FebcnSiO3oiZKKVRDB8rQT6QKqW9XjRAVw2VyU3uew2yWb6R0QsML4-kriTVVMkg0b5_BMoGt3S6iTmvzHjGocSQKuK9jezUUhK26EyQ2irlvQ5Olkev7l_PkYOgQRgESWbFYx2EU3gGhm_/s1000/Danvers-cvr-lr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="628" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXajdOwUDkt30U8J2-ArvRQhG4leL-zEKYYpLi_qqjviMf6FebcnSiO3oiZKKVRDB8rQT6QKqW9XjRAVw2VyU3uew2yWb6R0QsML4-kriTVVMkg0b5_BMoGt3S6iTmvzHjGocSQKuK9jezUUhK26EyQ2irlvQ5Olkev7l_PkYOgQRgESWbFYx2EU3gGhm_/s320/Danvers-cvr-lr.jpg" width="201" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I'm pleased to announce the release of <i>Tales from Mnemosyne </i>by Dennis Danvers as volume 90 in Aqueduct's Conversation Pieces series in both print and e-book editions. You can purchase it now at <a href="http://www.aqueductpress.com.">www.aqueductpress.com.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Tales from Mnemosyne </i>retells Classical myths, largely known from Ovid, in the
voice and tradition of an Appalachian storyteller, in this case, the goddess
Mnemosyne. As the goddess of Memory and mother of The Muses, she is uniquely
qualified to set the record straight—to tell the <i>true </i>stories without
the usual patriarchal propaganda, all the while keeping things fun and only
slightly blasphemous. Mnemosyne as a timeless goddess knows now and then
backwards and forwards and has as much to say about the here and now as way
back when. These fourteen tales include the most famous—Daphne and Apollo,
Europa and Jove, the Birth of Athena, Cupid and Psyche—along with some
too-often-forgotten ones, such as Tiresias and his daughter Manto, and Oenone,
the abandoned wife of Paris. Charon, appropriately, concludes the proceedings.<i>
</i><span> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span> </span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: inherit;">Advance
Praise<i> for Tales from Mnemosyne</i></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This
cool little book came in the mail yesterday, from Aqueduct’s Conversation
Pieces imprint. It’s by the author, Dennis Danvers. <i>Tales From Mnemosyne</i>. These stories were originally told by Ovid
but here they are told with the local trappings and voice of an Appalachian
story teller. I heard him read one of these at World Fantasy — what a unique
and effective blend of influences. Check it out.—Jeff Ford, author of <i>The Drowned Life </i>and <i>Pretty Good Neighbor</i><span style="color: #262626;"><span> </span></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"><span> </span></span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: inherit;"><span> </span></span></span></p>
Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-9496165290083672612024-01-11T06:00:00.000-08:002024-01-11T06:00:00.138-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 32: Cynthia Ward<p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEhooZd94GxoV7KBX6XmndPnGGkTAtlQHbiCnObM4IhNSznRqXNx0ae9Ul79BnDFwyAb1uy0bMUpAhlLbbBVs4fPSqA-Ang-h9JEZrqRbDYdItzDb5ISg9CdZYpbDyBcYX1V_zNg8arxd_T8wKPiALgzKwOWM7ssM2qqwZQs8aSL21M=s662-d" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="662" data-original-width="553" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEhooZd94GxoV7KBX6XmndPnGGkTAtlQHbiCnObM4IhNSznRqXNx0ae9Ul79BnDFwyAb1uy0bMUpAhlLbbBVs4fPSqA-Ang-h9JEZrqRbDYdItzDb5ISg9CdZYpbDyBcYX1V_zNg8arxd_T8wKPiALgzKwOWM7ssM2qqwZQs8aSL21M=s320-d" width="267" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">2023 in Review: The Godless, Pop Gods, and Others<br />
by Cynthia Ward</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 170.1pt;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Another less-than-stellar year, so on to the (mostly) good
stuff</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><b>May we all have a vision now and then (Music)</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Uo0JAUWijM"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">"Happy New Year" by ABBA</span></span></a>
- In hopes of a better year ahead.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://nowagainrecords.com/up/ZamrockBoxSet_BoxSet.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="200" src="https://nowagainrecords.com/up/ZamrockBoxSet_BoxSet.jpeg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39Ht6VtAkyE"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">"Journey to the End"</span></span></a>
by Haliok - My favorite song by Norwegian death-metal band Windir lends itself
well to techno/electronica interpretations, as this cover version demonstrates.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <a href="https://soundcloud.com/benjiphonik/omega-funk-10-000-by"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">Omega Funk 10,000</span></span></a> by
Benjiphonik - If you were wondering (as I'm sure we all do) who stands at the
intersection of P-Funk, Run-DMC, Slayer, B-movie sci-fi, and Weird Al Yankovic,
here's a link to a free streaming EP by SoCal singer/rapper/musician
Benjiphonik (although this particular collection is, to be fair, short on
metal).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwzeqPFLWL0"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">The Story of Zamrock! The Zambian Rock
Sound 1972-1978</span></span></a> - Thanks to the writer Manjula Menon for
introducing me to this short documentary and the fantastic psychedelic rock of
1970s Zambia.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><b>It was strange to discover the world was a better place
that you’d believed (Books)</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Nonfiction:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN">ABBA: Bright
Lights Dark Shadows</span></i><span lang="EN"> (updated
2014) by Carl Magnus Palm - Very thorough and mostly interesting, but probably
not for the casual fan (or for someone who wants an update that includes ABBA's
recent reunion) <br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN">All Creatures
Great and Small</span></i><span lang="EN"> by James
Herriot - So everyone read it back in the '70s except me, and I wish I had,
because I could have reread this charming account of a rural Yorkshire veterinarian's
adventures and misadventures many times in the intervening years.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1356447436i/64666.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="264" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1356447436i/64666.jpg" width="132" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales</i> by<i>
</i>Oliver Sacks -<i> </i>In this justly praised </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">(though now dated) book from 1995, the late neurologist
sympathetically discusses (from an outsider perspective) several individuals we
would now describe as neurodiverse, including, most famously, the autistic
animal behaviorist Dr. Temple Grandin.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End</i>
by Bart D. Ehrman - Fascinating and enlightening book by one of the leading
scholars of the early Christian era.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum</i> by
Temple Grandin and Richard Panek - Excellent (though dated) book on autism from
someone on the spectrum--which makes this something of a rarity in
mainstream-published books, in my experience.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir</i> by Lamya H - In this
collection of thoughtful and thought-provoking essays, the pseudonymous queer
Muslim immigrant author explores her relationships with her religion, her
deity, her sexuality, her culture, her partners, and her family.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1377731720i/484028.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="259" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1377731720i/484028.jpg" width="130" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles</i>
by Mike Davis - A classic sociocultural history of L.A. from an author whose
political perspective is much like mine, but I didn't finish it because I
wearied of the nonstop negativity.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>Confessions of the Other Mother: Nonbiological Lesbian
Moms Tell All!</i> edited by Harlyn Aizley - This anthology of essays by queer
nonbirth mothers is wide-ranging and well-written (if somewhat dated), and it
gave this childfree reader much food for thought about motherhood, parenting, pregnancy,
birth, child-raising, and family. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia
Highsmith</i> by Richard Bradford - By all accounts, the brilliant
mystery/thriller writer and trailblazing lesbian romance author Patricia
Highsmith was a reprehensible human being, but the author of this biography is
so busy making sure you know he doesn't like her that I abandoned the book, overcome
by the sound of axes grinding. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>The Family Outing: A Memoir</i> by Jessi Hempel - What if
nearly everyone in your family, including you, turns out to be queer and/or genderqueer,
and oh, yeah, you might be involved in a cult? <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in
American Public Life</i> by R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick - A
thoughtful, nuanced, non-insulting view of religion and irreligion in American
life, and their iterative interactions with U.S. law and custom and with one
another; the authors' reasonable thesis is that nonbelief has generally failed
to provide much to fill the role (meaningful action/activism) of religions and
faith groups, and they speculate on a more coherent approach to secular morality.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do
Believe</i> by Greg Epstein - A thoughtful and thorough exploration of not only
the possibility, but the necessity of atheist morality and ethics, written the
Humanist Chaplain of Harvard University.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1395145734i/20578615.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1395145734i/20578615.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>I Am a Bacha Posh: My Life as a Woman Living as a Man in
Afghanistan</i> by Ukmina Manoori with Stephanie Lebrun, translated by Peter E.
Chianchiano, Jr. - A fascinating first-hand account (in translation) from a
person who was assigned female at birth; was temporarily designated a boy so
her family would have a male child, in accordance with Afghani custom; and
refused to resume life as a girl--of interest to readers of Anna-Marie
McLemore's novel <i>When the Moon Was Ours</i> (2016) or Jenny Nordberg's <i>The
Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan</i>
(2014), or to anyone interested in gender, identity, feminism, Afghani culture,
etc.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save
America</i> by Dahlia Lithwick - The gut-clenching account of how women lawyers
across the U.S. fought back the Trump administration assault on democracy, and
let's hope Lithwick never needs to write a sequel.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions</i>
by Phil Zuckerman - This carefully researched (if now somewhat dated)
exploration of the United States' fastest-growing religious/ontological demographic
("nones") is written with grace and balance by a leading secularist; the
book's a useful guide, whether you're writing the other as a believer, or just
looking for better understanding, whether as an outsider or as an insider.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1673870643i/61685822.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="271" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1673870643i/61685822.jpg" width="136" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma</i> by Claire Dederer - A
complex, candid, and sometimes deeply uncomfortable exploration of art,
creativity, monstrous creators, our relationship with them, and other
relationships.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of
Neurodiversity</i> by Steve Silberman - The best book (and the most recent)
I've read so far on autism.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>The Other Family Doctor: A Veterinarian Explores What
Animals Can Teach Us About Love, Life, and Mortality</i> by Karen Fine - The
memoir of a woman veterinarian and pet owner who entered the field when it was
male-dominated and built a successful practice in a sexist profession that guarantees
much suffering and death; if you don't cry, your heart is harder than mine.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her
Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America</i> by Elizabeth Letts - An
aging Maine farm woman diagnosed with terminal cancer loses her home to the tax
man and sets out to cross 1950s America on a horse--Annie Wilkins is a
quintessential Mainer, the author understands Maine better than any other
out-of-stater I've ever read, and this is one of the best books I read all
year.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to
Now</i> by Jeff Yang, Phil Yu, and Philip Wang - This impressive, comprehensive,
and sometimes very funny exploration of Asian American pop culture and
historical/political/sociocultural issues includes a handy
"appreciation-or-appropriate" flowchart for those of us who are
writing the other, or who just want not to be assholes.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386923381i/54935.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="287" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386923381i/54935.jpg" width="121" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders</i> by Jennifer
Finney Boyle - A literate, insightful, candid, and drily funny memoir by the
novelist, trans activist, and former Colby College professor.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story
of the Founding Mothers of NPR</i> by Lisa Napoli - The subtitle is truth in
advertising.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in
Japan</i> by Jake Adelstein - The title and foreword make this engaging work
sound like a true-crime book; the subtitle might have injected more accuracy by
including the word "memoir."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe
(and Maybe You Should Too)</i> by Kate Cohen – This thought-provoking book
covers considerably more ground than just whether a nonbeliever should identify
and publicly come out as atheist.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1662673607i/62337617.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="298" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1662673607i/62337617.jpg" width="132" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary
for Living an Ethical Life</i> by Phil Zuckerman - Why morality dependent on
divine command isn't moral, among other subjects addressed logically and eruditely.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>Who Gets Believed? When the Truth Isn't Enough</i> by
Dina Nayeri - Odds are, if you're reading this blog, you are or have been part
of a demographic or several whose experiences are routinely disbelieved and
dismissed, and therefore might find this book of interest; but I have known
people who couldn't finish it, because the dismissed people on which it is
centered are refugees and torture survivors.<span>
</span>Harrowing and necessary.<br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed: 15 Voices from the Latinx
Diaspora</i> edited by Saraciea J. Fennell - A nonfiction anthology of
graceful, powerful essays from a fairly diverse, broadly defined group of
Latinx authors.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Fiction - Anthologies and Collections and a Story or Three:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" by Arthur
Conan Doyle - A fine winter mystery featuring an oft-stolen gem, Christmas
geese, and an almost merry visit with Sherlock Holmes, who embodies the
generous spirit of the season (included in <i>The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes</i>)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>Bicycles & Broomsticks: Fantastical Feminist Stories
about Witches on Bikes</i> edited by Elly Blue - If you read the full title,
you know exactly what you're getting; and they're fun and gentle visions.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1675468832i/97762865.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="533" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1675468832i/97762865.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Futures That Never Were (Broadswords and Blasters
Presents)</i> edited by Cameron Mount and Matthew X Gomez - Jam-packed,
pulse-pounding anthology/special issue of sword & planet and related pulp
space adventure stories (disclosure:<span> </span>I'm
a contributor).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>The Ruin of Gabriel Ashleigh: A Society of Gentlemen
Short Story</i> by KJ Charles - What if you lose everything, only to gain what
you really want?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men</i> by
Claire Keegan - A slim collection of three graceful, insightful, deceptively
simple fictions which serve as a corrective to any starry-eyed illusions about
male-female romantic relationships, and which I should not have read back-to-back
due to a certain monotony of theme; your mileage may vary.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>A Sweet Yuletide</i> by EE Ottoman - This short, gentle,
historical holiday FF romance may leave you hungry.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Fiction - Novels and Novellas:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>All the Right Notes</i> by Dominic Lim - Kind of uneven,
this ambitiously structured, Filipino/Japanese American, MM romance novel is
not a "hilarious comedy" as misleadingly promoted, but it is a
lyrical love letter to musicals.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>The Angel of the Crows</i> by Katherine Addison (who also
writes as Sarah Monette) - A gaslight fantasy, a sort of re-envisioning of
Holmes and Watson after significant alterations, set in a world of werewolves
and vampires and angels, fallen and unfallen; sometimes a mess, but an entertaining
novel.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Astrid Parker Doesn't Fail</i> (Bright Falls Book 2) by
Ashley Herring Blake - In this insightful and sexy sequel to small-town Oregon romantic
comedy <i>Delilah Green Doesn't Care</i>, Delilah's interior-designer
stepsister/fellow monster-mother-survivor must stake all on a reality-TV
remodel, but the cute lesbian head carpenter proves an obstacle to her goal,
her identity, and her heart. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>Babel</i> by R.F. Kuang - Brilliant magic system, audacious
novel, deserving Nebula Award winner.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Bard: Book 1</i> by Keith Taylor - This Arthurian sword
& sorcery fix-up novel about a wandering Irish musician/warrior/Druid is a compelling
if sometimes dated page-turner, with as harrowing a werewolf as I've ever seen.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Black Orchid Enterprises series by M.R. Dimond - With
four titles released so far, this cozy, diverse, contemporary small-town Texas
mystery series combines crime, cat rescue, an ABBA tribute band, the occasional
holiday, and romantic pining to entertaining (and sometimes sobering) effect
(two of the four titles are collections, not novels).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Bowlaway: A Novel</i> by Elizabeth McCracken - I was
primed to like this literary fantasy/magic realist novel centered on the
endangered New England sport of candlepin bowling, but the prose was so busy
being arch and clever that I gave up.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>By Way of Sorrow</i> (An Erin McCabe Legal Thriller Book
1) by Robyn Gigl - Page-turner/voyage of discovery about a trans lawyer seeking
justice, which left me wishing the character had queer/genderqueer found family
instead of operating in painful isolation.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Can't Spell Treason Without Tea</i> (Tomes & Tea Book
1) by Rebecca Thorne - I finally tried some cozy fantasy, and found this gentle,
romantic (FF), secondary-world novel a pleasant way to while away an afternoon,
as well as a welcome change from ten-tome epic fantasy trilogies; it's worth a
look if you love books or tea and don't mind anachronism.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Chef's Kiss</i> and <i>Chef's Choice</i> by TJ Alexander
- Despite my lack of cooking skills, I greatly enjoyed these queer and genderqueer
culinary romance novels, and found Book 2's Frenchman annoying but, yes! also
charming.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1653574427i/59314709.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="533" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1653574427i/59314709.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i><span lang="EN">Counterfeit</span></i><span lang="EN"> by Kirstin Chen - This terrific feminist literary
caper novel should be marinating in mystery/suspense awards, but sadly isn't;
don't miss it.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>A Coup of Tea</i> (Tea Princess Chronicles Book 1) by
Casey Blair - This recent entry in the recently named cozy fantasy subgenre has
a low-key (MF) romance and a narrator so keenly attuned to political and social
subtleties that the novel might also qualify as fantasy of manners.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1362185426i/17453991.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1362185426i/17453991.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>Death by Silver</i> and <i>A Death at the Dionysus Club</i>
by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold - Happy to see this alternate-Victorian
fantasy mystery series (featuring characters loosely inspired by Holmes &
Watson) back in print with gorgeous new covers, and delighted to read them
again.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN">Death on the
Nile</span></i><span lang="EN"> by Agatha Christie -
The classic Hercule Poirot whodunnit now also serves as a window into the colonial
English view of Egypt.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Demon Copperhead</i> by Barbara Kingsolver - This ambitious
Pulitzer Prize winner has a wonderful voice that pulls you right along (which
makes this grittily realistic contemporary literary novel no less dark or lengthy).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i><span lang="EN">Feel the Bern:
A Bernie Sanders Mystery</span></i><span lang="EN"> by
Andrew Shaffer - Set in Vermont (who'd have guessed?), this light cozy mystery from
the author of the Obama/Biden mysteries features the U.S. Senator as an enjoyable
if cranky amateur detective.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"> </span><i><span lang="EN">The Fiancée
Farce: A Novel</span></i><span lang="EN"> by
Alexandria Bellefleur - When a lie blows up in this Seattle-set FF rom-com, a
publisher's heir and a failing bookstore's owner agree to wed, a quick fix which
proves not the simple solution they were hoping for.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1390630660i/644341.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="280" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1390630660i/644341.jpg" width="118" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>Fire Logic</i> and <i>Earth Logic</i> by Laurie J. Marks
- Judging by the first two of its four books, Elemental Logic is a gracefully
written epic fantasy series which considers imperialism, colonialism, and magic
not as elements for a sweeping adolescent power fantasy, but intimately and thoughtfully--the
first two titles are difficult, beautiful, sometimes aggravating, and always
demanding and rewarding.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN">Have You Seen
Luis Velez?</span></i><span lang="EN"> by Catherine
Ryan Hyde - This diverse novel stays too close to the surface of its difficult intersections
and issues to avoid clocking out as Representation Lite.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"> </span><i><span lang="EN">Hen</span></i><span lang="EN"> </span><i>Fever: A Sapphic Victorian
Romance</i> by Olivia Waite - For the holiday I re-read this historical Christmas
romance novella, which offers just <span lang="EN">the
right level of detail to feel wintry, yet cozy and warm.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"> </span><a name="_Hlk153114081"><i><span lang="EN">Hercule Poirot's Christmas</span></i></a><span><span lang="EN"> by Agatha Christie - </span></span><span lang="EN">What's the holiday spirit without a bloody
murder, a family riven by hatred, and a fiendish locked-room mystery?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"> </span><i><span lang="EN">How to
Excavate a Heart</span></i><span lang="EN"> by Jake
Maia Arlow - In this Hanukkah/Christmas romance, a young palaeoichthyologist/dog
walker/trauma survivor literally runs into the girl of her dreams; can they
work past their youthful awkwardness and inexperience as a DC blizzard piles
the snow higher around them?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Idol Minds</i> by KT Salvo - A captivating (not to
mention steamy) contemporary MM romance in which a closeted, Oscar-winning
Korean American actor with secrets relocates to Seoul to coach a closeted K-Pop
superstar fleeing his own secrets.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Infamous: A Novel</i> by Lex Croucher - Fun, interracial,
sapphic Regency rom-com which felt rather more like Zoomers running with a
Boho/hippie crowd than I suspect is strictly accurate.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Iris Kelly Doesn't Date</i> (Bright Falls Book 3) by
Ashley Herring Blake - In the conclusion to the FF rom-com Bright Falls trilogy,
a writer's deliberately single life runs afoul of an irresistible actor and an
entire monster family; despite the novel's many strengths, it seems not nearly
aware enough of the absolutely toxic levels of familial meddling.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>An Island Princess Starts a Scandal</i> (Las Leonas Book
2) by Adriana Herrera - As this hot historical FF romance novel makes clear, Herrera
really knows how to put her romantic leads--and her reader--through the wringer.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Kiss Her Once for Me: A Novel</i> by Alison Cochrun - Fun
fake-engagement FF love-quadrangle romance that's a love-letter to the Rose
City and the first portrayal of a demisexual character I've seen that resonates
with my experience.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>K-Pop Confidential</i> by Stephan Lee - Riveting romantic
YA novel of a young Korean American woman who may land her dream job, if the
try-out and training don't kill her first; I hope this is an exaggerated
fictionalization of life in Korean entertainment, but fear it is not.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Love & Saffron: A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Love</i>
by Kim Fay - I don't expect white American characters to be aware of cultural
appropriation in writing professionally about Mexican food and recipes in the
1960s, but the additional material appended to this interesting but uneven
short epistolary novel from 2022 make it clear the author is either oblivious
to this ethical gray area or ignored it, which, together with some other issues,
leaves the work as Representation Lite.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i><span lang="EN">Luke and Billy
Finally Get a Clue</span></i><span lang="EN"> by Cat
Sebastian - A low-key yet riveting historical MM romance novella in which two prominent
pro baseball players navigate possible attraction in 1953.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1679317979i/123280663.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="533" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1679317979i/123280663.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>The Master of Samar</i> by Melissa Scott - In this terrific
stand-alone queer fantasy, loosely inspired by Renaissance Venice, curses and
genii loci are nothing like you imagined.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>Masters in This Hall</i> by KJ Charles - In this
historical MM romance novella, there's no place like home for the holidays, especially
when it's your uncle's grand house in Victorian England and you're on the trail
of the thief who loved and double-crossed you, with far more dangerous men pursuing
you both.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Mecca: A Novel</i> by Susan Straight - As good a writer
about California as Steinbeck; a novel that's a master class in writing the
other and the knowing chronicle of an Inland Empire native; a cri de couer against
the injustices of race and class and gender and citizenship at the core of the
Golden State and the United States; an ending that is unresolved yet all too
clear.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Midwinter Murder: Fireside Tales from the Queen of
Mystery</i> by Agatha Christie - Short, tricksy mystery and thriller tales
which are mostly, but not all, set in the winter season.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i><span lang="EN">Mortal Follies</span></i><span lang="EN"> by Alexis Hall - An amusing historical
fantasy romance (FF) novel, but your enjoyment may hinge significantly on your
reaction to the narration.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Natural Beauty</i> by Ling Ling Huang - This recent release
(2023) was published as a literary novel and I found it on a list of
crime/mystery/suspense novels by Asian writers, but my primary impression is
that it is a science fiction novel of body horror...and an unpredictable, thought-provoking,
and deeply creepy one.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Night Sky Mine</i> by Melissa Scott - Excellent far-future
cyberpunk novel of artificial life and the relationship of union and
corporation.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>One Last Stop</i> by Casey McQuiston - Seeking distance
from her boundaries-challenged mother, a queer virgin Southern woman relocates
to New York and becomes fascinated by the butch Chinese punk she sees on the
subway...a woman who seems from another time, and perhaps is.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Ocean's Echo</i> by Everina Maxwell - The sequel to
romantic (MM) far-future novel of political space opera <i>Winter's Orbit</i>
is at least as strong as its predecessor.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Pachinko</i> by Min Jin Lee - This decades-spanning
National Book Award finalist, a historical novel of Koreans in 20th-Century
Korea and Japan, is gorgeously and sensitively written, and a stone bummer.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>The Postcard</i> by Anne Berest, translated by Tina Kover
- In the alternating past and present storylines of this chilling novel/thinly
veiled memoir, 21st-Century fascism and Antisemitism rise around a Jewish
Frenchwoman barely aware of her heritage as she investigates an anonymous,
threatening postcard sent to her bearing only the names of her ancestors killed
in the Holocaust.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>The Princess Stakes: A Multicultural Regency Romance</i>
(Daring Dukes Book 1) by Amalie Howard - <span lang="EN">As part of my quest for the elusive feminist MF romance of
consent-conscious equals, I started this romance novel; I abandoned it
unfinished because I got tired of waiting for something feminist to show up.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"> </span><i><span lang="EN">A River Runs
through It and Other Stories</span></i><span lang="EN"> by Norman MacLean - Graceful, elegaic, infused with love for the West and
family and fly-fishing; reminds me greatly of Hemingway, except for leaving
somewhat less grit in my gears.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"> </span><i><span lang="EN">The Rivals of
Casper Road</span></i><span lang="EN"> (Garnet Run
Book 4) by Roan Parrish - Parrish returns to her popular small-town Garnet Run
series for a strong Halloween-set MM neurodiverse/neurotypical romance.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"> </span><i>The Romantic Agenda</i> by Claire Kann - As in her
previous ace/allo interracial MF romance novel, <i>Let's Talk About Love</i>,
Claire Kann presents a complex, difficult Black woman character who may leave
you tearing out your hair and/or wondering why the guy might stay with her;
points for creating characters and relationships which really leave you
thinking.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Season of Love</i> by Helena Greer - As Hanukkah and
other holidays pass in this sapphic romance, the Jewish heir to a Christmas
tree farm clashes and sparks with the Gentile manager.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen</i> (The Doomsday
Books Book 1) and <i>A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel</i> (The
Doomsday Books Book 2) by KJ Charles - Crimes and secrets, sex and romance, manly
love, KJ Charles--what's not to like?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>The Secret of the Lost Pearls</i> by Darcie Wilde (who
also writes as Sarah Zettel) - In the 2022 installment of the Austen-inspired Regency
mystery series, "useful woman" Rosalind Thorne becomes entangled in a
complex mystery that quickly moves far beyond a missing necklace.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix</i> (Remixed
Classics Book 5) by Anna-Marie McLemore - A gracefully written YA trans
Hispanic take on the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic of the Roaring '20s, but
perhaps not the novel for those who want no anachronism.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Seoulmates</i> by Susan Lee - Fun if kind of uneven YA MF
rom-com with K-Drama.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Shadow of the Rock: A Spike Sanguinetti Novel</i> by
Thomas Mogford - This opening novel of a Gibraltar mystery series turns out to
be set mostly in Morocco, which is something of a disappointment, given the
historical, ethnic, and sociocultural complexities of the Rock; additionally,
the lead is a bit too much of a lucky cishet white guy that the women can't
resist.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1679516813i/123443956.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="525" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1679516813i/123443956.jpg" width="131" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Show Girl</i> by Alyson Greaves - A modern spin on the
Pygmalion/My Fair Lady trope, but also not really like anything else I've never
read, and lovely, too; highly recommended.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Sorry, Bro</i> by Taleen Voskuni - Well written FF rom-com
of finding self and of finding a love that may be shunned in the Bay Area
Armenian American community; the narrator can be intense and irritating, so I
would have preferred to see the PoV alternating with her more centered love
interest.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i><span lang="EN">Sword-Dancer</span></i><span lang="EN"> (Tiger and Del Book 1) by Jennifer
Roberson - I wondered about mentioning this superior but trigger-filled heroic
fantasy novel from 1986, because I wondered if anyone significantly younger
than I could tolerate the entitled, misogynistic male narrator; of course, for
a woman of my generation, his kind was legion, except typically less open to
the possibility of change than the damaged Tiger is.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN">System
Collapse</span></i><span lang="EN"> (The Murderbot
Diaries Book 7) by Martha Wells - Another fine novel featuring everyone's
favorite snarky construct (but better appreciated if you do what I didn't, and read
or re-read Book 6 right before this one).</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>That Summer Feeling</i> by Bridget Morrissey - In this enjoyable
FF contemporary romance, a premonition ends in a far different place than the
viewpoint character expects when she attends a summer camp for adults.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>A Thief in the Night</i> by KJ Charles - So you're
desperate enough to rob a guy on the highway and assume a valet's identity, only
to find out said valet's new employer is the guy you robbed--what could go
right?</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1627597715i/58065392.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="202" data-original-width="134" height="202" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1627597715i/58065392.jpg" width="134" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>The Verifiers</i> by Jane Pek -
In this superior literary mystery/thriller novel that may also be science
fiction, a keen-witted queer Asian woman who scorns online dating, investigates
online daters and can't seem to connect to anyone in real life uncovers a
possible crime, with potentially deadly consequences.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i>Water Horse</i> by Melissa Scott
- <span lang="EN">A terrific epic fantasy novel,
which is unusual for the subgenre in being queer and possibly unique in
completing its complex story in one (!) volume; the inspiration appears to be
Celtic, but reading this novel as a Celtic fantasy would be confusing at best.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"> </span><i><span lang="EN">The Water Outlaws</span></i><span lang="EN"> by
S.L. Huang - This wuxia novel, which is set in an alternate Song Dynasty China
and based (in queer and genderbent ways) on the classic Chinese novel <i>Water
Margin</i>, is an exciting and thought-provoking sword & sorcery adventure,
but if you have any triggers, they are probably in this book; and if you want
your reads to comfort or reinforce your Western expectations, moralities, or
pieties, you are in the wrong place.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"> </span><i>Wear It Like a Crown: A MM Royalty Romance</i> by Zarah
Detand - A gay prince threatened with blackmail takes on a handler who urges
the prince's coming out while keeping his own secrets.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <i><span lang="EN">We Could Be So
Good</span></i><span lang="EN"> by Cat Sebastian - In
a 1950s New York newsroom, it can be a challenge to stay closeted; and what is it
with this rather intrusive co-worker, anyway?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"> </span></span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span class="il"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"></span></span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi43QRAIvl55jkUG9yPyGoi-Ok3A9SC6Ru_WfsswzSi_YoJieDwLNcFJ2dHZ77nYI1Qndxb34GEs1_tvxz676y7f3J6qu9qpvant_EtqEJyvAOHhZnHnGrbokUOnQyZm1Xaear0FmpDoZL4XpLhNuE03fQftArnTSOSbAMLRfqKyVbOshiWR3mBR83KLN40/s1000/ward-golden-woman-cvr-lr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="628" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi43QRAIvl55jkUG9yPyGoi-Ok3A9SC6Ru_WfsswzSi_YoJieDwLNcFJ2dHZ77nYI1Qndxb34GEs1_tvxz676y7f3J6qu9qpvant_EtqEJyvAOHhZnHnGrbokUOnQyZm1Xaear0FmpDoZL4XpLhNuE03fQftArnTSOSbAMLRfqKyVbOshiWR3mBR83KLN40/w126-h200/ward-golden-woman-cvr-lr.jpg" width="126" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /> <a href="http://www.cynthiaward.com/"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">Cynthia Ward</span></span></a> has
published stories in <i>Analog</i>, <i><span>Asimov's</span></i>,
<i>Nightmare</i>, <i><span>Weird Tales</span></i>, and elsewhere.
For <a href="http://www.wolfsingerpubs.com/"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">WolfSinger Publications</span></span></a>, she edited the anthologies <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=lost+trails+cynthia+ward"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">Lost Trails: Forgotten Tales of the Weird
West V<span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">olumes <span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">1-2</span></span></span></span></a></i>.
With fellow Aqueductista <a href="http://nisishawl.com/"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">Nisi Shawl</span></span></a>, Cynthia
coauthored the Locus Award winning fiction-writing guide, <i><a href="http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/978-1-933500-00-3.php"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">Writing <span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">the
Other: A Practical Approach</span></span></span></a></i>. In 2021, <a href="http://www.aqueductpress.com/"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;"><span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">Aq<span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">ueduct <span style="color: black; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: black;">Press</span></span></span></span></a> released
the concluding novella in her Bloody-Thirsty Agent series, <i>The Adventure of
the Golden Woman</i>.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span class="il"> </span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span class="il"><br /></span></span></p>
Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-9707159959357664452024-01-08T06:00:00.000-08:002024-01-08T06:00:00.135-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 31: Nancy Jane Moore<p> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville","serif";"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQYd1_COwLGsBWbYf-TXnCSUoWq-MybpKY48TC7-EmEvUHNge9KMYs1vpQY0B2bfQiiShcEE9Isz9qVm-gVGPujhtCV35v_UJ6WXTk4YU2q4aFJ2DC11jEWYzpQshFcpzzZBDbhBegYuKw4-IQED3iqs3dNCS-rEcX-2k9saroMqXO6Q1FhTyl3BSnfhEr/s1280/nanoccupy.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQYd1_COwLGsBWbYf-TXnCSUoWq-MybpKY48TC7-EmEvUHNge9KMYs1vpQY0B2bfQiiShcEE9Isz9qVm-gVGPujhtCV35v_UJ6WXTk4YU2q4aFJ2DC11jEWYzpQshFcpzzZBDbhBegYuKw4-IQED3iqs3dNCS-rEcX-2k9saroMqXO6Q1FhTyl3BSnfhEr/s320/nanoccupy.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville","serif";">Always
Reading in 2023</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville","serif";">By Nancy
Jane Moore</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville","serif";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">We are
slowly being crowded out of our apartment by books. We buy them. We pick them
up on the street and in little free libraries. We check them out of the public
library. We keep trying to get rid of the ones we don’t want, but that requires
us to both decide we don’t want something and then for one of us to actually
take it out of the place. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Things would
be worse if it wasn’t for ebooks. I’ve got three reading apps and two library
apps for those. Plus magazines also take up space, especially <i>New Scientist</i>,
which comes weekly. We keep trying to throw magazines out (or put them on the
street for others), but it’s hard to be sure we’ve finished with them. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">And of
course, I read magazines and newspapers and newsletters online as well, not to
mention various and sundry articles and blogs I stumble across. The truth is
that my partner and I are always reading. It makes figuring out which books and
other things to write about a challenge, because I can’t write about them all. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">So instead
of trying to include everything I read this year, I want to focus on two books
that affected me profoundly and deeply. Two very different books.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The first is
<i>Menewood</i> by Nicola Griffith. This is the sequel to <i>Hild</i>, which I
also loved, but <i>Menewood</i> is so much more than a sequel. First of all,
looking at it as a writer, it is simply a brilliant piece of written work. It’s
681 pages long (not counting notes and maps) and every page, every sentence, every
word matters. I, who often skim through long and exciting books because I want
to know what happens next, read every damn word. It took me five days and cost
me sleep because I had some important things I also had to do. I could not put
it down for long. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1678297988i/60784675.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="534" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1678297988i/60784675.jpg" width="134" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">My passion
for this book goes beyond the sheer beauty of the writing. While it shows
Griffith’s depth of knowledge of the history of England in the seventh century
(long before it was even one small country, much less an empire), it is much
more than a good historical novel. Yes, of course, a lot of is made up, for so
much of the history of that time is unknown. But Griffith has wedded her
knowledge of the things that did happen with her speculative fiction writer’s
ability to come up with what could have happened within the context of that
reality. She made it up, but it fits. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">And even
more importantly to me, she has written a book about what true leaders do, and
should do. The “kings” of English history in this time are warlords contending
with each other for land and power and wealth. Each kingdom is tiny, by today’s
standards, and each king has <span> </span>ambition
for more. But, like all too many leaders even of large countries, not to
mention corporate barons of today, they want that power and wealth for its own
sake, not for what they can do with it for their people.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Hild is a
woman with a lot of power, but she is different from those kings. Reading this
book makes one see what a world could be like with true leadership. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">This is a masterpiece
of literature and Griffith’s best book yet. I have read all her novels and a
good chunk of her short fiction and have been a fan of her work for a very long
time, but this book crosses a threshold. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">If you
haven’t read <i>Hild</i>, read it first. <i>Menewood</i> transcends that very
good book, but the underpinnings are important. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1685350654i/112976320.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1685350654i/112976320.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br />The second
book is completely different: <i>How Infrastructure Works</i>, by engineering
professor Deb Chachra. This deeply important book delves into the many systems
that underlie our modern world – electricity, international shipping, roads,
communications, plumbing – and makes it clear how essential they are. <br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Chachra
makes several important points in this book. First of all, infrastructure
systems are, by their very nature, collective. They are used by many people at
once and work best when they are operated with that in mind. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Secondly,
most crucial infrastructure is relatively new, having been developed within the
last couple of hundred years. While roads have been around for millennia, the
sheer number of highways that were built over the 20th century to accommodate
the automobile boggles my mind when I think about it. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Third,
infrastructure is what makes modern life modern. Without it, people must devote
all their time to the basic tasks of life. If your home lacks running water,
you must fetch it. If it lacks refrigeration, you can’t store food. Without a
sewer system, you face challenges in dealing with human waste. Off the grid
life may sound “free,” but modern systems are what gives us the time and space
to do more with our lives than the basics. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Fourthly,
and perhaps most importantly, infrastructure is something we humans invented.
Unlike natural systems, it is not unchangeable. Not only that, but we can learn
from our errors if we look at the system carefully. For example, people assumed
that widening highways would solve traffic problems, but instead, that tends to
increase traffic because more people use the road. And drainage systems that
dump waste into rivers or even oceans have created new problems. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Much of our
current infrastructure was created around fossil fuels, but here is the part of
the book that gives me the most hope: Chachra says we can build a future that
provides sufficient infrastructure to give all of us the systems we need to
make life reasonable and comfortable from renewable energy sources. This will
require redoing current infrastructure, which also will give us the opportunity
to make different decisions about what we need. (Maybe we don’t need all those
cars and roads.) <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">And once we
do that, the energy to run our world will cost almost nothing, especially by
comparison to fossil fuels. There are some technological challenges still, but
the bigger ones are societal and political. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I’ve tried
to summarize why I find this book so constructive, but I still feel like I’m
not doing it justice. The writing is delightful, clear to a lay person like
myself without being condescending. Chachra manages the trick of being honest
about the challenges we face while still being optimistic about what we can do.
The information is vital to everyone from the writer who wants to creature a
non-dystopic future to the activist dealing with climate change to any person
frustrated with badly run utilities and overcrowded highways. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I want
everyone to read this book! <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I’m so far
behind on seeing movies that it’s almost silly for me to comment on them. But I
do want to mention one movie that I think most people missed: the 2019 slasher
film <i>Black Christmas</i>. (This is a remake of two earlier movies with the
same name, so the date of release is important.) </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/22/Black_Christmas_2019_teaser_poster.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/22/Black_Christmas_2019_teaser_poster.png" width="135" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> I actually
saw this movie at the end of 2019, but I watched it again this year because I
wanted to discuss it in an academic paper for WisCon. It’s one of the most feminist
movies I’ve ever seen, which is not something you expect from a slasher film. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">This
particular movie roots the violence necessary to the genre in misogyny and most
of the murder victims are women. In one healthy improvement to the genre, the
camera does not dwell on dead female bodies. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">But more
than that, the women students fight back even though they are not superheroes
or trained fighters, and they fight back collectively. This movie does not show
women as powerless and it shows the importance of doing things together. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I found it
much more inspiring than the various movies about women superheroes. Give me an
ordinary hero any day. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I will
confess that I found the movie a little harder to watch the second time because
I knew that characters I was invested in were going to die. I don’t usually
watch slasher movies or recommend them. But this one did inspire me and I’d
like to see it get more of a following. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">One other
thing I did this year was become obsessed about so-called artificial intelligence
as represented by the large language model (LLM) chatbots that were released
into the wild with great hype and even greater flaws. There are many ways of
looking at those programs; I know some writers very angry because their work
was used in developing the LLMs and others who have lost the kind of steady
freelance jobs that paid their bills because some fool thought they could be
replaced with a program. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">But while
those things are a concern, I find them just one part of a much larger set of
issues. Not, I hasten to add, the laughable idea that these LLMs will become
true artificial general intelligence and either bring about some kind of
salvation or destroy the word; contrary to the tech bro vision, neither the <i>Terminator</i>
nor the <i>Matrix</i> movies are documentaries. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Unfortunately,
much of the popular media coverage of these LLMs has been uncritical reports
based on the hype laid out by Open AI and the other companies, leaving out the
very real criticisms leveled by those who are generally called ethicists –
people who understand what this tech is doing and who see a number of problems
that aren’t even being considered, starting with the fact that most LLMs make
some serious errors that can be dangerous if they are used for such things as
facial recognition systems, just to pick one. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">There is a
lot of good material out there. I want to point to two good starting places for
examining the deeper issues. One is the academic paper
<a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922"> “On the Danger of
Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?”</a> by Emily Bender, Timnit
Gebru, Margaret Mitchell, and Angelina McMillan-Major. It was this paper that
got Gebru and Mitchell fired from Google. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> The other is
an article by Ted Chiang in the <i>New Yorker</i>: <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web"> “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPG of
the Web,”</a> in which he describes the chatbots as “lossy text-compression
algorithms.” <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Both these
pieces undercut the popular narrative and make clear that we’re a long way from
real AI. They also make it clear that we need to stop falling for tech bro hype
and start questioning and regulating the products that come out of that world.
The copyright lawsuits currently pending may help, but the problems created by
LLMs are much broader than the immediate issues of writers and publishers. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">As I was
about to send this piece off to Aqueduct, I read the latest <a href="https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/bullet-points-a-couple-predictions"> newsletter</a> from
Dave Karpf, a professor who studies the internet and politics. He suggests two things that may happen with LLMs that will change the pop
narrative and perhaps even open up the much more important ethical discussion. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">One is that
copyright law may be strong enough to override what they’re doing, similar to
what happened with Napster some twenty years ago. But his second point, that we
might figure out that these stronger LLMs are useful for a lot of things such
tech has been used for in the past, rather than the next step to artificial
general intelligence. That is, it’s not the birth of true AI, but simply a better
computing tool for certain kinds of analytical and tech work. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">That gave me
something cheerful to think about as I approached the New Year.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh44XsD1Dmb75HVpgpWs35qPyMvkR7zvA6G6i3XY7XUVFr0OiBBZOa2p6eyOXjGp19mAVLeo28pMTYHNuM2iLF6GptXY-m_o9jN2jsfSrstSiOjY0PgKurq2x22qHVetJgGxeQp2OlLUFsNexGF1liCjsgq9DEiiJ1OUmHuepVGEa8GwBD26MMsWL12HLUj/s1000/realm-cover-lr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="646" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh44XsD1Dmb75HVpgpWs35qPyMvkR7zvA6G6i3XY7XUVFr0OiBBZOa2p6eyOXjGp19mAVLeo28pMTYHNuM2iLF6GptXY-m_o9jN2jsfSrstSiOjY0PgKurq2x22qHVetJgGxeQp2OlLUFsNexGF1liCjsgq9DEiiJ1OUmHuepVGEa8GwBD26MMsWL12HLUj/s320/realm-cover-lr.jpg" width="207" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br />Nancy Jane
Moore is the author of the fantasy novel <i>For the Good of the Realm</i>, the
science fiction novel <i>The Weave</i>, and the novella <i>Changeling</i>, <span> </span>all from Aqueduct Press. Her short fiction has
appeared in a number of anthologies and magazines and in a collection from PS
Publishing. She holds a fourth degree black belt in Aikido. In other lifetimes
she organized co-ops, practiced law, and worked as a legal editor. A native
Anglo Texan, she lived in Washington, DC, for many years and now lives with her
sweetheart in Oakland, California. Over the last few years, she has developed
good relationships with her neighborhood crows. She is currently working on a
sequel to <i>For the Good of the Realm</i>. Website (currently in progress):
<a href="http://nancyjanemoore.com">nancyjanemoore.com</a>. </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-12488833499260444922024-01-05T06:00:00.000-08:002024-01-05T06:00:00.140-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 30: Couri Johnson<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.aqueductpress.com/images/authors/CouriJohnson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="360" height="320" src="http://www.aqueductpress.com/images/authors/CouriJohnson.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;">The Pleasures of Reading,
Viewing, and Listening in 2023</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;">by Couri Johnson </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;"><br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;">It’s been interesting rediscovering reading for pleasure on the other
side of the Ph.D. I think in some ways, I’m still relearning how to let a story
be a story rather than always dissecting it to prove a point or to provide
workshop feedback. Not that those acts aren’t also, in their own way,
enjoyable. But sometimes, it’s good just to experience a thing. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;"><i></i></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1488651923i/33952849.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="704" data-original-width="431" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1488651923i/33952849.jpg" width="122" /></a></i></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;">To help with this rehabilitation, I gave myself a homework assignment to
read or re-read all of Haruki Murakami’s work from beginning to end. I love his
short stories – </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;"><i>Desire</i> is a short one
that’s great to start off with if you’re unfamiliar with his work. The stories
are concise, mysterious, and often pack a heavy emotional blow for their small
size. From the novels I’ve worked through of his so far this year, the finale
to his rat-series, <i>Dance, Dance, Dance,</i>
has been a standout. The interactions between the 30-something narrator in
contrast to a teenage girl underscore the different alienations and growing
pains that come with each era of life. </span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1651766492i/61037416.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="555" data-original-width="505" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1651766492i/61037416.jpg" width="182" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Another great pleasure of mine has been sitting down with Kym
Cunningham’s poetry. Her collection <i>New
Mythologies </i>is right up my alley. She blends horror and fairytale into a
lovely and disruptive talk about the female body throughout the collection,
through poems about girls with skin made of teeth or stone. I’m lucky to be
wrapping up the year with her new collection,<i> The Dis/sonance, </i>where Cunningham is being further disruptive (in
such a fun way!) with the relationship between words and identity, and how she
places words on the page.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1689187091i/153623717.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1689187091i/153623717.jpg" width="125" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;"> I’ve also been sitting with Christopher Barzak’s <i>Monstrous Alterations, </i>which has been one of my absolute favorites
of the year. Perhaps I’m biased for having studied under Barzak, and because
he, too, rewrites the Twelve Dancing Princesses in this collection, which is
one of my favorite stories to play with. I love retellings – especially those
that breathe a new emotional life into the stories, and Barzak does just that.
His end lines are the kind that stick with you, and I find myself returning to
them over and over again. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-highlight: white;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="background: white; color: #222222;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Couri Johnson is a recovering ex-pat living in Youngstown, Ohio. She's
a graduate of the North Eastern Ohio Master of Fine Arts and holds a
Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Louisiana at
Lafayette. Previously, she bounced around the States and Japan as an
English teacher, but has since settled back in the North to spend time
with her cats writing strange fairy tales. Her first short story
collection, <i>I'll Tell You a Love Story</i>, is available through Bridge
Eight Press, and her novel-in-stories, <i>The Girl Who</i> through Gateway
Press. Aqueduct Press will be publishing <i>Feraltales </i>in 2024 as a volume in the Conversation Pieces series.<br /></span></span></p>
Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-74488850843846697602024-01-04T06:00:00.000-08:002024-01-04T06:00:00.141-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 29: Margaret McBride<p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPXn6c_B-kgR0ltn4PACW5TthxYQAfBq35OI-ptwAvzitdyhE-lMcF3AROd9yLFjU1-92zcyS3v9GVDgB82AAqwPMtfZIBxuMcyz-kg1RxB7RN5nw1to0oE5q4aZCwEIvuMg_AJTHOyeFk/s320/558518_3627694852295_333274908_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="320" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPXn6c_B-kgR0ltn4PACW5TthxYQAfBq35OI-ptwAvzitdyhE-lMcF3AROd9yLFjU1-92zcyS3v9GVDgB82AAqwPMtfZIBxuMcyz-kg1RxB7RN5nw1to0oE5q4aZCwEIvuMg_AJTHOyeFk/s320/558518_3627694852295_333274908_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Aqueduct Reading List 2023</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">by Margaret McBride</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><p></p><p><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I taught at the University of Oregon for 30+ years (including classes on gender and sexuality in science fiction and fantasy). Now that I’m retired I have a lot of time to read. Choosing which ones I liked the best from my list made me realize I am responding most positively to books where characters manage to find community and work together through hard times (must be responding to the horrific political, international, environmental news that I read every day).</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1626721795i/56179360.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="259" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1626721795i/56179360.jpg" width="130" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /><br /><i>Light from Uncommon Stars </i>by Ryka Aoki–a mixture of fantasy and science fiction with the hurt of a trans character being abused by family, angst of music competitions, fear of aliens escaping conflict but tempered by the characters changing and working together. The scenes where the trans character is ignored and then finally helped by clothing store clerks are heart-breaking. You can’t go wrong with an Otherwise Award winner where aliens and an AI hologram run a doughnut shop in L. A.<br /><br /><i>Legends and Lattes</i> by Travis Baldree–well developed fantasy work that examines economic issues where troubles are overcome by unexpected people managing to work together. I loved the characters.<br /><br /><i>Interference</i> by Sue Burke (sequel to <i>Semiosis</i> which must be read first)–unique aliens with different versions of what sentience could be like with interesting human characters and the ethical decisions they must make.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /><i></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1619648351i/57886925._SX150_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="150" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1619648351i/57886925._SX150_.jpg" width="133" /></a></i></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br />Stage-Struck Vampires</i> by Suzy McKee Charnas I reread most of her books for her memorial at WisCon and am selecting this one to comment on because her essay about writing <i>Walk to the End of the World, Motherlines, The Furies, Conqueror’s Child</i> was enlightening (the series is well worth reading too). She was criticized because <i>Motherlines</i> had no male characters! Finishing the series took longer than she wanted because she had trouble finding a resolution where men and women could coexist in the horrific future she had envisioned. The stories in <i>Stage-Struck Vampires</i> are good too.<br /><br /><i>KnifeWitch</i> by Susan di Rende Plot elements might sound dreary: young woman kidnapped by pirates to be sold to mean cult has an encounter with a sentient sea monster. But no–this book was great fun with all kinds of unexpected plot twists. I read it on the plane coming home from WisCon and laughed out loud.<br /><br /><i>The Sentence </i>by Louise Erdrich–takes place during the first Covid pandemic year in Erdrich’s book store with maybe a ghost, examination of indigenous issues, post-incarceration difficulties, relationship problems, importance of reading and even includes a list of recommended books!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1634486353i/59365820.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="510" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1634486353i/59365820.jpg" width="127" /></a></div></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /><br /><i>Under Fortunate Stars </i>by Ren Hutchings–what a fun premise: a human spaceship with alien ambassador on board is stuck in unknown space with unworking engine. They are able to get to an old nearby ship which turns out to have the name and the crew of the humans that negotiated peace after a long war with the aliens 150 years ago! The crew are a scruffy lot fleeing from government charges–not the heroic crew that are the historic legends. Flashbacks tell more about what is going on. The author enjoys playing with common time paradoxes (although not the “what if you killed a grandparent” one). How much can the future people tell of past events without changing their time in unknown and maybe horrifying ways?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /><i></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1652374208i/53205888.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="515" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1652374208i/53205888.jpg" width="129" /></a></i></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br />Under the Whispering Door </i>by T. J. Klune I might have skipped this one based on a summary of plot: ghost guided away from his own funeral by a Reaper and taken to a tea house and given time to adjust before leaving through a door in the ceiling. However I liked <i>The House in the Cerulean Sea </i>and <i>The Extraordinaries </i>enough that I gave this novel a try, and am glad I did. The four main characters (two dead and two alive and able to see and talk with the dead) are likeable and even funny at times while dealing with their unpleasant circumstances. There’s even a ghost dog! The novel is not religious in a conventional way–the being in charge of gathering the ghosts is called the manager and makes mistakes. The novel felt a bit like Becky Chambers’ novels–lots of problems but somehow human good and community manage.<br /><br /><i>Winter’s Orbit </i>by Everina Maxwell Another one where if I’d been given a synopsis, I might not have read this book. Romances about people who can’t get together because of misunderstandings are not my thing, but I did enjoy this novel. The two main characters are interesting, as are some secondary characters. The plot is an intriguing mix of politics with changing views of who is the bad guy. The backstory of what remnants are and how the various levels of power came to be could be developed into its own SF novel. The first sentence gives some hint as to the humor and style: “‘Well, someone has to marry the man’ the Emperor said.” Then the next paragraph tells us she’s talking to her least favorite grandson.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1625155887i/56978096.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="518" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1625155887i/56978096.jpg" width="130" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><i>Lakelore </i>by Anna-Marie McLemore The novel is described as a YA fantasy with non-binary and neuro-divergent characters. I found the descriptions of ADHD and being on the spectrum believable, but regardless, they were interesting people who solved complex problems. I’ve loved everything McLemore has written, and this one continues to insure her works will be on my must-read list.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /><i>Mountain in the Sea</i> by Ray Nayler–won <i>Locus</i> readers’ best first book for 2022. Warning: a dark look at environment disasters, corporate greed and nasty politics, but the characters are interesting and I liked the multiple view points and the inter-chapter quotes. The focus on octopuses led me to read two non-fiction books about octopuses.<br /><br /><i>Tom Lake </i>by Ann Patchett I’ve liked her novels since I read <i>The Magician’s Assistant</i>, and this one definitely belongs on my recommended list. The story goes back and forth in time as a mom in her 50s tell her adult daughters (living at home during the first year of Covid) about her relationship with a well-known actor before they were born. The layers of how she felt then versus how she regards the events years later mixed with the speculation and misunderstandings from her daughters are intriguing.<br /><br />PS “They Will Dream in the Garden,” Gabriela Damian Miravete’s short story, won the Otherwise Award in 2018, and a collection of her short stories with the same title was published this month by Rosarium Press. I have ordered a copy because I love that short story (it’s available on line too).<br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.aqueductpress.com/images/covers/978-1-61976-113-1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="526" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgmgxM5Gnbf3vB5m9rIKUB6WGUdvJXjDASndgB9-PRowvoPAvjukrVwBWmuu9i_hChk5-uBOUuRUyLwXuu-PXbwknozcIH_W4U5shoZdOo2XWHzWhAtUb3NbsSHxfPoOF6Nw8z9exVierts9LtnXD_ZuhxAkLxmY5afnA4bdqgDWw=s0-d" width="132" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Margaret
McBride is retired from the University of Oregon where Gender and
Sexuality in Science Fiction and Fantasy was her favorite class to
teach. She is the editor of the tenth volume of the WisCon Chronicles, <i>Social Justice (Redux). </i>She
has been the chair of the Tiptree/Otherwise Award two times, has
participated on over forty panels at WisCon and hopes to do so again.
</span></p><p></p><p><br /></p>Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-91313007151960758662024-01-03T06:00:00.000-08:002024-01-03T06:00:00.249-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 28: Kristin King<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyhGyHBQTnMaHHdAwMhkTMBZo_Ptyv2PoQ_50cdFai_9zaCLLeQqotOK9AV2IFRkTeqFi5db03CaOxMtM65OPEC3toY718xTcHi7ei-oSwOSoET86gEOLgcF9TkpPVmgorQwMg3Ay47r9B/s320/kristin-reading.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="308" data-original-width="320" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyhGyHBQTnMaHHdAwMhkTMBZo_Ptyv2PoQ_50cdFai_9zaCLLeQqotOK9AV2IFRkTeqFi5db03CaOxMtM65OPEC3toY718xTcHi7ei-oSwOSoET86gEOLgcF9TkpPVmgorQwMg3Ay47r9B/s1600/kristin-reading.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Pleasures 2023</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">by Kristin King</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">Time Travel: Can You Change the Past?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">Everything we are today, and all our joys and
griefs, came out of the past. But we can’t ever visit it—physically, that is.
I’ve spent a bit of time this year as a historical voyeur, specifically looking
at primary sources about the events and people that precipitated the disastrous
1924 split of the Industrial Workers of the World. Two sides emerged, each
blaming the other, but I have a secret superpower. I can consult the historical
record to see what the various actors did with the rest of their lives. (As an
aside to Bowerman, I’m coming for you.) I’d dearly love to travel back in time
and fill in the gaps in my knowledge. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">Without further ado, here are four works of time
travel that I have enjoyed this year.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Speculations </span></i><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">by Nisi Shawl </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1666365505i/39884438.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="529" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1666365505i/39884438.jpg" width="132" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">When I look at the cover of this book, I see wonder,
wisdom, and intelligence. The protagonist, Winna Cole, seems to be looking
straight at me with something very important to say. Pure magic. And yes, you
can judge this book by its cover. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">The past appears to be gone, yet it holds so much
sway for us. We love it, we want it, and we can’t have it. It’s mysterious and
unreachable. But what if. . .</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">That’s the magic of the book. <i>What if?</i>
Wearing her great-aunt Estelle’s glasses, if Winna speculates twice, magic
happens. It’s a simple rule, much like the rules of magic in Edward Eager’s
books that I loved as a child. <i>What if</i> I could go back in time as a
child and find this book in the library? A brand-new Edward Eager, only better.
Winna uses her magic to see her family’s past and unlock a deeply hidden
secret. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">The time travel here is a “look, don’t touch”
variety. Winna can see the past but not change it. What she can do is use her
newfound understanding to make the present and future a better place. <span> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;"><span> </span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.</span></i><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;"> by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1486520624i/32075825.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="437" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1486520624i/32075825.jpg" width="135" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />This was an entertaining read about a
military-funded time-travel project that depends on bringing witches forward in
time from the past. What could go wrong? Well, from the title, we already know the
project is doomed. The fun part is finding out how. The initial assignment for
Melisande Stokes, linguist turned time traveler, is to steal a copy of a rare
manuscript from Puritan America, with the catch being the she must arrive and
depart naked. While she does procure a corset, it’s too loose, and hijinks
ensue. Another favorite moment: when Vikings invade Wal-Mart to prepare for a
search for El Dorado. </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">Can you change the past in this universe? Somewhat,
but time fights back, the way jello does. It needs coaxing, bribes to witches,
repeated efforts, and definitely not the military. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach</span></i><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;"> by Kelly Robson</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1506531524i/36187158.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1506531524i/36187158.jpg" width="125" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">This was a fun adventure and an interesting
treatment of colonialism. The premise here is that time travel cannot change
the past--or at least that’s what the government says. Because if you could
change the past, you could stop the environmental devastation that our
protagonist, a river ecologist named Minh, has been trying to heal. But once
time travel was invented, funds dried up for her restoration project, and she
ends up joining an expedition to the past in the timeship <i>Lucky Peach</i> to
study rivers of the past. She’s been assured that her tour guide has a zero
fatality rate, though only the tour guide knows what that means. When the
locals spot this monster, hostilities begin. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Doctor Who</span></i><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">: “The Church on Ruby Road”</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/dw_xmas_23_035_embargoed_21-00gmt_30_9b0e2187.jpeg?region=0%2C118%2C3000%2C1682" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="800" height="112" src="https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/dw_xmas_23_035_embargoed_21-00gmt_30_9b0e2187.jpeg?region=0%2C118%2C3000%2C1682" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">From now on, Doctor Who streams in the U.S. on
Disney Plus now, and that worries me. To what extent does that give Disney
editorial control over the show? We will see. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">Ncuti Gatwa gave a dazzling performance, with an
emotional range all the way from glee to tears of grief. I hope we get to see anger
as well, because I feel we really missed out on anger when Jodie Whittaker was
the Doctor, and anger has power. The showrunner and writers seemed to treat
Jodie Whittaker differently than male Doctors, and I speculate they may treat
Ncuti Gatwa differently than white Doctors. We will see. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">This episode, and the specials that preceded it,
seems to be exploring the chaotic nature of time travel. In older Doctor Who
stories, a building would burn to the ground, but it’s OK, because it matches
our (the viewers’) recorded history. The past is being put right. But with this
episode, trips to the past bring changes that oppose our recorded history and
yet still stick. I’m fascinated to see how it turns out.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><br />
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgWSb9KEguYSAFWFWDABKkXW4dnG0vAfYl6PW7nk3w6WuqeP14clfFniNoFwg43AsmUNRe1eUDW_A_Uy_kgbgRxBgFqutwyKQOoFU1rp54LQGFgPKU4LCWRblp_g4DR6lThzOLcG3FErhsohPb9OxqOfObAqLYAKE6lj3PMzxq1c3DWhxvj7W-boq1rVdklqqEFvgY7LPg=s0-d" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="140" data-original-width="90" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgWSb9KEguYSAFWFWDABKkXW4dnG0vAfYl6PW7nk3w6WuqeP14clfFniNoFwg43AsmUNRe1eUDW_A_Uy_kgbgRxBgFqutwyKQOoFU1rp54LQGFgPKU4LCWRblp_g4DR6lThzOLcG3FErhsohPb9OxqOfObAqLYAKE6lj3PMzxq1c3DWhxvj7W-boq1rVdklqqEFvgY7LPg=s0-d" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Kristin King (<a href="http://kristinking.wordpress.com/">http://kristinking.wordpress.com</a>) is a writer,
parent, and activist who lives in Seattle. Her work has appeared in <i>Strange
Horizons, Calyx, The Pushcart Prize XXII</i> (1998), and other places. Two of her
stories appeared in an Aqueduct Press anthology, <i>Missing Links and Secret
Histories: A Selection of Wikipedia Entries Lost, Suppressed, or Misplaced in
Time</i>. A selection of her short fiction has been collected in <i>Misfits from the
Beehive State</i>.
</span>Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-82623501257956550502024-01-02T06:00:00.000-08:002024-01-02T06:00:00.248-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 27: Lesley Hall<p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFJlpzx3zDvT7p31UdAUQOrp10VDyOug7y19LLBg4_uBKTvzVkZOwMzEn-oLe14lUgipR9cAk9TEGq880kzFmzifdicAWMKdvM5nTum3sxkU2_7fbAk0bkfyE8vL2u7vdV39QZ8xA0AM8g6TMX3lDKiONRiEBtnaony12LjdME2WzGKlgRJhzxb5FyBA/s320/Lesley%20Hall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="213" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFJlpzx3zDvT7p31UdAUQOrp10VDyOug7y19LLBg4_uBKTvzVkZOwMzEn-oLe14lUgipR9cAk9TEGq880kzFmzifdicAWMKdvM5nTum3sxkU2_7fbAk0bkfyE8vL2u7vdV39QZ8xA0AM8g6TMX3lDKiONRiEBtnaony12LjdME2WzGKlgRJhzxb5FyBA/s320/Lesley%20Hall.jpg" width="213" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 107%;">The
Pleasures of Reading in 2023</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 107%;">by Lesley A Hall</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">In 2023 I found myself
returning to fiction written in the 1920s by what might be considered
‘middlebrow’ British women writers, for a chapter I’d been asked rather out of
the blue to contribute to a volume on the literature of that decade. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://www.lesleyahall.net/wmwrtrs.htm"><span lang="EN-US">British middlebrow women writers of the
interwar period</span></a></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"> have long
been a side-interest of mine, and I was slanting my approach by way of my
historian’s interest in the social upheavals in women’s lives in the immediate
aftermath of the Great War and the partial grant of suffrage.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1699878340i/133429229._SX150_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="150" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1699878340i/133429229._SX150_.jpg" width="150" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">So, it was, hello again, E.
M. Delafield, Rose Macaulay, Rosamond Lehmann, E. Arnot Robertson, Winifred
Holtby, Margaret Kennedy, G. B. Stern, Sarah Salt, Dorothy L. Sayers, Storm Jameson,
‘Marie Carmichael’ (Marie Stopes), for depictions of <i>The Way Things Are</i>
(title of Delafield’s funny and sad 1927 novel), and Cicely Hamilton, Muriel
Jaeger, and Charlotte Haldane for frankly rather depressing visions of
potential futures. Even Vera Brittain’s fairly upbeat <i>Halcyon, or the future
of monogamy</i> snuck in some dark period eugenicist notes.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">This was, overall (in some
cases their best work didn’t really come until the 30s), <i>fun</i>. Finding
common themes and complaints and predicaments and things like people
name-checking Freud to show how modern they were without, you know, really talking
much about Freudianism?</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1694854954i/136032653.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="587" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1694854954i/136032653.jpg" width="147" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Also, I made one exciting
discovery of a writer I’d never previously come across, even if I am now very
frustrated that the complete corpus of her work is at present practically
unobtainable in its entirety. I was brought up short while reading </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 107%;">Dorothy
Sayers' <i>The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club</i>, when Wimsey scans Ann
Dorland's bookshelves: "Dorothy Richardson—Virginia Woolf—E. B. C. Jones—May
Sinclair—Katherine Mansfield—the modern female writers are well represented,
aren’t they?" <i>E. B. C. Jones</i>??? <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._B._C._Jones">Emily Beatrix Coursolles
("Topsy") Jones (1893-1966)</a> was a critically respected novelist
and reviewer of the interwar period, on the fringes of ‘Bloomsbury’, of
sufficient renown to merit an entry in the <i>Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography</i>. Her novels <a href="https://archive.org/details/quietinterior00jone/page/n7/mode/2up">Quiet
Interior</a> (1920), <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark%3A%2F13960%2Ft19k4709g&seq=1">The
Singing Captives</a> (1922), and <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015063920352&view=1up&seq=13">The
Wedgwood Medallion</a> (1923), have been digitized and are available online,
but there are three more that remain elusive.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 107%;">Apart from that, reading pleasures this
year included that gratifying sensation of finally completing series where the
final volume had been a long while coming.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 107%;">During the 1990s I read the first four
volumes of <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/fiction/cazalet-chronicles-books-in-order">Elizabeth
Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles</a>, taking an English upper-middle-class
family and their various connections from just before the outbreak of the
Second World War to just after, more or less as they came out. It’s by no means
cozy, though without being totally grim. A fifth and final volume came out in
2013 and I must have missed it, but my attention was drawn to the sequence
again this year and I acquired the whole lot as ebooks and read the whole thing
straight through. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 107%;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1382440287i/18697994.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="255" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1382440287i/18697994.jpg" width="129" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br />Roz Kaveney’s brilliant, sweeping,
Rhapsody of Blood fantasy sequence began in 2012 as a planned tetralogy with <i>Rituals</i>.
When <i>Realities</i> (a fourth volume) came out in 2018 and ended on a rather
indeterminate note, it was rather worrying, but word was that a final fifth
volume was in the pipeline, and this year <i>Revelations</i> brought the
sequence to what can, in the conventional clichéd phrase, be designated a
triumphant conclusion. <a href="https://www.salonfutura.net/2023/03/rhapsody-of-blood-revelations/">This</a>
is a useful overview for the series.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 107%;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328041999i/641177.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="246" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328041999i/641177.jpg" width="123" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 107%;">I’m not sure if this counts as series
over, or just, series picked up again: two of <a href="https://www.barbarawilsonmysteries.com/cassandra-reilly">Barbara Wilson’s
mysteries featuring lesbian translator Cassandra Reilly</a> were published in
the UK by Virago during the 1990s, but they don’t seem to have picked up the
volume of short stories or the third novel that appeared in 2000, so I had
missed those already. I’m a little surprised that I didn’t come across imported
US editions in Silver Moon feminist bookshop (I don’t think I’d have
anticipated finding them in the more mainstream imported crime bookshops!), but
poking about to see if Silver Moon was <span> </span>even still around by that time, I find that
there is a memoir/history forthcoming – exciting! And then two more novels were
added to Cassandra’s adventures in 2022 and 2023, and all of these were
available as ebooks, and so I indulged in a binge.<span> </span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 107%;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><br />
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAt4ApZIlq6NHCrbKegsn_7JzPQyLpBQbO6Lkb2GxbxiVMnHCCjQfRkVznvvSjAW13c-m3PTducWy7L1Qiry-M2Kkk25U4a7GPqVW-aJPxlQE87O-KJPxa_HyKsKDAQpU56KTjVprrUiQX/s200/conv-series-15-cover.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="121" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAt4ApZIlq6NHCrbKegsn_7JzPQyLpBQbO6Lkb2GxbxiVMnHCCjQfRkVznvvSjAW13c-m3PTducWy7L1Qiry-M2Kkk25U4a7GPqVW-aJPxlQE87O-KJPxa_HyKsKDAQpU56KTjVprrUiQX/s200/conv-series-15-cover.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span><span lang="EN-GB">Lesley Hall was born in the seaside resort and channel port
of Folkestone, Kent, and now lives in north London. She has retired from a
career as an archivist of over 40 years, though she's still active in her field of specialization. </span></span>essay "Send in the Clones?: Naomi Mitchison and the Politics of
Reproduction and Motherhood," was published in <i><span class="base" data-ui-id="page-title-wrapper">Naomi Mitchison:
</span>A Writer in Time</i> Edited by James Purdon, Edinburgh
University Press
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-naomi-mitchison.html">https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-naomi-mitchison.html</a><span><span lang="EN-GB">. She has published several books and
numerous articles on issues of gender and sexuality in nineteenth and twentieth
century Britain, and is currently researching British interwar progressive
movements and individuals. S</span><span lang="EN-GB">he has also
published a volume in the Aqueduct Press Conversation Pieces series, <i>Naomi Mitchison: A Profile of her Life and Work</i> (2007). She has been reading science fiction and fantasy since
childhood and cannot remember a time when she was not a feminist. Her reviews
have appeared in <i>Strange Horizons</i>, <i>Vector</i>, and <i>Foundation</i>, and she has been a judge for
the Tiptree and Arthur C. Clarke Awards<i>. </i>She
has had short stories published in <i>The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by
Women</i> (1996) and <i>The Penguin Book of Erotic Stories by Women</i> (1995) and, most recently, is the </span><span lang="EN-GB">author
of the series <i>The Comfortable Courtesan: being memoirs by
Clorinda Cathcart</i> and <i>Clorinda Cathcart's Circle</i>: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.clorinda.org/">https://www.clorinda.org.</a> Visit Lesley's <a href="http://www.lesleyahall.net/" target="new-window">website</a>.</span> <br />
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Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-91973984418334443232023-12-31T06:00:00.000-08:002023-12-31T06:00:00.180-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening 2023, pt. 26: Mark Rich<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlLNJmqqpda1ketUiP4pMyJ7C7vVrsd5IlcXqA6VeZZCLseEo015Z8ihV8WBJTTLFsDOqcdCsrInzEb2MNsyqv69_ahITTFMk81TIyIF80OExXMJqlahP3t4Qggf7NHlNSFys5MoITsOeI/s2048/IMGP0202.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlLNJmqqpda1ketUiP4pMyJ7C7vVrsd5IlcXqA6VeZZCLseEo015Z8ihV8WBJTTLFsDOqcdCsrInzEb2MNsyqv69_ahITTFMk81TIyIF80OExXMJqlahP3t4Qggf7NHlNSFys5MoITsOeI/s320/IMGP0202.JPG" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Readings & Echoes, 2023: Two Notes<br />by Mark Rich</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">First Note<br /><br /> "The boy had heard once that some people had so many books that they only read each book once."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> It was only last night, as I write this, that I happened on this line.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> And how happy I was, that I read these words while actually re-reading that particular book! </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I read it when quite young — although the echoes in my mind of the scenes as they progress are so clear, sometimes, that I begin to suspect this is not my first re-reading.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://cdn.imslp.org/images/thumb/pdfs/37/a03380a4eb3fe03c63ad5b2c9c98c46bca1ceb37.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="525" height="320" src="https://cdn.imslp.org/images/thumb/pdfs/37/a03380a4eb3fe03c63ad5b2c9c98c46bca1ceb37.png" width="210" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have been thinking about those echoes partly because of J.S. Bach. The other day I was page-scrutinizing one of the fugues I have memorized, being curious if the restatements of the theme saw modification through the course of the piece, or if they cleaved to the lineaments of the original statement. It turns out that Bach, in Book II Fugue 17, restates his original theme, which takes a question-and-answer form. When he moves it up or down in the scale, he accommodates the scale but retains the lineaments. The musical context, along the way, bows to the theme, not vice-versa.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This surprised me, since the musical effect is one of great exploration and variation. Most of that occurs around the theme — above, below, and in the trailing-along after-phrases. The theme itself appears as statement and restatement, then slightly altered statement which is itself restated, then restatement. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The ear reacts to the iterations positively, thanks to that precision in their character.You might think the world would value the fantasia or musical fantasy above the fugue, for by its very nature the fantasy must show a constant level of invention and cannot rely upon a structure of strict reiterations. Yet the fugue tends to win higher regard. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1588161155i/598117.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="336" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1588161155i/598117.jpg" width="134" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Wm. Armstrong, who wrote <i>Sounder</i>, the book I am re-reading, states in a prologue that it is not his story that he is telling. It belonged to an old black man whose personal story it apparently was. For Armstrong, the act of composition was in itself the act of echoing.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Each act of reading, then, adds a reverberation, or a new echo in the reader's soul.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The copy that I am now reading I picked up at a thrift store. Yesterday I came across the prior owner's bookmark, a folded-up foil inner wrapper from a famous-name chocolate which is, to me, worthless stuff, being mainly sugar. This placemark was around page 32 or so. I suspect the prior owner gave up reading the book around there, because the book has so little sugar in it. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So very little, in fact, that I like it greatly.<br /><br /> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Second Note<br /> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The boy should have heard, too, that some people have so many books that they only hope to open each book at least once.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This spring or summer, Martha and I were in a valley thrift store that opens two Saturday per month. I had already scouted through the closet where books are shelved, but in coming back from looking at kitchenware in the basement found Martha there. She held out a book. "Don't you want this one?"</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I did, although I figured it would go into the pile of books to read sometime or never. Last year I re-read Bradbury's <i>Fahrenheit 451</i>, however; and because of my interest in that cusp period in the early 1950s when Galaxy magazine seemed to be transforming the field, it had become a small goal to dig out the issue, buried somewhere in those sometime-or-never piles, that contained "The Fireman," the Galaxy story that became the famous novel.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347462223i/11309025.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="266" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347462223i/11309025.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This book Martha dug up, though, was a Bradbury collection: <i>A Pleasure To Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories</i>, published in paperback in 2011. It includes "The Fireman." Out of curiosity one day, I read the first story in the anthology, which purports to contain sixteen works that prefigure the novel. In a way that some Bradbury stories can, this story both dissatisfied and refreshed me. The notions of books and of burning played into it. They play into nearly all the stories here; and then they numb the reader who persists through the novellas that presumably are both pre-envisionings of the Montag-quest novel: "Long After Midnight" and "The Fireman." I emerged from the anthology, after many bedtime readings, having the clear sense that I had read a half-dozen tales that followed Montag and his fellow characters. But apparently there are just these two.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Have you ever read Bradbury's <i>Surround Yourself with Your Loves and Live Forever</i>? In 2008, through the efforts of John L. Coker, III, editor and publisher, it brought together seven accounts by Bradbury of his pivotal and literally galvanizing youthful meeting with "Mr. Electrico." While nothing might seem less enticing than a collection of stories each of which tell the same story, I found this sequence of tales fascinating in the way that waves on a beach are fascinating. Each one has its own claim to existence; no two are alike.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I am not sure I would recommend <i>A Pleasure To Burn</i> as highly as <i>Surround Yourself</i>. Yet it offers a window into Bradbury's soul that does not diminish it, in the way some windows can.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I say this because I clearly recall the point when, in my teens, I gave up reading Bradbury. In one of his seemingly endless R Is for Ray and B Is for Bradbury anthologies in the 1970s, I came across a story I had read before, in another of these Bantam collections. I read it again anyway, only to find that here it had a different ending. I felt as though I had caught Bradbury stealing from himself, and then trying to hide the fact.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Apparently I was responding to echoes and reiterations even then. How would I respond to those stories, which were the same except in their endings, today? I am not sure. In <i>A Pleasure To Burn</i>, in contrast, I came to feel the struggle that must have stirred in Bradbury, between the themes that obsessed him, that insisted on rearing their heads in his work time and again, and the contrary striving he felt toward the new. In a sense his work yearned itself toward the fugue while he himself yearned toward the fantasy.<br /><br /> I am cutting this short due to this week's health and time constraints, but think I can close on a note that may ring nearer the hearts of some Aqueduct stalwarts. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347256590i/363897.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="261" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347256590i/363897.jpg" width="131" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />At another thrift shop I found a book I expected to just price and try to sell for a few dollars: Karenna Gore Schiff's <i>Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America</i>. I still expect to do that. One afternoon, though, I idly picked it up and looked at the contents and thought to myself that I really should know more than I do about at least three of the book's subjects — Ida B. Wells, Mother Jones, and Frances Perkins. I have gotten as far as Mother Jones, so far. Schiff's book is clearly stated and seemingly reliable in its sources; is a good, solid effort, admirable and useful. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I should have known beforehand that Mother Jones's great issue was child labor. Now I do.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have a fat old paperback, an Oscar Williams-edited poetry anthology that I have been perusing nightly, more or less randomly. One afternoon during the week I was reading Schiff more actively, I had the brilliant notion to look at Williams's contents pages and see what poets exactly were included. Coming across the name Sarah N. Cleghorn, I had the inevitable jerk of the knee: "Who the hell is — ?"</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I went instantly to her page, and her quite short verse — which must have been touched by Mother Jones.<br /><br /> The Golf Links<br /><br />The golf links lie so near the mill<br /> That almost every day<br />The laboring children can look out<br /> And see the men at play.<br /><br />It was more likely touched, I should say, by the echoes of Mother Jones. (And the verse has no sugar! I like it.)<br /><br />— Cashton, Wisconsin, 13 & 15 December 2023<br /><br /></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71kyr8DiWZL._AC_UY218_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="153" height="218" src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71kyr8DiWZL._AC_UY218_.jpg" width="153" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-size: medium;">Mark Rich has had two collections of short fiction published — <i>Edge of Our Lives</i> (RedJack) and <i>Across the Sky</i>
(Fairwood) — as well as chapbooks from presses including Gothic and
Small Beer. He is also the author of a major biographical and critical study, <i>C.M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary,</i> published by McFarland and, most recently, of <i>Toys in the Age of Wonder: Science Fiction, Society and the Symbolism of Play.</i>
</span><span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: black;"> His poems have recently appeared in </span><i style="color: black;">The
Lyric</i><span style="color: black;">, </span><i style="color: black;">Penumbric</i><span style="color: black;">, British Fantasy Society's </span><i style="color: black;">Horizons</i><span style="color: black;">,
and </span><i style="color: black;">Blue Unicorn</i><span style="color: black;">. He lives in Cashton, Wisconsin, with
partner-in-life Martha Borchardt and two partners-in-happy-hours
Scottie dogs.</span></span></span></span>Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-38200598592414130302023-12-29T06:00:00.000-08:002023-12-29T06:00:00.136-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 25: Christopher Brown<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitnhqTB_Q6F_Db5owHhPMqXBVpqKrBvhvIqKx8Hj1xU2NhJPjF40kHtTPdgjUYBi2woIiLazMKFQBzhwnngiHK7W1fFlLc3KJclLd-A60jpmK7FUhSMRNEh6gUCcgmdBVWUGhvEZc1ykrusYrMoeTK3mebJuOdxT0WZWxxaQYyi5L8162XwJVI06VeGg/s320/Chris%20Borwn.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="269" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitnhqTB_Q6F_Db5owHhPMqXBVpqKrBvhvIqKx8Hj1xU2NhJPjF40kHtTPdgjUYBi2woIiLazMKFQBzhwnngiHK7W1fFlLc3KJclLd-A60jpmK7FUhSMRNEh6gUCcgmdBVWUGhvEZc1ykrusYrMoeTK3mebJuOdxT0WZWxxaQYyi5L8162XwJVI06VeGg/s320/Chris%20Borwn.png" width="269" /></a></div><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<p></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Aqueduct
Year in Review 2023</span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">by Christopher
Brown</span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">The
only real vacation we took this year was to South Padre Island the week of July
4, with extended family ranging from ages 4 to 83. An old school Texas beach
trip, where you pack your own portable sun shade structures to protect you from
the ever more intense local star that radiates the day, as you watch the tanker
traffic come and go in the deepwater distance and wonder whether the water is
really safe to swim in. It ended up being the hottest week on the modern
meteorological record, not just there, but around the world, and you could feel
it on the sand, and even in the water. The wetland refuges on the bayside were
desert dry, full of folks rampaging across the paradise turned wasteland on all
terrain vehicles like the members of some Mad Max recreation club. <br /></span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Above
the kites floated a tethered aerostat operated by the U.S. Border Patrol, a
cute white blimp loaded with advanced avionics, scanning for climate refugees
and smugglers in the zone where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf. And right
along the horizon line shimmered the big rockets of the Space X factory and
launch pad, their golden age <i>Destination Moon</i> forms making me wonder if
the heat had me hallucinating some waking dream of the spacefaring 21st century
my late 20th century childhood had promised. The evident truth was less
promising: the richest men on Earth are using the libertarian business platform
of Texas to try to get to another planet, now that we have trashed this one to
a point where our culture and very survival is threatened. Roll over, Heinlein,
and tell Bradbury the news. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347437511i/699804.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347437511i/699804.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Sitting
there in my beach chair in our true dystopia, one of the paperbacks I had
brought along was an old (1994) Penguin collection of <i>Colonial American
Travel Narratives</i> edited by the women’s studies scholar Wendy Martin. It
opened with <i>A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary
Rowlandson</i>, one of the earliest American captivity narratives, a
first-person recollection of the author’s capture and 11 weeks captivity by a
mixed group of Narragansett, Wampanoag and Nashaway in 1675, during the
conflict known as King Phillip’s War. Rowlandson was around 40 when she was
taken, and wrote with great command of her story, telling it through a series
of removes that give it a curiously cinematic structure, framed with a Puritan
Biblical theme that very slowly erodes as her alienation from the people she
has been taught to view as unredeemed savages becomes more complicated, and
viscerally experienced by the reader through her detailed daily descriptions of
the foods she is fed, from a singed seared horse liver to the unborn calf of a
doe killed in the hunt—so tender, she explains, you could eat the bones. </span></span></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><br /></span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1561525041l/52834881.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="314" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1561525041l/52834881.jpg" width="126" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />It
was the second captivity narrative I had read this year. The first was Fanny
Kelly’s <i>Narrative of My Captivity Among the Sioux Indians</i>, recounting
the attack on the author’s wagon trail on the Oregon Trail in the summer of
1864, and her five months with the Lakota. The book had been on my shelf for a
while, one of the many little hardbound editions I had accumulated over the
years from Lakeside Press—the volumes the financial printer R.R. Donnelley used
to send to its customers at the holidays every year for most of the twentieth
century and the first two decades of the twenty-first, a series I had
discovered as a securities lawyer who got on the mailing list for a while. The
books were always classics of Americana, beautifully made, and accompanied by
an introduction that mixed historical background with an epistolary business
message from management to the stakeholders. They finally killed the series
when traditional financial printing became an anachronism and the company was
carved up into the remaining valuable parts, but I still keep an eye out for
the books, which, in the way of all freebies, have a knack for showing up on
the shelves of suburban used book stores. <br /></span><p></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">I
found myself binging those sorts of books this year, as intuitive writerly
research. After five years of writing dystopian novels, I made the pivot to
narrative nonfiction, with a pitch for a book about urban wildlife and ecology,
green futures, and the story of my family’s project making a home in a Texas
edgeland where industrial land use bleeds into interstitial wilderness. In the
way one does after selling a book off a proposal, as I started actually writing
it I found myself grappling with what sort of story it really was, and
eventually realized what I was really doing was in a tradition most American
readers have internalized so completely they forget about its existence as a
distinct genre—the tales of exploration, discovery, colonization, conquest and
frontier settlement that are the real post-Columbian literature of the
Americas. Where we came from, what we found here, how we changed it, how it
changed us. The quintessential American narrative archetype, one could argue,
and perhaps a variant of the seminal human story—especially as our migratory
natures are being reawakened by the climatic changes our permanent settlements
have wrought. <br /></span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">I
reread Cabeza de Vaca’s journal of his years among the indigenous peoples of
Texas and northern Mexico after washing up on the coast following a shipwreck
in 1528, and Haniel Long’s remarkable poetic riff on that narrative, <i>An
Interlinear to Cabeza de Vaca</i>. I read translations on university websites
of Cortes’ letters to King Carlos reporting on the wonders of Tenochtitlan, as
smallpox began to winnow the local population and he effected his conquest. I
re-read Bernal Diaz’s first person account of the same events, <i>The Conquest
of New Spain</i>. On my mother’s shelves, I found Audubon’s memoir of his
childhood and early life as a kid who always gravitated toward the wild spaces,
in the form of a manuscript found by his family in a barn on Staten Island, and
published by his granddaughter Maria along with his nature journals in 1897 as <i>Audubon
and His Journals</i>, a text that reads like a letter to the author’s children
at the same time as it encodes, from its first page’s account of his mother’s
death in the successful Haitian slave uprising, the way so much nature writing
situates ecological diversity as a private estate of white privilege. </span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1595231449i/54608531.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1595231449i/54608531.jpg" width="125" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">I
tracked down volumes of the strangely esoteric histories of American highways
that are out there, like Milo Quaife’s 1923 <i>Chicago’s Highways Old and New</i>,
revealing how the engineered routes of our automobiles and Internet cables
often follow the paths of pioneer trails made from Native American trails, many
of which had their origins as the trackways of migratory megafauna we have
mostly banished from existence. I read the bizarre annotated journal of <i>The
Expedition of Zebulon Pike</i>, the young Army officer dispatched by Aaron Burr
co-conspirator General James Wilkinson in 1805 to explore the upper reaches of
the Mississippi following the Louisiana Purchase, as edited in 1895 by the
naturalist, surgeon and Madame Blavatsky protegé Elliott Coues, who fills most
of the pages with rambling footnotes riffing on the weird ways the collisions
of languages express themselves through the ever-morphing names of places and
peoples in the North American landscape. I discovered William Bartram’s
journals of his trips into the southern swamps of the 1770s, Frederick Law
Olmsted’s 1840s saddle trip across Texas, and re-considered Thoreau’s <i>Walden</i>
and the illusion of solitude it constructs like some paradigm of the view from
nowhere. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1699573677i/146342967.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="800" height="148" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1699573677i/146342967.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">I
read pioneer settlement accounts, like John Woods’ <i>Two Years’ Residence on
the English Prairie of Illinois</i>, and similar stories of the first
generation of colonists in my home state of Iowa. I reread pieces from John
Keene’s brilliant <i>Counternarratives</i>, published by New Directions in
2015, which repurposes such narratives in stories and novellas that conjure a
more honest and emancipatory window into the pan-American past and present. And
I dug out the copy of Carlos Castaneda’s <i>A Separate Reality</i> some 70s
stoner high school teacher assigned us, and freshly examined what was really
going on there.</span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Through
it all, I found windows into the continent that was, and the one we have made.
The journals of early travelers like Pike, Audubon and Bartram into the wilds
reveal a natural ecology we have mostly erased under plow and pavement, and a
diverse and complex human ecology that reflected millennia of habitation of and
movement across this land. I devoured material on the Pleistocene extinction
and the curious ecology of common American plants co-evolved to be eaten and
dispersed by animals that no longer exist, in books like Connie Barlow’s
fascinating <i>The Ghosts of Evolution</i>. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1677084246i/122993405.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="530" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1677084246i/122993405.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">I
started to see the newer stories we tell, including the science fictions that
fuel the interstellar yearnings of Gen X technobarons to lord over their own
new worlds, through the prism of those narratives of colonization. And to
wonder how, through narrative inversion and interrogation, we might reinvent
those operating systems of identity in a way that starts the process of
decolonizing the world, and ourselves. I started to see many of the new books
arriving through that prism, including, in the spring, my editor Makenna Goodman’s
powerful and incisive first novel <i>The Shame</i>, and at the end of the year,
Ed Park’s epic Korean-American literary alternate history <i>Same Bed Different
Dreams</i>, and I look forward in 2024 to exploring what other new work I have
been missing while bunkered down on my own.</span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"></span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><a href="https://christopherbrown.com"><span class="Hyperlink0"></span></a></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://christopherbrown.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/failed_state_cover-199x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="199" height="200" src="https://christopherbrown.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/failed_state_cover-199x300.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Christopher Brown
is the author of the novels <i>Tropic of Kansas</i>, <i>Rule of Capture</i> and
<i>Failed State</i>. His climate memoir <i>The Secret History of Empty Lots:
Field Notes from an American Edgeland</i>, which draws on the same material as
his popular urban nature newsletter <a href="https://fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com"><span class="Hyperlink1">Field
Notes</span></a>, is forthcoming from Timber Press in the fall of 2024.</span><p></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p>
Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-67303652629613938692023-12-28T18:00:00.000-08:002023-12-28T18:00:00.133-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, Part 24: Lynne Jensen Lampe<p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvdwaS-WnT36lJIjW9sNJ9OHu79rXGXUGfxOk4FoIqjc4mOnKkuFeiULRlxqm3dcTbcDWhbkZXMu2bIw7uNcSZCNrRyIpIcACmpcq_LdGi1XJqJq_uC2ngpyFHlyNoNoW7CnWuv_bm1GF9F1QNBhxlEkP8KFXVD5kmYjAAN1c81ZrsluFEvm14DGogEQ/s320/Lampe.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="240" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvdwaS-WnT36lJIjW9sNJ9OHu79rXGXUGfxOk4FoIqjc4mOnKkuFeiULRlxqm3dcTbcDWhbkZXMu2bIw7uNcSZCNrRyIpIcACmpcq_LdGi1XJqJq_uC2ngpyFHlyNoNoW7CnWuv_bm1GF9F1QNBhxlEkP8KFXVD5kmYjAAN1c81ZrsluFEvm14DGogEQ/s320/Lampe.jpeg" width="240" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">What
I read in 2023</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">by Lynne Jensen Lampe <br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">My
mother was working on her master’s in social work when she met my dad on a
blind date. He’d left school as a teen to join the Navy, eventually getting his
GED and going on to a couple of months of college. Both of them loved reading.
Mama died in 2011. Daddy had a stroke in 2017, after which he re-learned to
walk, eat, speak, everything. Now 89, he still has difficulty moving his right
side. Every step, every reach requires intense concentration. Widowed,
long-retired from working on train cars, and no longer able to tend a yard, he
reads for hours a day. The table by his chair had a book on it. Along the way
he developed a love of reading. He travels the globe from his chair, and he
finds joy in the escape, even reading thrillers and espionage (eg, <i>The
Borrowed</i> by Chan Ho-Kei or <i>Better Off Dead</i>, the latest Jack Reacher
novel by Lee Child and Andrew Child).</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1512774287i/30622624.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="315" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1512774287i/30622624.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> <br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">I
inherited a love of mysteries—my favorite genre when I want to forget life’s
details—from my dad and my maternal grandfather. Grandpa Sam loaned me his
collected Sherlock Holmes when I was still in elementary school. My reading
list has expanded considerably since then, though I still have a soft spot for
Holmes pastiches (eg, <i>The Whole Art of Detection</i> and <i>Dust and Shadow</i>
by Lyndsay Faye). In 2023 I spent time with various Substack newsletters,
poetry collections, books on literary craft, and nonfiction. Here are some
highlights.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Through
https://substack.com</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://oldster.substack.com/"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Oldster Magazine</span></i></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">—a wonderful set of interviews
and long posts curated by writer/editor Sari Botton, aimed at those 50 and
older: Sober Oldster, general Q&A, and other lovelies related to aging.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.erininthemorning.com/"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Erin in the Morning</span></i></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">—investigative reporting on legislative
and other news about the trans community. Erin Reed’s writing is thorough,
timely, expansive.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://litmagnews.substack.com/"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Lit Mag News</span></i></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">—info about lit mags, submission
how-to’s and support, generally thorny issues in the writing community that no
one else but Becky Tuch seems ready to tackle honestly and upfront.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">***I do
still read social media and follow family, friends, writers, and writing
organizations on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and, yes, X. I somehow avoid the
meanies yet find discourse that drives to me to deeper thought. And joy—babies,
puppies, graduations, and new books.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.thesealeychallenge.com/history"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The Sealey Challenge</span></b></a><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">August
is the month to read one poetry collection or chapbook per day. The challenge
started with Nicole Sealey in 2017. This year, I resolved to complete it and
pulled 31 books from my shelves. Months later I’m still working my way through
my stack—turns out I don’t like rushing poetry as a writer or a reader. When I
did finish a collection in a day, I marked poems to revisit and linger over. Some
faves from the challenge:</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1668324782i/61340224.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="533" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1668324782i/61340224.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Judas
Goat </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">by </span><a href="https://www.gabriellebat.es/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Gabrielle
Bates</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">—A Judas
goat leads sheep to slaughter but is not itself killed. These poems compelled
me to follow with no regard for comfort. Random lines: “cervix slapping the
fifty-yard line / like a fried egg flipped down on a griddle to burn” (from
“Strawberries”).</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Partial
Genius</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> by </span><a href="https://www.litcleveland.org/profiles/mary-biddinger"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Mary Biddinger</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">—These prose poems jangle, discordant
in pitting 1960s expectations of women against various identities, including
French club president. I read this collection in 2022 too. The juxtapositions
satisfy me, tweak my thinking. Random lines: “When I walked into the hallowed
basement of the courthouse I felt like a manifesto or particularly bold
haircut” (from “Some Truths”).</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Who
Will Cradle Your Head?</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
by </span><a href="https://www.jaredbeloff.com/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Jared
Beloff</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">—The
collection comprises lineated poems, prose poetry (some about Sasquatch), and
vispo (visual poetry) and erasures that investigate both environmental disaster
and restoration. Random lines: “I am arrested as the water spreads, unhinges
its jaw to swallow the land” (from “Sasquatch sees the ocean for the first
time”).</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Mysteries</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The </span><a href="https://tawillberg.com/marion-lane-the-midnight-murder/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Marion Lane series</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> by T.A. Willberg—The three YA books
begin in 1958 London and involve a secret investigative group that operates in
abandoned tunnels below London. The books do question the validity of
extra-legal agencies and the use of gadgetry and technology for good vs evil
(and which is which). </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Nonfiction</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1606940676i/52609310.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="525" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1606940676i/52609310.jpg" width="131" /></a></i></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br />How
to Fight Racism</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
by Black theologian </span><a href="https://jemartisby.com/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Jemar Tisby</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">—The book specifically deals with
a process for predominantly white churches to become antiracist, beginning with
a framework called A.R.C. (awareness–relationship–commitment).</span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">My
own book</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">I read
from <i>Talk Smack to a Hurricane</i>, my debut poetry collection, throughout
the year in Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois as well as online for readings in
the UK and North Carolina. Reading the poems about my mother’s mental illness
and its impact on our relationship, psychiatry’s treatment of women, and
antisemitism did <b>not</b> get easier with repetition. Instead, I’ve realized
how angry I am at psychiatry and ways my own internalized antisemitism diluted
my mother’s joy.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Reviews/Critique</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">I was a
beta reader for a friend’s memoir, began freelancing as a book reviewer, and
joined </span><a href="https://tinderboxpoetry.com/"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Tinderbox Poetry Journal</span></i></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> as a submissions reader. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Craft
books, essays, and articles</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.pw.org/"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Poets & Writers</span></i></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">—A journal chock-full of
submission calls, inspiring interviews, features on debut authors, advice from
lit biz folks</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.graywolfpress.org/books?search_api_fulltext=the+art+of&field_pub_date_op=between&field_pub_date%5bvalue%5d=&field_pub_date%5bmin%5d=now-99years&field_pub_date%5bmax%5d=now+2years&field_bisacheading_op=or&field_categories=All"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The Art of _______</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> series</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> from Graywolf Press—of
attention, daring, description, syntax, recklessness, and more</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">A
Primer for Poets & Readers of Poetry</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> by </span><a href="http://gregoryorr.net/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Gregory Orr</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">—A book I come back to again and
again for Orr’s discussion of the threshold between order and disorder </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Ordinary
Genius</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> by </span><a href="https://www.kimaddonizio.com/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Kim
Addonizio</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">—full
of writing exercises and also the concept of “necessary coldness” (where
restraint, rather than blatant drama-trauma, creates the deeper emotional
reaction in the reader)</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.twosylviaspress.com/pr-for-poets.html"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">PR for Poets</span></i></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> by Jeannine Hall Gailey</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1669520089i/63850490.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="557" height="320" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1669520089i/63850490.jpg" width="223" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Lynne Jensen Lampe’s poems appear in </span><a href="https://stonecirclereview.com/"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Stone
Circle Review</span></i></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="https://www.thrushpoetryjournal.com/"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">THRUSH</span></i></a><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">, </span></span><a href="https://www.thrushpoetryjournal.com/"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Rise Up Review</span></i></a><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">, Yemassee</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">, and elsewhere. Her
debut collection, <i>Talk Smack to a Hurricane</i> (Ice Floe Press, 2022), a
2023 Eric Hoffer Book Award-winner, concerns mother-daughter relationships,
mental illness, and antisemitism. She edits academic writing, reads for <i>Tinderbox
Poetry Journal</i>, and lives in mid-Missouri with her husband, two dogs, and
lots of squeaky toys. She designed a number of covers for Aqueduct books in the
first few years of the press. </span><a href="https://lynnejensenlampe.com/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">https://lynnejensenlampe.com</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">; Bluesky/X
@ljensenlampe; or IG @lynnejensenlampe.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span></p>
Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-72648580956176509172023-12-28T06:00:00.000-08:002023-12-28T06:00:00.134-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, Part 23: Joanne Rixon<p> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-mirror-indents: yes; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-mirror-indents: yes; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.diabolicalplots.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/KJRixon_headshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://www.diabolicalplots.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/KJRixon_headshot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">The
Pleasures of Reading </span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-mirror-indents: yes; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">by
Joanne Rixon</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-mirror-indents: yes; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-mirror-indents: yes; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> This
year I did a lot of comfort reading, which for me consists of re-reading books
I read years ago. I consumed stacks of old YA fantasy novels and obscure
science fiction trilogies that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend to anyone who
didn’t love them in the '90s. But I also encountered some real gems.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-mirror-indents: yes; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My
absolute favorite kind of novel is the one that blends literary seriousness
with speculative weirdness. <i>Our Wives Under the Sea</i> by Julia Armfield is
a strange, deep book about grief. Death as the sloughing off of our solidity as
we enter the dark currents of the underworld. The confirmation at the end that
the strange and menacing shadow is a real monster feels almost but not quite
unnecessary. I was left feeling like I’d made contact with something primordial—and
also like someday I need to write a queer book that isn’t about grief. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1655389803i/60784309.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1655389803i/60784309.jpg" width="125" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-mirror-indents: yes; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Malka
Older’s sensibility and clarity in <i>The Mimicking of Known Successes</i> is
something I envy as a writer. Here are the stairs, the doorway. Here are your
boots and coat, the delicate teacup on its saucer. Here are the flickering gas
lamps that glow in the fog, shaping the world without illuminating it. And here
is the fog, between you and the knowledge you seek. Holmes and Watson and a
missing body, reincarnated among the rings of a gas giant. I’ll be re-reading
this one as soon as I get my hands on the sequel that is coming out in the
spring. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-mirror-indents: yes; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My
most-recommended books of the year are Naomi Novik’s Scholomance trilogy. I
devoured all three like a fat dog who has stolen a whole rotisserie chicken off
the counter, in gulps, and then I told everyone I knew that they must read them
too. Not just because this series is a damn fine coming of age with magic and
monsters and world-changing intrigues, but because the whole point of telling
each other stories like we do is so we can figure out how to learn from our
mistakes and do better at being people in a society. And I truly think these
books are a beacon of moral clarity for understanding the world.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-mirror-indents: yes; text-indent: .5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1622813641i/55868456.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="329" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1622813641i/55868456.jpg" width="132" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> <i>The Spear Cuts Through Water </i>by Simon Jimenez took me more than
a month to read. Almost always, if a book is giving me that much trouble, I
stop reading it, but this book is different. Jimenez’ prose was very difficult
for me, but it was rewarding at the same time, and the rewards of the rest of
the book, which is a twisting, complex intergenerational battle for the soul of
the world, were great. And the difficulty of the prose was necessary—the
writing was dense and oblique, but also ornate and creative in a way that meant
every word was surprising. The creativity itself meant that I had to slow down
and read every single word. I couldn’t predict what words were coming next. I
was not in the driver’s seat, I was holding on for dear life as the story
careened around blind turns, and I enjoyed it immensely.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-mirror-indents: yes; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A
pattern I noticed in myself this year is that I ingested almost all of my
longform nonfiction via podcast. I had good luck with podcasts this year,
starting with <i>Lead Us Not</i>, an investigation by Jenna Barnett at Sojourners
into the leader of L’Arche, a religious community of co-op homes for people
with and without disabilities. The founder of this movement was a deeply
compassionate spiritual man who inspired many people to devote their lives to
service—and also a sexual predator who took advantage of a number of women who
looked to him for spiritual guidance. There’s something particularly awful
about a spiritual leader coercing people sexually; it distorts the spiritual
life of the victim. I have a friend who works within L’Arche as a chaplain, and
this podcast gave me enough light to have good conversations with them about their
work, their faith and their doubts.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-mirror-indents: yes; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">On
a lighter note, <i>The Big Dig</i> podcast by NPR and WBGH public radio in Boston,
hosted by Ian Coss, is absurd to the point of comedy. A winding path through
the conception, labor, and birth of the multi-tunnel interstate highway project
in Boston known as the Big Dig, this podcast is an incredibly useful look at
infrastructure. Every writer should understand infrastructure—it’s real life
worldbuilding. Construction permits and architectural designs shape our lives
in ways obvious and subtle.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-mirror-indents: yes; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">On
an even lighter note, <i>If Books Could Kill</i> is my favorite podcast of the
year. Michael Hobbes, investigative journalist, and Peter Shamshiri, lawyer and
co-host of the Supreme Court podcast <i>5-4</i>, tear apart “the airport bestsellers
that captured our hearts and ruined our minds.” There’s something intensely
satisfying about scathing mockery of the worst books in the world, the
bestsellers full of maliciously useless pablum. Blowhards use these books to
get famous and make money off of people who are just looking for a little
guidance, and this podcast is the only justice the world will ever see for
them. It’s a beautiful work of art, and, like the YA fantasy novels of my
teenage years, a comfort to read—or listen to—when the rest of my life is not
very comforting at all.</span></p>
<div><br /></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Joanne Rixon's short speculative fiction has appeared in venues including <i>Terraform, Fireside</i>, and <i>Lady's Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet</i>.
They are a member of STEW and the Dreamcrashers, and are an organizer
with the North Seattle Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Meetup. They
are represented by Jennifer Goloboy of the Donald Maass Literary Agency,
and you can find them yelling about poetry and politics on bluesky
@joannerixon.bluesky.social, or at <a href="http://joannerixon.com">joannerixon.com</a></span><div dir="ltr"><br /><br /></div><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-mirror-indents: yes; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></p>
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Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-74624827029822963432023-12-27T18:00:00.000-08:002023-12-27T18:00:00.134-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, Part 22: LaToya Jordan<p> </p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.aqueductpress.com/images/authors/LaToyaJordan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="http://www.aqueductpress.com/images/authors/LaToyaJordan.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;">The
Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;">by LaToya Jordan</span></span></span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Books:</span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">I started off 2023 with two novels that
will stay with me for a long time: <i>Nightbitch</i>
by Rachel Yoder and <i>The Change</i> by
Kirsten Miller. These were perfect to read back to back because they spoke to
each other and could’ve been in the same universe. In both, women channel their
rage, transform it, and use it to change their situations. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1612737468i/55835474.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1612737468i/55835474.jpg" width="134" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">In <i>Nightbitch</i>,
a stay-at-home mother solo parents her two-year-old during the week. She’s
angry with her husband who’s only home on the weekends from work. She is an
artist, or was one, because she hasn’t been able to make any art since becoming
a mother and being primary caretaker. She starts physically transforming at
night, into what she thinks is a dog. As she begins to accept the animalistic
nature in her, she makes dramatic changes that lead her to being able to be a
mother, wife, and an artist again. <br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">In <i>The
Change</i>, three middle-aged women experiencing changes in their lives: empty
nest, widowed, divorce, career failings – all of that while starting menopause.
But as they experience the change of life, they also come into powers. Working
together, they use their powers to solve the murder of a teenage girl. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> As a perimenopausal mother-writer, these
books hit me in the gut. What I wouldn’t give to have more time to work on my
craft and how I’d love to develop superpowers and channel my hormonal rage into
something that could help the world.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> Other books and stories I enjoyed
reading this year:</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Books:</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Forgive
Me Not</span></i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> by Jennifer Baker - (I read this one
with my tween daughter!)</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1682892530i/61352064.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="533" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1682892530i/61352064.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The
Women Could Fly</span></i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> by Megan Giddings</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> <i>Jackal </i>by Erin E. Adams</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> <i>Bad Moon Rising</i> by Luisa Colón</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> </span><i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Bleak
Houses</span></i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> by Kate Maruyama</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"><i>Murder Book</i> by Hilary Fitzgerald
Campbell</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Stories</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">:</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519263290i/37570595.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="531" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519263290i/37570595.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />“Light Spitter” by Nana Kwame
Adjei-Brenyah in his short story collection <i>Friday
Black</i>. I read most of the stories in this book but read this particular
story five times. It’s about a college campus shooter and his victim as ghosts.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">“Six Versions of My Brother Found Under
the Bridge” by Eugenia Triantafyllou in <i>Uncanny
Magazine</i></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">“Clown’s Balloons” by Sam Rebelein in <i>Bourbon Penn</i></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Streaming:</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Almost all of my favorite series, except
for <i>Black Mirror</i>, are book adaptations.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Netflix:</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Bodies</span></i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> <br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">I love time-travel and mysteries. This series was a slow burn of confusion in
the beginning but by the end I was hooked and wanting more. It follows four
detectives in four different timelines, two set in the past, one in present
day, and one in the future. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"><i>Shadow and Bone</i>, Season 2</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Queen
Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story</span></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Sweet
Tooth</span></i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">, Season 2</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Black
Mirror</span></i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">, Season 6. My two favorites of the
season were Episode 1, “Joan Is Awful” and<span>
</span>episode 5, “Demon 79.”</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f2/Joan_Is_Awful.jpeg/220px-Joan_Is_Awful.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="275" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f2/Joan_Is_Awful.jpeg/220px-Joan_Is_Awful.jpeg" width="160" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> "Joan Is Awful" is about a woman who
discovers that the hottest new show on a popular streaming platform is based on
her life and it reveals secrets about her life to her boyfriend, colleagues,
and everyone watching. One of the biggest things I learned from the episode is
that we all really need to be reading the terms and conditions before we agree
to purchase a product or services.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> <i>Demon 79</i> is about a demon who needs to
help the protagonist make three sacrificial murders to save the world. It is
supernatural horror, which is a deviation from the sci-fi and technology
aspects of Black Mirror, but still holds up a mirror to the social and
political issues we face.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Hulu:</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"><i>Black Cake</i></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Podcasts:</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">2023 was the year I finally gave
podcasts a chance. <br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">“Shame Spiral” with Ely Kreimendahl is a shameless plug, I was featured on this podcast this yea). Ely speaks with
guests about shame; it’s funny, it’s deep. She asks thoughtful questions and
has a beautiful voice for radio. One of my favorite episodes of the year was
“Embarrassing Myself In Front of Jon Hamm” with Mara Wilson. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"><br />
I also listened to “Scamanda,” hosted by journalist Charlie Webster. This
podcast is the story of Amanda C. Riley, who scammed her friends, family, and
town into believing she had cancer. I love that this podcast uses an actor to
read the blog and social media posts written by Amanda.<br />
<br />
</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Just when you think you’ve learned
everything about Michael Jackson, you find out you don’t know it all with
“Think Twice: Michael Jackson” from journalists Leon Neyfakh and Jay Smooth.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"><br />
Finally, true crime podcast “Anatomy of Murder” with Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi and
Scott Weinberger. Of all the true crime podcasts in the world, I enjoy this one
the most because I prefer a journalistic style to true crime and because of the
expertise the hosts bring to the show: Nicolazzi was formerly a NYC prosecutor
and Weinberger was a former deputy sheriff. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitztv8ZX3ebu8xx_4F4EWQjus-E_rfNqBjJ_8XjZAVh96zDqKp2YTnbZ05pyW4IZMZllxHuOcdgxjUDznp3rHl_GCUc7EZNi0YVnL448Wq6P6Rv_4B3M9LoF-u0wuIsxd9C_Rr_z3B8aSi9A1QweOcCExrmBaRpIuxHCjcOtbv2Tu5llPcjZa2OA9HnA/s1000/Jordan-pink-hat-cvrlr.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="626" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitztv8ZX3ebu8xx_4F4EWQjus-E_rfNqBjJ_8XjZAVh96zDqKp2YTnbZ05pyW4IZMZllxHuOcdgxjUDznp3rHl_GCUc7EZNi0YVnL448Wq6P6Rv_4B3M9LoF-u0wuIsxd9C_Rr_z3B8aSi9A1QweOcCExrmBaRpIuxHCjcOtbv2Tu5llPcjZa2OA9HnA/s320/Jordan-pink-hat-cvrlr.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Calibri","sans-serif"" lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">LaToya Jordan is a writer
from Brooklyn, NY. Her work has appeared in <i>Anomaly</i>, <i>Literary
Mama</i>, <i>Shirley Magazine</i>,<i> Mom Egg Review</i>, <i>Raising Mothers</i>,
<i>Poets & Writers</i>, <i>The Rumpus</i>, and more. Her flash story
“Offering” was a spotlight story in B<i>est Small Fictions 2021</i> and named
in Wigleaf’s Top 50 2021. Her essay “The Zig Zag Mother,” appears in <i>My
Caesarean: Twenty-One Mothers on the C-Section Experience and After</i> and
another essay, “After Striking a Fixed Object,” published by <i>The
Manifest-Station</i>, was notable in <i>Best American Essays 2016</i>. She is
also the author of a poetry chapbook, <i>Thick-Skinned Sugar</i>. Aqueduct Press released her novella<i> To the Woman in the Pink Hat</i> as a volume in the Conversation Pieces series earlier this year Follow her on
Twitter @latoyadjordan.</span></p>
Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-12533160457981680352023-12-27T06:00:00.000-08:002023-12-27T06:00:00.137-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, part 21: Cat Rambo<div><span style="font-size: large;"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.sfwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/catrambo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="155" data-original-width="150" height="320" src="https://www.sfwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/catrambo.jpg" width="310" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Reading Pleasures of 2023</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">by Cat Rambo </span><br /></div><span id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-1f3de4b1-7fff-93c5-15e6-5a04436d2abc"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-1f3de4b1-7fff-93c5-15e6-5a04436d2abc"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">I
read more than I watch or listen, and so here are highlights from this
year of the close to 200 books I read or reread in 2023. I get the
majority of my reading from NetGalley, BookBub deals, ARCs, and the
library. I include publication dates so I can remember what I will
recommend for Nebula reading; bolded titles are eligible for award stuff
this year.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Here are some of my favorites in speculative reading from this year:</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">F.M. Aden - <i>The Bride of Death</i> (Northern Light Press, March 1, 2024) - Lovely fairytale retelling.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Emma
R. Alban -<i> Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend</i> (Avon, Jan 9, 2024) YA -
queer Victorian romance with a whiff of The Parent Trap.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Cassie Alexander - <i>AITA?</i> (2021) - Fun paranormal sexy romance.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1633437192i/58659343.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="407" data-original-width="255" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1633437192i/58659343.jpg" width="125" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Julia Armfield - <i>Our Wives Under the Sea</i> (2022) Lovely, eerie horror.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Rachel Aukes - <i>The Lazarus Key Waypoint</i>, (Jan 8, 2024) - Thriller with fish & wildlife officers going up against dinosaurs</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Bridget
E. Baker - The Birthright Series, 2020. Solid space opera, and I liked
the PoV changes from book to book. I read the first three and will be
picking up the other five when I get the chance.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">S.A. Barnes - <i>Ghost Station</i> (April 9, 2024) Great psychological thriller on a space station.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Redfern John Barrett - Proud Pink Sky </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(Amble Press, 2023) Linked short stories of a gay homeland. Enjoyed this a lot.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett - The Long Earth Parallel earth series, 1st of four.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Melissa Blair - <i>A Broken Blade</i> (2021) - Solid YA fantasy, first of three books.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Marie Brennan - <i>The Market of 100 Fortunes</i> (Aconyte, Feb, 2024) Loved this Legend of the Five Rings tie-in novel. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1688422431i/139595692.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="251" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1688422431i/139595692.jpg" width="125" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Tobias
Buckell - A Stranger in the Citadel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(Tachyon Publications, 2023),
Terrific </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">world-building and a librarian questioning that world.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Octavia
E. Butler - <i>Mind of My Mind</i>. Rerelease of work by one of my favorite
writers. Everyone should read Octavia. Over and over again.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Sebastien
Castell - The Malevolent Seven </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(2023). Absolutely solid and fun fantasy
that lives up to the excellence of Castell’s other works.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Heidi Catherine - <i>The Whisperers of Evernow </i>(2019) Interesting premise, YA.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Beth
Cato - A Thousand Recipes for Revenge </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(47North, 2023) I love Cato’s
work and this was no exception. Plus -- food and fantasy! First of two, and
I’ve already preordered the sequel.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">P. Djèlí Clark - <i>The Dead Cat Tail Assassins</i> (Tor, April 23, 2024) Delightful secondary world fantasy.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">David Clawson - <i>My Fairy Mother is a Drag Queen </i>(2017) - Fun Cinderella retelling. YA.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1665319037i/61885131.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="520" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1665319037i/61885131.jpg" width="130" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />Lex Croucher - Gwen and Art are Not in Love </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(Tor Macmillan 2023). YA queer romance, fun and frothy.</span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Alex Evans - I Am a Barbarian </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(BooksGoSocial, Dec 17, 2023) Fun YA secondary world fantasy.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Philip
Jose Farmer - <i>Lord of the Trees</i> (2012), <i>The Mad Goblin</i> (2013) Typical
crazy-ass Farmer and a certain amount of (literal) cock-swinging.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Brandon Gillespie - Atom Bomb Baby </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(2023) Strong whiff of Fallout fanfic about this book, but in a good way.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Nicole
Glover - <i>The Conductors</i> (2021) Loved this alternate history with
magicians running the Underground Railway; first of two books</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Kim Harrison - <i>American Demon</i> (2020) I always enjoy Harrison, and this was no exception.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Christina Henry - <i>The House that Horror Built</i> (Berkeley, June 14, 2024) Solid horror about the cinema, nicely creepy.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Kevin
Hincker - The Ghost with a Knife at Her Throat </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(August 13, 2023) I
adored this urban fantasy, which had some cool twists. First in a series
and I’m picking up the rest.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">S.J.
Himes - <i>The Necromancer’s Dance</i> (2016) First in an urban fantasy series
of the vampires/werewolves ilk, fun gay fantasy with lots of action.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Dara Horn - <i>Eternal Life </i>(2018) Is living forever a boon or a curse? Lotsa historical texture.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Kat Howard - An Unkindness of Magicians, A Sleight of Shadows </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(2023) Loved this duo of mannerly magician books.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Sarah Zachrich Jeng - <i>When I’m Her</i> (Berkley, March , 2024) Compelling story of female friendship.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Mary E. Jung - <i>Blossom and Bone</i> (2022) Cozy fantasy feel to this series that I really enjoyed, first of a three-book series.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">T.J. Klune - In the Lives of Puppets </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(2023) Terrific SF retelling of Pinochio. One of my favorite reads of the year.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Tim Lebbon - <i>Among the Living </i>(Titan Books, Feb 6, 2024) Lebbon is always good, and this is solid and compelling.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1673303646i/62873999.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="532" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1673303646i/62873999.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Ann
Leckie - Translation State </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(2023) More in Leckie’s complex and
compelling SF universe, along with one of my favorite characters of all
time, Qven.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Britney S. Lewis - <i>The Undead Truth of Us</i> (2021). YA zombie with a lot of emotion to it.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Megan Mackie - Death and the Crone </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(2023) Enjoyed this older woman romance in Mackie’s Lucky Devil setting.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Melissa Marr - <i>Remedial Magic</i> (Tor, Feb 20, 2024) Cozy fantasy with a lovely lesbian romance.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">J.R. Martin - The Engineer’s Apprentice </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(2023) Solid beginning to a steampunk series.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Zoe
Hana Mikuta - Off With Their Heads </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(Disney, April 24, 2024) Great queer
Alice in Wonderland riff with Gideon the Ninth vibes.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Jo Miles - Dissonant State </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(2023) Fun space opera that has me looking for the beginning of the series.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1688576257i/176443184.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="494" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1688576257i/176443184.jpg" width="124" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />Premee
Mohamed - The Siege of Burning Grass </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(Rebellion Publishing, March 12,
2024) If you buy one book in 2024, this should be it.</span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Sunny Moraine - <i>Your Shadow Half Remains</i> (Tor, Feb, 2024) Creepy horror of the everyone is the enemy apocalypse variety.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Silver Nitrate </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(2023) Sharp-edged horror set in cinematic history. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Tamsyn
Muir - <i>Harrow the Ninth</i> (2020), <i>Nona the Ninth</i> (2022) I loved Gideon
and Harrow but bounced hard off the third book for some reason.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Patrick
Ness - <i>The Rest of Us Just Live Here </i>(2015) - YA and I LOVE this book
about what it’s like to not be the Chosen One so much.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Naomi Novik - <i>A Deadly Education</i> (2020), <i>The Golden Enclaves</i> (2022) Fabulous entry into the genre of magic schools.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Allison
Saft - <i>A Dark and Drowning Tide</i> (Random House, Sept 17, 2024) Loved
this secondary world fantasy frenemies-to lovers-take on a murder
mystery.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith
Saintcrow - <i>A Flame in the North</i> (Orbit, February 13, 2024) I always
enjoy Saintcrow and this was a pleasurable read, but I like her more
modern fantasy stuff considerably more.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1592766695i/34729702.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="461" data-original-width="330" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1592766695i/34729702.jpg" width="143" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Robert
Shearman - <i>We All Hear Stories in the Dark</i> (2022). I’m still working my
way through this massive three-volume set and enjoying it enormously.
Highly recommended if you love short stories.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">A.J. Steiger - <i>Eye of a Little God.</i> (January 2, 2024). Well-executed psychological horror.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Neal
Stephenson and Nicole Galland - <i>The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.</i> (2017)
Great time- travel corps stuff with a fun romance. There’s a sequel,
which I need to pick up.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Andrew F. Sullivan - The Marigold</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> (2023) Fabulously unhinged horror.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Lavie Tidhar - The Circumference of the World </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(2023) His usual brilliance, so much lovely stuff in this!</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">K.B. Wagers - <i>A Pale Light in the Black</i> (2020) Fun start to a series.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Khan Wong - <i>The Circus Infinite</i> (2022) Terrific SF with a runaway teen with special powers.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Z. J. Ryder - Twisted Neuros </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">(Self published) I love this story of an AI trying to figure out its own existence.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">In
anthologies and collections, I recently began a project to go through
all my anthologies and collections to see which I want to keep. So far
that’s included <i> </i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><i> </i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Space Opera</i>, edited by Brian Aldiss. Keeping for historical relevance more than any innate quality.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><i> </i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Light Years and Dark</i>, edited by Michael Bishop. Keeping for the high degree of original fiction, the quality of writers and works, and the editorial vision.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">In
my short-fiction reading club, in which we read classic stories of
F&SF, we read: </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Ray Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn”</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Karen Joy Fowler’s
“Standing Room Only” </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies,” and “The
Green Hills of Earth” </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Anne McCaffrey’s “The Ship Who Sang” </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Vonda N.
McIntyre’s “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand” </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">C.L. Moore and Henry
Kuttner’s “Vintage Season” </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Clifford Simak’s “Desertion” </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Connie
Willis’ “A Letter from the Clearys” </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Roger Zelazny’s “Auto-da-Fe.” </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve found these craft-focused sessions, which are part of my Patreon
community, illuminating and useful in terms of learning more about
F&SF history as well as craft tips and tricks.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Baldur's_Gate_3_cover_art.jpg/220px-Baldur's_Gate_3_cover_art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Baldur's_Gate_3_cover_art.jpg/220px-Baldur's_Gate_3_cover_art.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></span></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">In
video/computer games, I started playing the early version of Baldur’s
Gate 3 in early September, and I’ve been obsessed with it. Earlier in
the year, I was playing Sun Haven and really enjoyed it. If you’re a
Stardew Valley fan, you will like Sunhaven, because there’s a lot of
similarities and fun writing. I continue to play Pokemon Go on my phone.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">RPG-wise,
I’m running a live game of D&D 5e and playing in two f2f homebrew
D&D campaigns, one virtual D%D campaign plus Esper Genesis on
Twitch. That sounds like more than it really is, which is a chance to
game once or twice each week. Early in the year, I played in a game of
Apocalypse Hearts run by Lowell Francis and want to recommend the Open
Hearth gaming community for people interested in finding interesting
story-focused games to play online.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">In
travel recommendations, I spent part of March and all of November in
Spain, and want to shout out to Castell Llaés in Girona, and nearby
Hostall La Serra, where I had several meals, including the good fortune
of their last dinner of the season, after which we clustered around
their fire and listened to our hosts tell ghost stories. In the Gothic
Quarter, I got a new tattoo from artist Joan Taltavul of Meatshop
Tattoo. I stayed at a funky Airbnb with four flights of stairs and no
elevator but also an extraordinary rooftop terrace overlooking Placa
Reial. I had a delightful dinner at Tapas 24 as well as a belated
birthday celebration at Xiringuito Escribá, which was terrific paella in
a beachside setting.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1681106837i/59808156.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1681106837i/59808156.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /> Cat Rambo’s 300+ fiction publications include stories in A<i>simov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine</i>, and <i>The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>. 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 <i>Devil’s Gun</i> (Tor Macmillan, 2023) and anthology <i>The Reinvented Detective</i> (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. <br /></span></span><p></p></span>Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-56246335178587694482023-12-26T06:00:00.000-08:002023-12-26T06:00:00.138-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 20: Andrea Hairston<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimXZXYcyrumHsqolqJBOKkw3VFnkpR9mK9_2TntlTu48mwX-P0BHTj9eqZuV44DsibpyZEed3wJSVTyQFo1NYFGW1ZOzHmGhSSgpA0NepUjujjEMlfHYThOo-Saa5GLpLWIlk1ux4YXYVsPuevQKiURZHQQFoKpcyTYv5nVnzil2uozSiNX5qerQ04nwY/s3791/Andrea4.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3791" data-original-width="2189" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimXZXYcyrumHsqolqJBOKkw3VFnkpR9mK9_2TntlTu48mwX-P0BHTj9eqZuV44DsibpyZEed3wJSVTyQFo1NYFGW1ZOzHmGhSSgpA0NepUjujjEMlfHYThOo-Saa5GLpLWIlk1ux4YXYVsPuevQKiURZHQQFoKpcyTYv5nVnzil2uozSiNX5qerQ04nwY/s320/Andrea4.JPG" width="185" /></a></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">The Multiverse of Worlds in the Universe We Inhabit Together</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">by Andrea Hairston</span><br /> </p><p></p><p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">How can we be
different together? </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That’s a question
I keep coming back to as a theatre artist, professor, and a novelist, as a bit
of entangled life on a tiny blue pebble hurtling through vast darkness. How can
I make the journey from self to other, break out of my skin and appreciate
living in someone else’s? How can I slip into someone’s scales, branching
roots, feathers, or ooze, and experience their universe and treasure their
spirit? When I drop into a book, play, or film, I want to experience a new
world or the multi-verse of worlds in the universe we all inhabit together. (Read<i>
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our
Futures</i> by Merlin Sheldrake.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">These are trying
times. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As far as I can
tell, these are always trying times. So a few other questions: How do we
survive ourselves? How do we let go of toxic mythology and take action to
create and sustain a future that holds us all? And how did the old folks face
the apocalypse and hold on to themselves as well as the future? How did they
keep on keeping on through their trying times? </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As a child in the
50’s and 60’s, I remember being told again and again: the big problem with backward,
non-European cultures was a slavish adherence to (unscientific) tradition, to superstitions
and absolute dictums from a savage past. I was counseled against listening to
the Elders. I was told to ignore the generations who’d been lost in the jungle
before modernity saved them/us. To reach the future, I had to check that
backward African, African American, Indigenous science crap at the door! ‘Cause
ancestor worship led to stagnation. Critical thought, experimental practice,
and entrepreneurial savvy led to change, progress, and greatness. Indeed the
world could/should transform at the speed of thought. Faster than thought. God
was a speed demon.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I am now struck
by the (almost) absolute faith our current society has in ancestors who worshiped speed, risk-taking, and the magic hand of the slaveholders. We
honor those who believed might makes right and sanctify those who believed nothing
trumps profit. The lives squandered and lost, the oceans, mountain, species
eradicated, well, that’s just the regrettable, but inevitable collateral damage
as we progress, as we careen into the future. To echo Gerald Vizenor, I ask: How
do we not only survive the terror, cruelty, and oppression in these
superstitions but how do we thrive? To call on James Baldwin, I wonder: How can
we be enraged with the world but not consumed with despair? To riff on Alice
Childress: How do we resist cutting ourselves in pieces? How do we hold all of
who and what we are?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The artists on my
list share the joy of feeling our complex world. They engage with these trying
times. They celebrate the amazing entangled life forms. They examine the horror
and the brilliance. And they do not despair. They invite us to hope.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1678421810i/57121695.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="230" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1678421810i/57121695.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Last Canto of
the Dead</i>, Outlaw Saints #2 by Daniel José Older is a polyrhythmic epic to
all that we can be. Our flaws and the possibility of annihilation are on
display. Mateo Matisse and Chela Hidalgo are two teenagers in love. They are also ancient
spirits made flesh. They struggle to heal profound divisions in their
diverse and complex communities in the lingering context of colonialism. This sequel
to <i>Ballad and Dagger</i> is soul repair as is Daniel’s Sketchbooks &
Scratchpads—a newsletter on substack.com.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In <i>The
Extended Mind</i>, Annie Murphy Paul contends that intelligence is always an
interaction and mind is a community! </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924870i/57504.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="308" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924870i/57504.jpg" width="130" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />I reread Nalo
Hopkinson’s <i>Brown Girl in the Ring</i> published in 1998. Talk about navigating
the apocalypse with the wisdom and the idioms of the ancestors! See what
happens when you (literally) steal someone’s heart! Afro-Caribbean ancestor
wisdom rewrites the future.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Poverty, by
America</i> by Matthew Desmond is a devastating exploration of how we normalize
poverty in America. Subsidizing wealth is our biggest priority, not eliminating
poverty. The underpaid and overworked sustain comfortable middle and upper
class lives. Desmond ruptures denial and complacency and points us towards what James Baldwin calls, “real change.”
Real change is creating that future which sustains us all!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Rustin</i>, a
Netflix film starring Coleman Domingo and directed by George C. Wolfe was
thrilling. The film focuses on civil rights activist Bayard Rustin who organized
the 1963 March on Washington—a mammoth undertaking. Imperfect, complex people
come together to make the world better. At first the other leaders, Martin
Luther King, Roy Wilkins, and others, sideline queer Quaker Rustin. But he’s
got the vision and the skills to pull off the impossible. The leaders also sideline
the women, refusing to let a woman speak at the Lincoln Memorial--Mahalia Jackson gets to sing, but women are denied a right to address the marchers. Big struggles
in the struggle. As Rustin works to make their dreams a reality, the change makers don’t all get
on, but he forces them to keep their eyes on the prize. Messy, hard, social change. Soul repair for right now!</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1686761184i/62919847.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="531" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1686761184i/62919847.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>The Reformatory</i>
by Tananarive Due was impossible to put down, not because of the brilliant
dramatic structure, elegant characterizations, and lyrical language; not
because of Due’s marvelous conjuration of the Jim Crow 1950’s. Her two young
protagonists, Robbie and Gloria, must deal with restless spirits wandering the blood-soaked
ground of our history. They must fend off monstrous men who torture children with
impunity. I kept turning the pages because of Robbie’s and Gloria’s determination.
They faced the horror of our world and refused despair. They gave me hope.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgwuh9KGu6FW2IvUhc9Uv7aVbqv3JpwAAmcpYgddn8LjF7109On71py_CgOugXHZLAftDxVU4Id6GP-ygWrkb8SG815tBVi6qqpSoT5UfDZhRg4yDGp8CxSndeK0HhWyRpENtaPVD3X8YP96w4NtRoCex4gXH-u2GgiwNmdLMWW8fC9OevWKWOFtHdSc0/s2048/Arch%20Cover%20Final.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgwuh9KGu6FW2IvUhc9Uv7aVbqv3JpwAAmcpYgddn8LjF7109On71py_CgOugXHZLAftDxVU4Id6GP-ygWrkb8SG815tBVi6qqpSoT5UfDZhRg4yDGp8CxSndeK0HhWyRpENtaPVD3X8YP96w4NtRoCex4gXH-u2GgiwNmdLMWW8fC9OevWKWOFtHdSc0/s320/Arch%20Cover%20Final.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Andrea Hairston is a
novelist, playwright, and scholar. Aqueduct Press published her first three
novels, all of which are being reissued by <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tor: <i>Will Do Magic For Small Change</i>, a
New York Times Editor’s pick and finalist for the Mythopoeic, Lambda, and
Otherwise Awards; <i>Redwood and Wildfire</i>, winner of the Otherwise and Carl
Brandon Awards; <i>Mindscape</i>, winner of the Carl Brandon Award. Aqueduct
also published<i> Lonely Stardust</i>, a collection of essays and plays. “Dumb
House,” a short story appears in <i>New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by
People of Color</i> edited by Nisi Shawl. Andrea has received grants from the
NEA, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and the Massachusetts Cultural
Council. <i>Master of Poisons,</i> came out from Tor.com and was on the 2020 <i>Kirkus
Review</i>’s Best SF and F list. Tor will publish <i>Archangels of Funk</i> in May of
2024.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p>Andrea Hairstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08533238589541221316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-62757581358117562942023-12-25T06:00:00.000-08:002023-12-25T06:00:00.132-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 19: Isabel Schecter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgdHR4RNK2NnQgjQn9UdYeU4s_o9B1QrG-_xP-N1n5R5H1D9XmWURdS8FDwp8oj_dKQbi-CJ_3KWy2VpWXIaUzadS5k-iMW9SPs1AAwgWAgnbyF0jWfbADwKwft_L-sPxWdBXp7sydLWPeUXjriOq2jJwrMR4Abia28Q75qayXG=s923-d" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="923" data-original-width="710" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgdHR4RNK2NnQgjQn9UdYeU4s_o9B1QrG-_xP-N1n5R5H1D9XmWURdS8FDwp8oj_dKQbi-CJ_3KWy2VpWXIaUzadS5k-iMW9SPs1AAwgWAgnbyF0jWfbADwKwft_L-sPxWdBXp7sydLWPeUXjriOq2jJwrMR4Abia28Q75qayXG=s320-d" width="246" /></a></div><br /><p><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 150%;">Libraries and Books in 2023</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 150%;">by Isabel Schechter</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Are
we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? <br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">For
those of you who took family car trips when you were younger, or those of you
riding in a carpool to WisCon, the wait to get to your destination on those
trips was interminable. Time moved at a glacial pace. Fast forward to today when
the book you have on hold at the library still hasn’t come in, and the wait is
also interminable. Time is once again moving at a glacial pace. <br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Rather
than waiting for the book, you could just buy it (from an independent bookstore,
of course) and get it today, but that may not be a financial option for you. If
it’s a popular book, friends who may own the book might be reading their copy
and can’t lend it to you until they are done, and your friends who don’t own it
may be the very people who have a hold on a library copy and are in line ahead
of you. <br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">On
the other end of the time spectrum, your book club is meeting in just two weeks
and you still haven’t even gotten the book, and who knows if you will be able to
finish reading it before the book club happens? Apparently, time can move at a
glacial pace and so fast that it feels like you can’t keep up with it. How is
this possible? <br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Well,
as a science fiction fan, I am used to time running in multiple directions at
multiple speeds simultaneously, so I do the best I can to manage my impatience
with whichever way time is flowing by having library accounts in multiple
library systems. <br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">I
have an account with my San Diego city library system as well as the San Diego county
library system (having both is permitted). In addition, although I am not a
resident of Los Angeles, I am a California resident, and the Los Angeles city
library system grants accounts to all California residents, so I also have an
account with the Los Angeles city library system.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> My
city library system has a shamefully small budget for books and materials (City
Councilmembers, I’m looking at you), which means there is a limited selection
of books, and a small number of copies of the books that are available. My
county library system has approximately three times the city system’s books and
materials budget (governing done right), which means my chances of getting a
book in a reasonable amount of time are much higher with the county than the
city. <br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Sadly
though, even with two systems, there are still not enough copies of all the
books I want. But I won’t let underfunded library systems stand between me and
my book club, so when I was recently in Los Angeles, I brought my driver’s
license and a utility bill, and viola, I now have a Los Angeles city library
account! This doesn’t mean that I am going to drive two hours to go to LA every
time I need a book, but I can put eBooks on hold and have an even greater
chance of getting the books I need. <br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">So
the next time you need a book and can’t get it from your local library, or your
other local library, or your other not-local library, contact your elected
officials and invite them to join your book club that’s happening in two weeks.
And be sure to pick a book that has 347 holds on it. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Here
are some suggestions of books I’ve gotten from the library:</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1698701097i/179490216.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="531" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1698701097i/179490216.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><i>Book
Lovers</i> by Emily Henry</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><i>The
Book Woman of Troublesome Creek</i> by Kim Michele Richardson</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><i>The
Last Chance Library</i> by Freya Sampson</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><i></i></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1551259771i/41961994.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1551259771i/41961994.jpg" width="134" /></a></i></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i><br />The
Library of the Unwritten </i>by A.J. Hackwith</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><i>The
Midnight Library</i> by Matt Haig</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 150%;"> Happy reading.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 150%;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzGScx4PulfxsYy5M3it5tntop2-ekX8EXDYEHlVraPUdPN8xeWj-sMvWI3H9g2XQYasuflgFQDjZhArXx0hFW-yRr7-8y7U9r35b2YboNOTU5nw-3CVwYdPMlIKkLPQm6RBj7uSP85nD04Rm3noWPnOuOJjSd-iatS0-1JjaGGpLCIou7QIcaIrTaekIu/s1000/aqueduct-wiscon-chron-12-cvr-lr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="647" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzGScx4PulfxsYy5M3it5tntop2-ekX8EXDYEHlVraPUdPN8xeWj-sMvWI3H9g2XQYasuflgFQDjZhArXx0hFW-yRr7-8y7U9r35b2YboNOTU5nw-3CVwYdPMlIKkLPQm6RBj7uSP85nD04Rm3noWPnOuOJjSd-iatS0-1JjaGGpLCIou7QIcaIrTaekIu/w129-h200/aqueduct-wiscon-chron-12-cvr-lr.jpg" width="129" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Isabel’s essays on race and representation in SF/F have been published
in <i>Invisible 2: Essays on Race and Representation in SF/F</i>, <i>Uncanny: A
Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy</i>, and several volumes of the
WisCon Chronicles; and she is Co-Editor of <i>The WisCon
Chronicles Volume 12: Boundaries and Bridges</i>. She is Puerto-Rican,
feminist, child-free, Jewish, vegetarian, and a Midwesterner living in
Southern California, and embraces the opportunity to represent the
fact that no one of those identities excludes any of the others.
</span><p></p><p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></p>
Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-29066560714575412842023-12-24T06:00:00.000-08:002023-12-24T06:00:00.135-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 18: Raven Belasco<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.aqueductpress.com/images/authors/RavenBelasco.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="627" data-original-width="417" height="320" src="http://www.aqueductpress.com/images/authors/RavenBelasco.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">The Pleasures of Reading,<br />
Viewing, and Listening in 2023 </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> by Raven Belasco</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: medium;">TELE</span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: medium;">VISION</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222;">2023 was a helluva year. But I’ve been very thankful that,
at the end of a long day, I’ve had amazing shows to sit down and watch to
decompress.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222;">I’m not sure how I found it, but one of the shows that
brought me the most pleasure was <i>The Diplomat</i> on Netflix. If you had said you
had an “American political thriller series” for me, I would have given you
side-eye. But this show is so much more than that. It was created by Debora
Cahn, and has a fantastically feminist viewpoint. Keri Russell is Katherine “Kate”
Wyler, who against her will ends up as the newly appointed US ambassador to the
UK. She must deal not only with the job, but with Rufus Sewell, her husband,
who is always putting his thumb on the weights, with sometimes catastrophic
results. The rest of the cast is a revelation (and very diverse) but David
Gyasi as UK Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison really shines out. The show is
witty, delves deep into emotion, and keeps up a delightfully chaotic pace. I am
desperate for another season.</span><span style="color: #222222;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f1/Lupin_logo.png/220px-Lupin_logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="109" data-original-width="220" height="109" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f1/Lupin_logo.png/220px-Lupin_logo.png" width="220" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Happily, I got a third season of <i>Lupin</i> this year! If
you haven’t been watching this French action-mystery thriller starring Omar Sy,
well, you have three full seasons of delight ahead of you. Sy is the
professional thief Assane Diop, son of a Senegalese immigrant. Assane’s father was
framed by his employer, the powerful (and really vile) Hubert Pellegrini, and
now Assane is ready to get revenge—but in the style of his hero, gentleman
thief Arsène Lupin. The show is full of amazing acting, brilliant effects, and a
focus on love and family. My favorite character is actually the dog, J’Accuse,
who has been trained to bark whenever the evil Pellegrini’s name is mentioned.
I suggest you watch it in the original French with subtitles—the English
dubbing is disappointing.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">An unexpected delight was <i>White House Plumbers</i>, satirical
political drama miniseries starring Watergate masterminds and President Richard
Nixon's political operatives E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) and G. Gordon
Liddy (Justin Theroux) who are tasked with plugging press leaks by any means
necessary. Through egotistical bungling they accidentally bring down the
Presidency they are desperately trying to protect. Excellent acting, costuming/sets,
and beautifully written.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><i>All the Light We Cannot See</i> is a four-part limited
series on Netflix. Set in <span style="background: white; color: #4d5156;">WWII in
France just as the Americans show up to liberate the country, a blind French
girl and a young German soldier <span> </span>find
each other through a shared passion for radio. That romance only really shows
up right at the end—before that it’s all a desperate race to keep the radio
announcements going despite Nazi efforts to shut it down, because those radio
transmissions are guiding the American bombers. It stars Mark Ruffalo, Hugh
Laurie, and a brilliant cast of actors who are all bringing their A game. </span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Another WWII offering on Netflix is <i>Transatlantic</i>,
about the historic Emergency Rescue Committee that operated in Marseilles,
Spain, and Portugal after the fall of France. Their goal was to get out people
the Germans particularly wanted to murder, especially,well-known artists and
scholars of the time including Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Marc Chagall,
Marcel Duchamp, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, and more. The cast
is diverse, the actors are being directed to their very best, and the costuming
and set design are brilliant. It will make you laugh and cry—or at least, I
laughed and cried. I plan to rewatch it again soon.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4e/Netflix_Fall_of_House_of_Usher_series.png/220px-Netflix_Fall_of_House_of_Usher_series.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4e/Netflix_Fall_of_House_of_Usher_series.png/220px-Netflix_Fall_of_House_of_Usher_series.png" width="135" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Saving the best for last, <i>Fall of the House of Usher</i>
is gothic horror miniseries, eight gorgeous and deeply upsetting episodes. Again,
amazing writing and acting. The works of Poe all get name-checked or
easter-egged as the Usher family comes apart in the most horrific ways. I think
Poe would be proud of this show; it is truly unique horror for this age, as his
stories were. This little snippet still sends shivers down my spine every time
I watch it: </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIK-q6JoOeU"><span style="line-height: 107%;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIK-q6JoOeU</span></a><span style="line-height: 107%;"></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Just watch that show, dammit! It doesn’t matter if
you don’t generally watch horror, this is simply too good to miss!</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">FILMS</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">As for films, these are the ones I made time to see
in the theater this year, and all were worth it:</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><i>They Cloned Tyrone</i></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><i>The Harder They Fall </i></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><i>Barbie</i></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">All were amazing in their own way. Make time (and a
big bowl of popcorn) for them.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">BOOKS</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Most of what I read this past year was nonfiction
research for my Blood & Ancient Scrolls series. One of the joys for me in
writing about vampires is that I can play around in any part of history I like,
and I “have to” do a bunch of research for each story set in the past, or for each
character who has a chip on their shoulder from that Thing that happened in Constantinople
in 360 AD, etc.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388591921i/587638.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="460" data-original-width="318" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388591921i/587638.jpg" width="138" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br />Lucky for me, the last novella I wrote in the year
had a section set in the khaganate of Khazaria in the 900s. So aside from all
the other research I had to do for the rest of it, I got the excuse to read <i>Gentlemen
of the Road</i> by Michael Chabon, who is one of my most favoritest authors.
The book itself is from 2007 and is set exactly in the same time and place as
the end of the novella I wrote. So you see, I “had” to read it! It’s a “swashbuckling
adventure” that follows two Jewish bandits (who style themselves “gentlemen of
the road”) who become embroiled in a rebellion and a plot to restore a
displaced Khazar prince to the throne. It’s a fun little romp, but also as
thoughtful and deep as one expects from Chabon. It was a treat for me to get to
call this “research.”</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">I had a couple weeks to read for pleasure this past
summer, and used it well by digging into the first three books in the Mycroft
Holmes series by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse. If you love Holmesania,
these books are perfectly satisfying and were just right for a vacation-read.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">AUDIOBOOKS</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">This part of the recommendations is harder for me,
because I mostly listen to audiobooks to fall asleep at night, and I have a
bunch of series I just roll through over and over. So let me tell you, I can
give you the plot of any Cadfael book in detail that would bore you. Likewise,
the Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. However, I do share
audiobooks with my partner when we do long drives, and the habit these days to
listen to the latest John Scalzi, which, this summer, was <i>The Kaiju
Preservation Society</i>. I really cannot sum up the gorgeously ludicrous plot,
but all you need to know is this is as well-written, perfectly plotted, and as
filled with endlessly fascinating characters as all Scalzi books are—plus huge
kaiju stomping about the place causing chaos. Simply: a treat, and read by Wil
Wheaton, a double treat!</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1602604484i/51174256.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="526" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1602604484i/51174256.jpg" width="132" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /> Also, <i><span style="background: white; color: #202122;">The
Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name</span></i> by
Brian Muraresku didn’t come out this year (it was 2020) but I got it on
audiobook this year, and it’s even better in audiobook than it was reading
it—and since it completely rocked my universe when I read it, that’s high
praise indeed. If you haven’t found it already, it’s described as “a groundbreaking
dive into the role psychedelics have played in the origins of Western
civilization” but it becomes so, so much <i>more</i> as Muraresku goes on a
quest to discover the literally hidden Mysteries. It’s gorgeously written, and
really comes alive when the author reads it to you. I could not recommend this
more highly.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgImoYxIW6LCvqUAaYy9EO3LNdBHulbmVxF8ROzNoNupuuETvHeZ15jWcr0oA1FxxpFtiGAnrLC5R1P2gibft8_1reV6Xs3FO_nyPMCzX10Ld_QmzrJV1ru9U8d6FxhPQajNCwc3df42jBrzwBQHPqXIUEISFl1tnouozo-nI404IynRZlgUTw5cbtEQBjD/s1000/Belasco-Adventures-cvr-lr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="647" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgImoYxIW6LCvqUAaYy9EO3LNdBHulbmVxF8ROzNoNupuuETvHeZ15jWcr0oA1FxxpFtiGAnrLC5R1P2gibft8_1reV6Xs3FO_nyPMCzX10Ld_QmzrJV1ru9U8d6FxhPQajNCwc3df42jBrzwBQHPqXIUEISFl1tnouozo-nI404IynRZlgUTw5cbtEQBjD/w129-h200/Belasco-Adventures-cvr-lr.jpg" width="129" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Raven Belasco is the pen name of Lisbet Beryl Weir, for the ease of
readers to easily distinguish the genres she’s playing with. By now
she will answer to either name. She is the author of The Blood & Ancient Scrolls series. She loves
cooking, yoga, and her small indignant terrier (who takes her out for
walkies when plotting gets tricky). What little spare time she might
have had is entirely taken up with sewing ancient garb and hanging out
with her fellow geeks in the SCA.She is the editor of <i>Adventures in Bodily Autonomy, </i>which Aqueduct released in October.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p></p>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></p>
Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-13893916686728543642023-12-23T06:00:00.000-08:002023-12-23T06:00:00.134-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 17: Elizabeth Clark-Stern<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEjmB4nq8gLg4SZ8olaY0RdWHEUqEBXt_FxHVr4BlMYZZcZ1TpQzRhgFJNPZg1NrHtPqE9l8oGp_ec2DVfk5ZbRVmCRKxERFEVg7fzzYzldC8sprZcfMjmCgCajXFpoBdsKJgq6ZNdoib5tpZmwuyft3rtCt30tMGk3ofZleN570b5uRGok=s640-d" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="608" data-original-width="640" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEjmB4nq8gLg4SZ8olaY0RdWHEUqEBXt_FxHVr4BlMYZZcZ1TpQzRhgFJNPZg1NrHtPqE9l8oGp_ec2DVfk5ZbRVmCRKxERFEVg7fzzYzldC8sprZcfMjmCgCajXFpoBdsKJgq6ZNdoib5tpZmwuyft3rtCt30tMGk3ofZleN570b5uRGok=s320-d" width="320" /></a></div><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The Joy of Art in Community: The Pleasure of
Reading, Viewing, Listening 2023</span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">by
Elizabeth Clark-Stern</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">It was a bumpy year for me. Losses and
challenges in the family, increasing threats to our democracy, the horror of war.
I sought community in the arts, finding it in some very unexpected places.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">At the Open Mic for local authors at
Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, Washington, I listened to writers of
every age, race, and gender identity read from every genre: fiction, comedy,
memoir, non-fiction, poetry--authors from small presses, large presses,
self-published, and works- in- progress. A <span> </span>nine-year-old Indian-American girl explained
that she was upset about the impact of global warming on the animals of the
earth. <span> </span>Her grandmother said to her, “You
are creative, you can write a book about it. That will help the animals. ” This
girl went on to illustrate and publish her own book. She stood on a box to
reach the podium as she read her story about two girls who saved an elephant and
a panda. We all cheered. Her grandmother, in purple silk sari, beamed with
pride. <span> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><span></span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivnBJm5Xqty5lSr9wNHYXYi5RFmxJ7_rqFoT9Xx0MU3JvEuxyy69GiaKCGUGj2aE3McKepWz5EHy5kP7CrsCRE2kq4Hib2-twpJSKHBfy0DogpEfwnvA8uzqPMcJ4Qs7_4T-O0mZUZarkFqfhOCbc_V-W1NS-gY-wyrvmLRIah79JYmSLzYKJOZFJLUAAp/s1000/garfinkle-home-cvr-lr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="644" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivnBJm5Xqty5lSr9wNHYXYi5RFmxJ7_rqFoT9Xx0MU3JvEuxyy69GiaKCGUGj2aE3McKepWz5EHy5kP7CrsCRE2kq4Hib2-twpJSKHBfy0DogpEfwnvA8uzqPMcJ4Qs7_4T-O0mZUZarkFqfhOCbc_V-W1NS-gY-wyrvmLRIah79JYmSLzYKJOZFJLUAAp/w129-h200/garfinkle-home-cvr-lr.jpg" width="129" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><span> </span>Another community available at the
flick of a button is Aqueduct Press. I adored Gwynne Garfinkle’s <i>Can’t Find
My Way Home. </i>Her prose flows like a mountain stream, the characters so
alive you expect to see them standing next to you at the grocery store. The
original voice of the actress-heroine sparkles, “I felt my life fragment and
reshape itself.” I love the sense of drama, the delight in entering Jo’s mind.
I have a theater background myself, and lived through the Viet Nam war era.
Garfinkle captured the madness and fury of the time flawlessly. A novel that
elevates the spirit with meaning and magic. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"> </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1178487725i/799832.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1178487725i/799832.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Also, from Aqueduct, I read <i>Alanya
to Alanya: </i><span>Book One of the Marq’ssan
Cycle</span> by L. Timmel Duchamp. Although it was published in 2005, I was
thunderstruck at the relevance to our current global crises. Through the
metaphor of science fiction, Ms. Duchamp takes us into the complexity of a
world of exploitation and tyranny, while allowing us intimate access to the
shadow side of our protagonist, who must fight both external and internal
battles. Duchamp’s writing is chilling in its breadth and depth. Such phrases
as, “ Magyyt stared at the sky, wishing self could look upon the light of
Marqeuei. They had miscalculated human psychology so badly that now they must
take nothing for granted. This habit of denial…The humans were perfectly
willing to grant extraordinary powers of reality to things imaginary and
abstract, but would refuse to grant reality to the obvious.”</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><span> </span>Sound familiar? Reading<i> Alanya </i>helped
me metabolize the trauma in our world, and in my own psyche.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><span> </span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1564577305i/38820046.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="530" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1564577305i/38820046.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Next I turned to Yuval Noah Harari’s
<i>21 Lessons for the 21<sup>st</sup> Century, </i>in some ways a nonfiction version
of Duchamp’s <i>Alanya to Alanya. </i>Harari is a world history
professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of <i>Sapiens </i>and
<i>Homo Deus: A Brief History of</i> <i>Tomorrow.</i> While I don’t agree with
all of his conclusions about human psychology, it was chilling to read his
predictions about the colonization of A.I. in our present and future world</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">This theme was echoed when I visited my
85-year old brother in his nursing home in Austin, Texas. We watched the 1950’s
version of the film <i>Invasion of the Body Snatchers.</i> My brother was a
science fiction author in his day (<i>Gods in a Vortex,</i> and <i>Alien
Perspectives</i> by David Houston) He loves the original <i>Body Snatchers</i>
and considers it head and shoulders above recent re-makes. I agreed, and found
myself trembling as I sat next to his bed, watching the movie on a portable DVD
player. “So suspenseful,” I gasped. My brother smiled with satisfaction. We
agreed that this black- and- white 1956 movie presaged the takeover of A.I. and
Fascism threatening our world in 2023.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1653944198i/61153762.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="263" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1653944198i/61153762.jpg" width="132" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Also in the nonfiction category, I
discovered the global community of authors in <i>The Climate Book</i> edited by
Greta Thunberg. Scientists, health professionals, journalists and activists
from around the world report on the impact of our warming climate in their
countries. While not an easy read, the comprehensive analysis of the reporting
pulled me into membership in the global community of writers like Karl-Heinz
Erb, Joelle Gergis, Julia Arieira, and 100 others. <span> </span>In the final chapter, “<span>Hope is something you have to earn<i>,</i>”<i> </i></span>Greta
Thunberg writes, “…some of the best ways of igniting the changes we need have
not yet been discovered…You must take it from here and carry on connecting the
dots yourself, because, right there, between the lines, you will find the
answers---the solutions that need to be shared with the rest of humanity.”</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">I’m searching for those dots. <span> </span>What can I do? With whom can I network? I have
a renewed passion about our warming world, thanks to the world community
portrayed in <i>The Climate Book.</i></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Small wonder with all of this
churning in my head and heart, I turned to<b> music</b> for joy and redemption.
My eldest daughter treated me to the Woodland Park Players production of Monty
Python’s <i>Spamalot, </i>a musical comedy about the tyranny and genocide of
the Middle Ages! I had never seen Community Theater so ebullient. The energy of
love, connection, and laughter spread throughout the audience and leapt over
the footlights. We left humming the tunes. The world be damned, we can still
laugh and sing and dance.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Erhu.png/81px-Erhu.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="81" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Erhu.png/81px-Erhu.png" width="65" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><span> </span>I discovered a less hysterical, but
equally elevating musical experience when I took my youngest daughter to see my
friend play the <i>erhu</i> in a production of the Seattle Chinese Orchestra at
Benaroya Hall. The <i>erhu </i>is a slender, vertical violin with two strings.
My friend, an immigrant from Hong Kong, confided that she was very nervous to
play in such a big event for the Chinese community, but she did a beautiful
job. My daughter was eager to see the performance since she had spent her
senior year in high school in Beijing on a School Year Abroad scholarship. She
saw people playing the <i>erhu </i>in the subways and on street corners. Her experience
in Beijing, as a white kid among the Chinese, was replicated that night at
Benaroya. We were definitely visitors –welcome ones—in an audience of exuberant
Chinese. The music on the stage warmed all of our hearts and opened my ears and
my mind, to a whole new style of music.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><span> </span>Finally the “word-music” of poetry
has been important to me this year: Rumi, Mary Oliver, Hildegard of Bingham….</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRaMIxi-HJJT2nEZTNfRN9JYnypQ3yhEhBun60rxt1Xlk1qJYKn6cD5VLEBig&s" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="179" height="168" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRaMIxi-HJJT2nEZTNfRN9JYnypQ3yhEhBun60rxt1Xlk1qJYKn6cD5VLEBig&s" width="179" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"> I
will close with Amanda Gorman’s <i>The Miracle of Morning:</i></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><i> </i> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"> We
thought we’d awaken to a world in mourning,</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Heavy
clouds crowding, a society storming,</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">But
there’s something different on this golden morning.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Something
magical in the sunlight, wide & warming.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">We
see a dad with a stroller taking a jog.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Across
the street, a bright-eyed girl chases her dog.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">A
grandma on a porch fingers her rosaries.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">She
grins as her young neighbor brings her groceries.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Wishing
you all joy in your reading, viewing and listening in the year to come.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">The
Open mic for local authors in the Seattle Area takes place every third Monday
at 6:15 at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. Check their website for
details.<span> </span></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><span> </span></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><span> </span></span></i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmgLJUczvHlObKDBm5ax6D4V4JXH_nfld00w6QiaerF8FKhnW2i3nQYGnr5pEir2a3jMD2JPY_PigSd8E0ehNlPysVDAJ7Bdlwtxio11yy9nvdnVgWABxRAdlmkoqk8eYstyiMtXBB0ryqnhGbwR5paQ3eRrUMu1xDJwN8ovE8gzFQXiTZh5fIVRYxuQ/s1000/Clark-Stern-cvr-lr.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="649" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmgLJUczvHlObKDBm5ax6D4V4JXH_nfld00w6QiaerF8FKhnW2i3nQYGnr5pEir2a3jMD2JPY_PigSd8E0ehNlPysVDAJ7Bdlwtxio11yy9nvdnVgWABxRAdlmkoqk8eYstyiMtXBB0ryqnhGbwR5paQ3eRrUMu1xDJwN8ovE8gzFQXiTZh5fIVRYxuQ/w130-h200/Clark-Stern-cvr-lr.jpg" width="130" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><p></p><span style="font-size: medium;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Elizabeth
Clark-Stern has had careers as a modern dancer, actor, teacher, screenwriter,
playwright, psychotherapist (an art form in its own right), and most recently,
a novelist. Her novel, <i>The Language of Water</i> was published by Aqueduct in 2023. She lives in the Seattle area.<br /></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><span> </span></span></span></p>
Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-40108679066613336932023-12-22T06:00:00.000-08:002023-12-22T06:00:00.171-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 16: Cheryl Morgan<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Finncon_2019_16.jpg/220px-Finncon_2019_16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="275" data-original-width="220" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Finncon_2019_16.jpg/220px-Finncon_2019_16.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<p></p><h1><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-weight: normal; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></h1><h1><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 107%;">The
Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023</span></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 107%;">by Cheryl Morgan</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Some of my favorite writers have had new
novels out this year, and top of the list has to be </span><i><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Menewood</span></i><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> by
Nicola Griffith. If you are a fan of Hild then you will love this book. I need
say no more.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A close second, mainly because I was
a sensitivity reader for the book so am a bit biased, is <i>Hopeland</i> by Ian
McDonald. I really don’t know how to describe it, save that it is climate
fiction and is adamant that there is still some good left in the world. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Mike Carey has returned to science
fiction with <i>Infinity Gate</i>, the first book in a two-part series about a
war for the multiverse. One of the major characters is a teenage girl from a
species that has evolved from rabbits. I’ve seen kangaroos in action close up.
I know what a human-sized rabbit could do with those feet, and Mike does too.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Samit Basu is in fine form with <i>The
Jinn-Bot of Shantipoor</i>, a science fiction novel that is based on but by no
means shackled too, <i>Aladdin</i>. As usual with Basu, it marries serious
thinking about society, great action, and wry humor.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1675909206i/101161569.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="526" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1675909206i/101161569.jpg" width="132" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I’ve been following Tim Powers’
career for decades now. I don’t always love his books, but <i>My Brother’s
Keeper</i> shows him on top form. His portrayal of Emily Bront</span><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">ë</span><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> as a brave and determined young woman trying to save
her family from a werewolf curse is a joy to behold. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">On to some younger writers now, and
Valerie Valdes is fast becoming a favorite. I often see her work described as
“cozy”, but while you are generally guaranteed a happy ending, <i>Where Peace
is Lost</i> deals with some pretty weighty topics.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1622813641i/55868456.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="329" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1622813641i/55868456.jpg" width="132" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br />The book that should have won all
the awards this year is <i>The Spear Cuts Through Water</i> by Simon Jimenez.
Thankfully the British Fantasy Awards got it right, but the book’s absence from
Hugo and World Fantasy shortlists is a mystery to me.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Emily Tesh has graduated from
novellas to novels. <i>Some Desperate Glory</i> does a fabulous job of shaking
out tired space opera tropes and giving them new life.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1659965739i/61897863.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="525" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1659965739i/61897863.jpg" width="131" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I’m always pleased to see books
from small presses do well. Sadly, Unsing Stories has since closed, but in <i>The
Coral Bones</i> they produced a fine piece of feminist climate fiction that
caught the notice of several UK awards.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Still with planetary science, but
on a much longer timescale, is <i>The Terraformers</i> by Analee Newitz. This
sort of very long view of social development used to be a staple of early 20<sup>th-</sup> century SF, and it is good to see it brought up to date.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Hopefully I have enthused about
Stark Holborn before, but if not her science fiction Westerns are well worth a
look. <i>Hel’s Eight</i> is the sequel to <i>Ten Low</i> and is every bit as
good.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Finally in the newer writers, L R
Lam has been getting steadily better throughout their career and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>DragonFall</i> is an imaginative new take
on dragon lore that is worth checking out.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1663443870i/60864436.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1663443870i/60864436.jpg" width="125" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br />When I took on Juliet E McKenna’s
backlist more than 10 years ago it was with the hope that continued exposure
would eventually lead to her getting a mainstream contract again. This year it
finally happened with <i>The Cleaving</i>, a very feminist re-telling of the
Arthurian story. Juliet is still doing new books for Wizard’s Tower, and the
latest, <i>The Green Man’s Quarry</i>, sold over 1000 copies in its first week,
which is very good for a small press.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A project I set myself this year
was to finally read Susan Cooper’s <i>The Dark is Rising</i> sequence. I was
too old for it when it first came out. I can see why it is so popular with
younger readers, but the lack of agency of the characters nagged at me.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Continuing series that I’m fond of
had new books this year. That included <i>Furious Heaven</i> from Kate Elliott,
<i>System Collapse</i> for Martha Wells, <i>Translation State</i> from Ann
Leckie, <i>Beyond the Reach of Earth</i> by Ken MacLeod, and <i>A Fire Born of
Exile</i> by Aliette de Bodard.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1688164439i/182095034.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="324" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1688164439i/182095034.jpg" width="130" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Several great series also reached
their end. We had <i>Salt on the Midnight Fire</i> from Liz Williams, <i>Promises
Stronger Than Darkness</i> from Charlie Jane Anders, and <i>Blue Beautiful
World</i> from Karen Lord. I want to make particular mention of the <i>Rhapsody
of Blood</i> series by Roz Kaveney which finished with a fifth volume, <i>Revelations</i>,
this year, but is really one giant secret history novel spanning the whole of
human history.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The flood of amazing novellas seems
to be slowing down a little, perhaps because readers are reacting to the very
high prices being asked for them. This year’s favorites for me were <i>Mammoths
at the Gate</i> by Nghi Vo and <i>Even Though I Knew the End</i> by C L Polk.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In nonfiction we saw the release
of <i>Space Crone</i>, a collection of wonderfully pointed pieces by Ursula K
Le Guin. I was also very impressed by Jack Dann’s <i>The Fiction Writers Guide
to Alternate History</i>. The round table he ran with various practitioners of
the art is a wonderful demonstration of the absence of rules for writing
because every writer is different.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">One of the oldest stories in human
history is the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i>. If you really want to understand that
book, I recommend the new translation by Danish scholar, Sophus Helle. Sophus
is an Assyriologist with an excellent understanding of literature. He not only
provides a fresh and very readable translation, but also a comprehensive
explanation of the social and historical background to the creation and
development of the Epic.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Talking of mythology, Ronald Hutton
is always excellent for debunking of modern nonsense about pagan survivalism.
However, there do seem to be some traditions that have survived. In <i>Queens
of the Wild </i>Hutton takes a look at some of them. Excellent scholarship as
usual.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Talking of scholarship, I was
amazed by <i>Begin Transmission</i>. Tilly Bridges appears to have worked her
way slowly through the four Matrix films, and the animated series, frame by
frame, noting things of interest. The result is something only a person with that
level of dedication, and a thorough grounding the film-making theory, could
have produced. I’m not sure that I buy all of the allegorical elements that
Bridges claims to have found, but the evidence seems very compelling and the
Wachowski’s are absolutely smart enough to have done everything she describes.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1654338838i/61222723.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="336" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1654338838i/61222723.jpg" width="135" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I read a lot of history books these
days. Most of them are quite academic, but one that stands out for readability
and fascinating subject matter is <i>On Savage Shores</i> by Caroline Dodds
Pennock. It tells the stories of indigenous people from the Americas who, back
in the 16<sup>th</sup> and 17<sup>th</sup> centuries, took the long and
hazardous journey from their homes to Europe, a land full of savage and
uncivilized people.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A more recent history best seller
is <i>Normal Women</i> by Philippa Gregory. It is a wonderfully feminist
attempt at restoring women to British history over a span of 900 years. Much of
it is fascinating, and heartwarmingly inclusive. However, the one element of
the book that I am an expert on – trans history – is full of errors, which
makes me worry about the accuracy of the rest of the book.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I’ve had essays included in two
academic works this year. I make no claims for greatness myself, but my fellow
contributors have done fine work. Thus I warmly recommend <i>Imagining the
Celtic Past in Modern Fantasy</i>, edited by Dimitra Fimi and Alastair Sims,
and <i>Follow Me: Religion in Fantasy & Science Fiction</i>, edited by
Francesa Barbini. I’m especially grateful to Dimitra and Alastair for letting
me write about Patricia Kennealy-Morrison’s delightfully bonkers Celtic space
opera, <i>The Keltiad</i>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">On now to film and TV. Haters of
superhero stories have been gleefully predicting the death of the Marvel
Cinematic Universe for some time now. However, <i>The Marvels</i> was the most
delightful film I have seen in a long time, while <i>Across the SpiderVerse</i>
is a work of genius. <i>Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3</i> is much better than
most reviews suggest, and <i>Loki</i> Season #2 took a very interesting turn.
Having said that, the Nick Fury TV series, <i>Secret Invasion</i>, was
terrible, leading me to suspect that it wasn’t only the title sequences that
were entirely software-generated.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The <i>Barbie</i> movie did a lot
of things very right. Margot Robbie and Kate McKinnon were brilliant as usual,
and the feminist rant delivered by Gloria (America Ferrera) was very much on
point. I can understand that some women are against anything promoting the
ridiculous Barbie body image, but the film is opposed to it too. Also the film
left the anti-trans bridge furious, which must speak well of its feminist
credentials.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Good Omens</span></i><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> Season #2 was short, weird, and utterly heartbreaking
at the end. I can’t wait for season #3.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Star Trek</span></i><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> continues to be interesting. While <i>Picard</i>
Season #3 was primarily fan service, <i>Strange New Worlds</i> is reliably
wonderful. <i>Lower Decks</i> is still managing to take the piss out of <i>Trek</i>
while still loving the franchise. Sadly I’m feeling pretty meh about the final
season of <i>Discovery</i>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I have mostly given up on <i>Star
Wars</i>, but I was pleasantly surprised by <i>Ahsoka</i>. I loved how it
unashamedly bought in to the fantasy aspect of the franchise, and how that
irritated a lot of dudebro fanboys.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I thought that Amazon’s adaption of
William Gibson’s <i>The Peripheral</i> was superb, and I’m very sad that we
won’t be getting a second season. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">And then there is <i>Doctor Who</i>.
With Russell T Davies back at the helm the series is once again ridiculously
silly, delightfully heartwarming, and occasionally edge-of-the-seat scary. This
is the third series I’ve mentioned that has David Tennant in it, which probably
says something about me. Ncuti Gatwa’s initial appearance was very promising.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/41/Gwenno_-_Tresor.png/220px-Gwenno_-_Tresor.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="220" data-original-width="220" height="220" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/41/Gwenno_-_Tresor.png/220px-Gwenno_-_Tresor.png" width="220" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br />Now that I’m resident in Wales I’m
trying to listen to more musicians who perform in Welsh. I mentioned Gwenno
last year. Her latest album, <i>Tesor</i>, has most of the songs in Cornish,
which is very similar to Welsh. The music is fabulous, if electronica is your
thing.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">If you prefer something more
traditionally Welsh, I warmly recommend the harp music of Cerys Hafana. And if
Indie rock is your thing, a band called Mellt (Welsh for Lightning) is worth
checking out.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I’m writing this only a few days
before the Winter Solstice. That’s traditionally a time for hauling out albums
by the likes of Clannad and Enya, but this year I will be playing Heilung. They
describe themselves as an experimental folk band, but there is something very
metal about their attitude. With members from Denmark, Norway and Germany, they
specialise in recreating the sounds of Iron Age Northern Europe, complete with
lyrics drawn from runic inscriptions.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Neatly segueing on from that, the
games company, Modiphius, has successfully Kickstarted a new tabletop RPG
called <i>Cohors Cthulhu</i>. This is basically <i>Call of Cthulhu</i> in the
Roman Empire, which is so much my jam that I might have to dust off my
game-mastering skills.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The Podcasts I listen to these days
are mostly history-themed. My current favorite is <i>Gone Mediaeval</i> from
the History Hit stable. Co-host Matt Lewis is a staunch Richardian, which is
how he got the scoop on Philippa Langley’s amazing discoveries about the
Princes in the Tower. I’m very much looking forward to reading Langley’s book
on her research.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In terms of travel, I was delighted
to get to the Eurocon in Uppsala in Sweden. It is a beautiful city, and the old
Viking settlement with its huge royal burial mounds is well worth a visit. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Finally I warmly recommend the Fantasy
exhibition at the British Library. The associated events are great too. Many of
them are available online, and you can find several of the past ones available via the <a href="https://living-knowledge-network.co.uk/">Living Knowledge Network</a>. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="font-size: large;">Cheryl Morgan blogs, reviews and podcasts regularly at <a href="https://www.cheryl-morgan.com/">
Cheryl’s Mewsings</a> and <a href="http://www.salonfutura.net"><i>Salon Futura</i></a>. She is the owner of <a href="http://wizardstowerpress.com/">Wizard’s Tower Press</a>. She also lectures regularly on topics of SF&F literature, and on queer history.
</span></p>Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-73313880890798629242023-12-21T18:00:00.000-08:002023-12-21T18:00:00.132-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 15: Susan diRende<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEhkClZmlCeHwvHvSJp77Yb21kBjtR39SctuJBdKdJ4wI3wkyfokIOgWStr2QIOxR5UaNfA4xtNEg_5M-fPDpvuThM9ZNhJEftg7z9PLI9kJVDbuRXnpTF3Acr3Rl9yydMnGAkQDudH3MTsdaofTY6kuX9i-RnoL1AM1IRMY=s712-d" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="684" data-original-width="712" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEhkClZmlCeHwvHvSJp77Yb21kBjtR39SctuJBdKdJ4wI3wkyfokIOgWStr2QIOxR5UaNfA4xtNEg_5M-fPDpvuThM9ZNhJEftg7z9PLI9kJVDbuRXnpTF3Acr3Rl9yydMnGAkQDudH3MTsdaofTY6kuX9i-RnoL1AM1IRMY=s320-d" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">2023's Pleasures, Guilty and Otherwise </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">by Susan diRende</span></p><p><br /></p><p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">When it occurred to me that the time was approaching
for this year‘s Pleasures of Reading, Listening and Viewing essays at Aqueduct,
I had a wicked thought. What if I told the truth? <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">I mean, I’ve told the truth in the past, but it was
the nice and comfortable truth for people who like reading, who take literature
seriously, and who recognize and enjoy diving into the thorny complexities of
human existence. I do have a highbrow side. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">But also a lowbrow one. A taste for those guilty
pleasures with no redeeming qualities? <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">If I’m being kind to myself, I will call it my
mental spa time, a mental manicure or pedicure. Dealing with the surface things
in life. Soothing the mental aches and stress points of reality. A place where
I don’t have to think about anything meaningful. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">Blame it on my imagination. My creativity is an
omnivorous scavenger. This is not self-praise. The only omnivorous scavenger in
nature is the cockroach. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">What this means for me in practical terms is that
all the things other people do to turn off their idea-generator —taking a walk,
meditating, watching a movie, or reading a good book — in me does the opposite.
All those things beautifully made to engage me in story and nature and cosmic
understanding, all of them give me ideas. And there I am on the mountaintop
spinning a story or conjuring a palette for a painting or considering a
fantastical planet with conscious snow. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">My inner life is a constant battle of focus, or more
precisely of choosing what to focus on today, this minute. To get books
written, to paint canvases, to market my work: that takes a lot of time. But if
I read a book about the history of agriculture, suddenly I’m world building. If
I come across a writer whose prose is just yummy, I stop to figure out how she
did it, and want to practice putting it into my own writing. (I’m looking at
you, Ursula LeGuin.) If I watch historical drama, I’m suddenly filled with
impatience at the whole idea of kings and queens and want to break the genre’s
focus on that by revealing the constructed nature of our love for hierarchy
since I don’t believe it’s natural, but a cultural artifact. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1617072525i/56269264.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1617072525i/56269264.jpg" width="134" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">Okay, I lied. I have some “real” book recs after
all: David Graeber’s </span><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue-Italic;">The Dawn of Everything </span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">coupled with any of Ed West’s </span><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue-Italic;">A Very, Very Short History of England</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;"> Series. You will never view kings kindly or think
an admiring thought about Richard the Lionheart ever again. And don’t get me
started on The Enlightenment… </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1501493428i/34138319.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1501493428i/34138319.jpg" width="134" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">See what just happened? I started off writing about
the reading and viewing pleasures that turn off my brain, when I was hijacked
by the idea of suggesting just a couple of thought-provoking books. *Sigh* <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">So what do I do watch, read, and listen to to
relax?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m almost embarrassed to say. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">Reels. As in those short form videos on TikTok,
Instagram and Facebook. Even YouTube. I love them. Some are just what you’d
expect from the social media commentaries. Animal videos for instance. Antics.
Rescues. Relationships. Not only do they make me laugh or marvel, but a
creature doing something funny or extraordinary or surprising almost never make
me think about anything but the moment. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">Sure they’re sentimental. And yes, Wilde did say
that “a sentimentalist is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion
without having to pay for it.” Hence the “guilty pleasure” admission. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrPlfgHNnMg/">https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrPlfgHNnMg/<br /></a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">I also watch demo reels. Paper holiday decorations.
(Amazing what a person can do with toilet paper rolls.) Cooking. (Did you know
you can knock the seeds out of a pomegranate in ten seconds by cutting it in
half, holding it over a bowl in the sink to catch the splatter, and whacking
the back with a wooden spoon? Magic.) How to draw a horse. (You start with a
kite shape…) <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">Sometimes I tell myself that I am feeding my
writer’s knowledge-base by watching people building furniture or houses.
Training horses. Sewing garments. Weaving grass baskets. Tying knots. Wild
foraging. Mudlarking where people dig in riverbanks for a little bits of this
and that. I’m not gonna do any of that. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">If I really want to zone out, I watch YouTube where
there are longer process videos. For instance, there are all these landscapers
who do videos of tending to badly overgrown yards for free and use them to get
viewers on YouTube. I watch these and I get absorbed in mowing, trimming, and
edging. It is weirdly satisfying seeing the chaos turned to order. Nothing I
would take and make a story out of, nor does it spur in me any desire to do it
myself the way a painting process video might. It makes the watching mentally
restful. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">Another completely pointless pleasure is watching
videos of people who buy abandoned storage units and go through them looking
for valuable stuff they can sell. Likewise people shopping at thrift stores to
list on eBay. There is a solid, low-level hum of curiosity generated by
unwrapping the unknown or the search for an unrecognized treasure. I watch
these when I want to disengage. And it works. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">So if the holidays are full of stress, and if the
idea doesn’t give you rotten egg disgust, you could try reels. In the
beginning, they will send you lots of loud, obnoxious, sexualized content
unless you control it. Search for a hashtag like #animals or more specifically
#bees and watch the lady who moves hives from unwanted locations without
getting stung. If you’re crafty, try #diy or pick a material thing related to a
craft like #yarn or #fabric just to give the algorithm a place to start. Select
what looks interesting. Watch and “like” it if you want more of the same. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;">As for me, I’ll be watching some border collies move
a herd of sheep. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /> </p><p></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"></span></p>
<span style="background: #FEFFFF; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIoP8tlvp9OxHKwHy7JZevRrYFvb1hvjKaO0DPSj7k8fK3-QkUx0j3iyvV6erbEjH0OV72OvH0f38tMU3sgdLFXdl3IfylTioyesPN0nXNfZD11K2cFZUuYMeYulC_oFsc-9xe3OSdYP7K6ZYQp9Jh35yfedlApEllyk2MahNh7wEWI2W5C1ohhnsRxQGl/s1000/diRende-knife-cvr-lr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="648" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIoP8tlvp9OxHKwHy7JZevRrYFvb1hvjKaO0DPSj7k8fK3-QkUx0j3iyvV6erbEjH0OV72OvH0f38tMU3sgdLFXdl3IfylTioyesPN0nXNfZD11K2cFZUuYMeYulC_oFsc-9xe3OSdYP7K6ZYQp9Jh35yfedlApEllyk2MahNh7wEWI2W5C1ohhnsRxQGl/s320/diRende-knife-cvr-lr.jpg" width="207" /></a></div><br />Susan diRende has always been a fan of the empty-handed
leap into the unknown, both in her life and her work. She creates stories at
the intersection of worlds that make heroes of misfits, skeptics, and fools.
Her published works range from serious academic to sci-fi space farce. Her art
and videos has been shown in exhibitions and film festivals in the US, Mexico,
Belgium and New Zealand. She has won numerous awards and grants for her writing
and art from, among others, the Artist Trust, the Philip K Dick Awards, Seattle
Arts Commission, Montgomery Arts Association, the Dixie Film Festival. Before
Covid, she wandered the world with no fixed abode and is looking forward to
getting back on the road with little more than a suitcase and her dog. Aqueduct published her novella <i>Unpronounceable</i> in 2016 and her debut novel, <i>Knife Witch</i>,in 2023.<br /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeue;"> </span></p>
Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-36116457820330583452023-12-21T06:00:00.000-08:002023-12-21T06:00:00.145-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, part 14: Cesi Davidson<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.aqueductpress.com/images/authors/CesiDavidson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="616" data-original-width="425" height="320" src="http://www.aqueductpress.com/images/authors/CesiDavidson.jpg" width="221" /></a></div><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Morning with Sonia</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">by Cesi Davidson</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">These words are not from my memory. These words are from my
despair.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">There’s no shrapnel embedded in my side table. My hand isn’t
filled with shards of glass from the broken window. There’s no smoke in the air
or smells of gunpowder. The neighbor’s baby isn’t screaming from the relentless
shooting that passed through the night. I’m uncomfortable because there are women
in the world who fear for their life. I can’t feel cozy among the living. I
reach for my companion, a copy of Sonia Sanchez <i>Collected Poems</i>. I read my morning seed thought from one woman</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">COME ride my birth, earth mother</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">tell me how i have become, became</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">this woman with razor blades between</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">her teeth.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.akpress.org/media/catalog/product/cache/1ec012b46cbfe4262fc94f3e95ab2d9c/i/m/img_20220324_0018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="540" height="200" src="https://www.akpress.org/media/catalog/product/cache/1ec012b46cbfe4262fc94f3e95ab2d9c/i/m/img_20220324_0018.jpg" width="167" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">In her collection of favorite poems (1969-2019), Dr. Sanchez
shares her experiences of the world as a mother, professor, champion of the
Black Arts Movement, and social activist. The tenderness, the love, the grit,
and the turbulence of her work reminds me of our responsibility as writers. We
have to turn this world right side up and remove the illusion that some of us
are less than human. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I want to claim Sonia Sanchez as my fellow Harlem sister. My
New York City village is a place she loved and mourned. I walk across 127<sup>th</sup>
Street towards Madison Avenue considering her guidance. Her lifetime
contributions enrich the entire world. In the spirit of Dr. Sanchez, I give
myself peace and comfort but a razor blade is correctly placed between my
teeth.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL7hGTS2zXmzBhkTD9vhJS19fzXcwUqFgXXQO06vHMpd1OgMCDxvhP1Un2trX-xJCvryNC2PqlNk8YG37cYds4ZG0jWniKM8JnB2QNw3_Nh6mfJodauIDcqQ2eSa6cA802YX3UZw423TYrDuLIdpoSF7ib75Jp7TadpXqhSI9rl6Kj4Jnwo8HzuS05mA/s1000/Davidson-bilabials-cvr-lr.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="631" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL7hGTS2zXmzBhkTD9vhJS19fzXcwUqFgXXQO06vHMpd1OgMCDxvhP1Un2trX-xJCvryNC2PqlNk8YG37cYds4ZG0jWniKM8JnB2QNw3_Nh6mfJodauIDcqQ2eSa6cA802YX3UZw423TYrDuLIdpoSF7ib75Jp7TadpXqhSI9rl6Kj4Jnwo8HzuS05mA/w126-h200/Davidson-bilabials-cvr-lr.jpg" width="126" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Cesi (Cecelia) Davidson holds
a doctorate degree in Speech Language Hearing Sciences from the Graduate School
and University Center of the City University of New York. She’s provided therapeutic
services for children with communication and learning challenges for over forty
years. Since beginning playwriting in 2009, she’s written hundreds of plays and
works of non-fiction. Critics praise her demonstrated broad range, fearless
creativity, and cultural responsiveness. She’s founder and curator of Short
Plays to Nourish the Mind & Soul, free public theatre in New York City. Dr.
Davidson is the author of three anthologies of plays published by Aqueduct
Press: <i>Articulation, Fricatives</i>, and <i>Bilabials</i>.<a href="http://www.cesiwrites.com">www.cesiwrites.com</a>; <a href="mailto:cesidavidson@gmail.com">cesidavidson@gmail.com</a></span>
Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-27711914835694902282023-12-20T18:00:00.000-08:002023-12-25T14:37:22.590-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 13: Dennis Danvers<p> </p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6B8gzGZ2yNPwv8gK7dUmiUpxRpU51bh8aGV52ajF15LD5MSMBCb_ywxZ09UXRH4tYgNvPF3LBGw9rtLy9dmNn_8VSOv6lOhIm3tQiy0eN0XzPp6UWHWYuQA2vwVrbWlXj-Jx0R3Us7tvMpE2XNbFu-SGEK8NpHO93UErDuAR0Ls4XX3bKwNlKlC_f-Dyd/s640/DennisDanvers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="477" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6B8gzGZ2yNPwv8gK7dUmiUpxRpU51bh8aGV52ajF15LD5MSMBCb_ywxZ09UXRH4tYgNvPF3LBGw9rtLy9dmNn_8VSOv6lOhIm3tQiy0eN0XzPp6UWHWYuQA2vwVrbWlXj-Jx0R3Us7tvMpE2XNbFu-SGEK8NpHO93UErDuAR0Ls4XX3bKwNlKlC_f-Dyd/s320/DennisDanvers.jpg" width="239" /></a></div><br /><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Reading, Viewing, Listening in 2023</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">by Dennis Danvers</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I began the year reading <i>Bewilderment</i> by Richard
Powers and found it deeply moving. I dipped in and out of Bob Dylan's <i>The
Philosophy of Modern Song</i> throughout the year. I've been writing a lot of
songs the last few years, and hanging out with Bob is an inspiration. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a771bba12abd99bc6250a8c/1517763702570-EBIC08EM2A9B0IAQPQ84/9780393089059_198.jpeg?format=2500w" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="301" data-original-width="198" height="200" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a771bba12abd99bc6250a8c/1517763702570-EBIC08EM2A9B0IAQPQ84/9780393089059_198.jpeg?format=2500w" width="132" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I read <i>Frenchman's Creek</i> by Daphne Du Maurier and
found it delightful. I also reread <i>Rebecca</i>, a favorite novel. I read <i>Dombey
and Son</i> by Charles Dickens and it delivered on all those Dickensian
pleasures in abundance.<span> </span>I reread <i>The
Odyssey</i> every few years, and this was the first time I read Emily Wilson's
terrific translation, taut and lean and musical. I reread some Ray Bradbury—<i>The
Martian Chronicles</i> and <i>Dandelion Wine</i>—I hadn't read since I was a
teen, and they were both more wonderfully weird than I remembered them. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1649265161i/60057155.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="324" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1649265161i/60057155.jpg" width="130" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />After Dickens, I sought out shorter novels. I enjoyed <i>Just
Like You</i> by Nick Hornby for his usual virtues but also for the glimpse it
gave me of the Brexit controversy on a human scale. <i>The Plot: A Novel</i> by
Jean Hanff Korelitz didn't quite work for me, though it was fun. I guessed the
plot too early and spoiled it... <i>Bad Questions</i> by Len Kruger, on the
other hand, was a beautiful and funny novel about a painful adolescence not
unlike my nerdy adolescence. <i>Nine Shiny Objects</i> by Brian Castleberry
delivered a kind of retro spookiness in an understated but haunting story. <i>Saturnalia</i>
by Stephanie Feldman offered a pagan future—what's not to like? </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">We stream a lot. Favorites include <i>Dead to Me</i> on
Netflix, <i>Jury Duty</i> on Hulu, <i>The Morning Show</i> on Apple, <i>Lessons
in Chemistry</i> on Apple, <i>No One Will Save You</i> on Hulu. In the theater
I saw <i>Barbie</i> and the <i>Eras Tour</i> with my stepdaughters and loved
them both. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">As for music, I've listened to a lot of Taylor Swift—I've
been a Swiftie since her first album, and this is her year. I also watch a lot
of piano tutorials on Bitesize Piano, a great site by Francesca Williams, a
piano teacher in the UK.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ada153df8370ae10e7070b8/c0b9c9a6-fb42-4d5f-a515-478588718b5f/FULL+LINEUP.png?format=2500w" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="280" data-original-width="800" height="70" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ada153df8370ae10e7070b8/c0b9c9a6-fb42-4d5f-a515-478588718b5f/FULL+LINEUP.png?format=2500w" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">And just last week we went to a Richmond Shakespeare
production of <i>Hamlet</i> that was great.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYnAtH6PxXOVFAmEE0sY_25UpTeu_vmcSDhl98PdpA5n9jevjh9g-5bYAlzDwSYhTXrz4hPsqhDHTkDfkVzxJ_mbB5uFUQubi2axxT6wSXa_qy29cau8STuaup0-oAAUF_oDe_3Zvk7qgynQ_Y14vMY_iKhes-d_mfZ-uCTQCTUPPZf3s8lNz3qz4QkB8C/s1000/Danvers-cvr-lr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="628" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYnAtH6PxXOVFAmEE0sY_25UpTeu_vmcSDhl98PdpA5n9jevjh9g-5bYAlzDwSYhTXrz4hPsqhDHTkDfkVzxJ_mbB5uFUQubi2axxT6wSXa_qy29cau8STuaup0-oAAUF_oDe_3Zvk7qgynQ_Y14vMY_iKhes-d_mfZ-uCTQCTUPPZf3s8lNz3qz4QkB8C/s320/Danvers-cvr-lr.jpg" width="201" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br />Dennis Danvers has published ten
novels, including <i>NYT </i>Notables <i>Circuit of Heaven </i>and <i>The Watch</i>,
and Locus- and Bram Stoker-Awards nominee <i>Wilderness; The Perfect Stranger </i>(2020)and
<i>The Soothsayer & The Changeling </i>(2021). His short fiction has
appeared in <i>Strange Horizons, Apex, F&SF, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud
Wristlet, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Electric Velocipede, </i>and elsewhere. His story
collection, <i>Leaving the Dead </i>was published in 2023. He taught Literature
and Creative Writing for over thirty years at Virginia Commonwealth </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">University and lives in
Richmond, VA. Aqueduct Press will be releasing his <i>Tales from Mnemosyne</i> next month.</span><span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif";"></span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-23877208250461561882023-12-20T06:00:00.000-08:002023-12-20T06:00:00.245-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt.12: Sarah Tolmie<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEiupRJ0YwkUeUhh5t1mcf_61CyxJXMeXmaWKk8k9eAFvoDsUq7ivuLG4jniUlfQsciHDNDx5TX-mgwekB3-zYdJv54T0KR8Gk-2mc6uZXOCeykWdILqA81Gks_3B7jAcGpsVghHVzqCnIsWYP4CRcD6a4_4LzNi6nJNVyg=s1024-d" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEiupRJ0YwkUeUhh5t1mcf_61CyxJXMeXmaWKk8k9eAFvoDsUq7ivuLG4jniUlfQsciHDNDx5TX-mgwekB3-zYdJv54T0KR8Gk-2mc6uZXOCeykWdILqA81Gks_3B7jAcGpsVghHVzqCnIsWYP4CRcD6a4_4LzNi6nJNVyg=s320-d" width="240" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Reading and Listening in 2023</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">by Sarah Tolmie</span><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="Body"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">2023
</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";">was an awful year. I expect we’re all agreed on that. So bad was this year for
so many people that it seems almost bizarre to enumerate personal sorrows or
desires and reflect on how the pleasures of reading, viewing or listening
alleviated them. But then, where does that leave us as individuals? Or as
makers or consumers of art? What levels of misery (personal, national, global)
is art meant to combat, or record? Is the purpose of art the reduction of
misery, and if so, by what means? Consolation, enlightenment, witnessing,
activism? </span></span></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";">These are the questions that bubbled up as I was racking my brains to
try to think of works of art that I enjoyed this year. I</span><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";">n retrospec</span><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";">t they seemed few and far between. This has
less to do with any present dearth of art than with the fact that pleasure that
is not insane or irresponsible feels like an endangered category. Is it even
okay to feel pleasure now? What a horrible, Presbyterian question. I can barely
believe I asked it. Chilly ranks of ancestors in a faith my family abandoned
generations ago clap their pale hands. Yuck. Back off, you misery goats! I
insist that it remains right to like things! I will go on appreciating the
crowning achievements of human consciousness that reside in the arts! To that
end …</span></span></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1476615440i/29868611.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="530" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1476615440i/29868611.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> <span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";"></span></span><p></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";"> The
two books that I liked most and thought about most this year were two volumes
of essays by Ursula Le Guin. I bought both of them — in addition to the big
fiction collections <i>The Found and the Lost</i> and <i>The Real and the
Unreal </i>— in a paroxysm of grief right after her death but didn’t read them
straight off. Indeed, I lost track of them. I found them a couple of months
ago. The first, and arguably the more important, is <i>Words Are My Matter:
Writing About Life and Books 2000-2016, </i>consisting as it does of commissioned
essays and addresses, assorted introductions to classic authors or editions,
and an astute series of her contemporary book reviews from the <i>Manchester
Guardian</i>. This is the considered, astringent, public-facing Le Guin, knowing
that she is writing in moments of consequence and doing so with her inimitable
decorum. </span></span></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";"> </span></span></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1470694965i/29363335.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="541" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1470694965i/29363335.jpg" width="135" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";">Decorum without prissiness, goopiness or crassness is something I have
always associated with her. She is the only modern feminist I can imagine who
thought it worthwhile to spend her last novel thinking seriously through what
it meant to be <i>pius Aeneas</i>. At the same time she is wonderfully
forthright about the months of anxious editing and then the six minutes of
terror that was the creation and delivery of her acceptance speech for the National
Book Foundation medal in 2014; read that blast of the trumpet against the
corporate profiteering of today’s publishing industry and imagine yourself
speaking it aloud to a room full of Amazon apologists. Neither will you ever
forget what she says (in an address to NARAL in 2004) about her own illegal
abortion in 1950, especially if, like her, or my mother, or myself, you are a
woman who has both had an abortion and raised a family and understood one as
necessary to the other. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1489159159i/33503495.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="530" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1489159159i/33503495.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";">The second book is 2017’s <i>No Time To Spare: Thinking
About What Matters</i>, a series of blogs collected from her website, blogging
being an experiment she dd not begin until she was over eighty. Being pressed
for time at that age — as she explains with marvelous directness — evidently
contributed to the concision of these essays. Montaigne would read them with
pleasure: they are chatty without being gossipy, casual without being
dismissive, clever without being precious. They hit that amazing middle ground
that she found in her middle age — along about the time of <i>Tehanu</i> — in
combining deep thought and domestic detail. As usual, she is exact and profound
about animals (cats, chiefly, plus one memorable encounter with a snake) and
language. I was delighted to find that she had gone through a meditation upon
the confusing adage “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” that was almost
identical to my own (hint: try substituting <i>keep</i> for <i>have</i>). She
gets into a moral quandary: is it appropriate to have an amanuensis, even just
to help answer your fan mail? (The amanuensis question is highly relevant to
female authorship all the way back to Margery Kempe.) All in all, both books,
especially when taken as a pair, are golden. </span><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";"></span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";"> </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631687432i/2623.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="519" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631687432i/2623.jpg" width="130" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";">And
I listened to Anton Lesser’s reading of <i>Great Expectations</i>. Lesser is
one of my favorite audiobook narrators; his <i>Dombey and Son, </i>for example<i>,</i>
is a masterpiece. When you combine the talents of a powerful and unaffected
voice actor, in particular one who has the rare skill of producing voices for
both genders with equal conviction, with the dramatic unfolding of Dickens you
really get a great thing. I’ve said before that I never appreciated Dickens
until I began to hear his books read aloud; it clarifies a great many of his
effects. </span></span></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";">I remember liking <i>Great Expectation</i>s when I read it years ago
as an undergraduate, but it slipped my mind for decades afterward, and also
became strangely fused in my memory with <i>David Copperfield</i>, a book I
read much later. I admire the darkness and weirdness of the late Dickens, and <i>Great
Expectation</i>s certainly has those; the scathing ironic distance that Pip the
belated narrator achieves about his self-regarding youthful self is masterful;
and the book presents that almost unbelievably callous and systematic
separation of the poor and the rich, the criminal and the complacent, that
characterized the Victorian period, and that now seems eerily familiar to us
again. The twenty-three-year-old Pip, numb and traumatized, witnesses the
condemnation of thirty-two men, women and children, to death at one single
assize; recollecting it years later he can barely sustain his astonishment
beyond a single sentence. Which is worse? <i>Great</i> <i>Expectations</i>: it
remains a great and terrible account of class apartheid.</span><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";"></span></span></p>
<p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Hoefler Text", "serif";"> </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGgAFPrUr8WukMh3SyzqlYtnLH6NtF273AW0QTWWvMSKjzvUsdaAkIupqK3fCNdmnI15pydojRsPO20XjfklYC3QOuGZe_tROKOb-DVBayYjn4yZRdq4ZxgU4QUFz3GdhDRe7D_7B62UoH7iEM0F4oQZubOBGHeDSmhNuJLeBYcxVTFuOX8CTk4suB8PuK/s1000/Tolmie-sacraments-cvr-lr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="644" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGgAFPrUr8WukMh3SyzqlYtnLH6NtF273AW0QTWWvMSKjzvUsdaAkIupqK3fCNdmnI15pydojRsPO20XjfklYC3QOuGZe_tROKOb-DVBayYjn4yZRdq4ZxgU4QUFz3GdhDRe7D_7B62UoH7iEM0F4oQZubOBGHeDSmhNuJLeBYcxVTFuOX8CTk4suB8PuK/s320/Tolmie-sacraments-cvr-lr.jpg" width="206" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p></p><p class="Body"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><i>Sacraments for the Unfit</i>, which Aqueduct released earlier this year, is</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span>Sarah Tolmie’s sixth book with Aqueduct Press. Others include <i>The Stone
Boatmen</i>, nominated for the Crawford Award in 2015, and <i>The Little Animal</i>s,
winner of the Special Citation at the Philip K Dick Awards in 2020. In addition
to publishing short fiction, novellas and novels with Aqueduct, she has
released two novellas with <a href="http://Tor.com">Tor.com</a>, <i>The Fourth
Island</i> and <i>All the Horses of Iceland</i>; the latter was listed as one
of the top fantasy books of 2022 by The New York Times. She has also written
three volumes of poetry for McGill-Queen’s University Press; the second one, <i>The
Art of Dying</i>, was a finalist for the 2019 Griffin Prize for Poetry. In her
other life, she is a Professor of English at the University of Waterloo. Her
website is <a href="http://sarahtolmie.ca">sarahtolmie.ca</a>.</span>
</p>
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Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-13465264788500667152023-12-19T18:00:00.000-08:002023-12-19T18:00:00.147-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 11: Holly Wade Matter<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigyrxCdt-rii7GgUtpuT4PmIq5Mj3LvQEQf8UU7jaVAKGqd47tF4qtvLsQZjWX_vUGz1Hh8V2Bz6MlX7SG7-KvM7WKa52Q3DMAT38_ni-HsxL6cg_nGQuVwD2CE9vcqMgnWafNqZnicKYk_UsSMIAXMNPeOEhY5NaynT-U6FkKfw_A_FHWqBybLUU5Egp5/s752/smile%20and%20crown.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="752" data-original-width="612" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigyrxCdt-rii7GgUtpuT4PmIq5Mj3LvQEQf8UU7jaVAKGqd47tF4qtvLsQZjWX_vUGz1Hh8V2Bz6MlX7SG7-KvM7WKa52Q3DMAT38_ni-HsxL6cg_nGQuVwD2CE9vcqMgnWafNqZnicKYk_UsSMIAXMNPeOEhY5NaynT-U6FkKfw_A_FHWqBybLUU5Egp5/s320/smile%20and%20crown.jpg" width="260" /></a></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNIWhBo8gYhWk8a9bRw-mLv2VKQIqtSXFwYXp9ZCfwsypJFsVh7-7cOpSzA3vQUczs0VaDbG44mX4o_jB9EyeHEwpemdczVjUv49rqmWBuALSOQ0q6UxQ533wrXk_n7P3ntJUhwXRwIEC4Q6zexA-bZgcA7T0fWewH_QiVoorvKDGtjko3Y6ZFO8pW5Mqb/s752/smile%20and%20crown.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Pleasures of 2023</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">by Holly Wade Matter</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Read:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><i>Knife Witch</i> by Susan DiRende</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSWbnco4IinXQsVbqvuo4ybtXBteTsoUg4KXAYCfY1iGSRenw8zGbjr_SGs6L9mWHfBGmPuAqNrImYQLf90IzUgvvZoU5ORF9U9-b5AeYUNw-2GfPgZjuE2UFd3QHBY04x921mSFZfEUDKNotJFVhb45ZgcgO2fLWnjJv3SkXWthc8KzeBbTqb8TmUyLr4/s1000/diRende-knife-cvr-lr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="648" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSWbnco4IinXQsVbqvuo4ybtXBteTsoUg4KXAYCfY1iGSRenw8zGbjr_SGs6L9mWHfBGmPuAqNrImYQLf90IzUgvvZoU5ORF9U9-b5AeYUNw-2GfPgZjuE2UFd3QHBY04x921mSFZfEUDKNotJFVhb45ZgcgO2fLWnjJv3SkXWthc8KzeBbTqb8TmUyLr4/w129-h200/diRende-knife-cvr-lr.jpg" width="129" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">In Susan DiRende’s debut fantasy novel, seagoing raiders, establishment witches, an evil Emperor, a volcano, and a lovelorn kraken put the heroine, the Knife Witch, through her paces and goad her, much to her annoyance, to evolve and reveal her true nature and power. An inveterate pantser, the Knife Witch (whose name is revealed only near the end of the novel) eschews plans and goes by her gut instinct and her fortunate trait of itching when danger is near. With every setback she encounters, she powers herself through with a philosophical "Be as must be." She gathers around her a small family of outcasts who have, each in their own way, a unique power to add to the magical stew. <br /><br /><i>Knife Witch</i> was a fun read, rich in unique detail and escapades. And if the characters didn't exactly have a riotous good time, this reader did. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><i>Demon Copperhead</i> by Barbara Kingsolver</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1660050779i/60194162.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="264" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1660050779i/60194162.jpg" width="132" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">When this novel was first recommend to me by my well-read neighbor, I imagined it was a contemporary fantasy book. It took a few paragraphs for me to catch on that it was a reimagining of <i>David Copperfield</i>. Kingsolver, like Dickens, is masterful at depicting children in peril. Demon (born Damon) has to endure a drug-addict mother, a brutal stepfather, forced labor on a tobacco farm, and more travails before reaching the safety of Coach Winfield and his daughter Angus. Demon achieves glory on the high school football team, only to injure himself in the game. From that point, he is pulled into the sad world of drug addiction, in the company of fellow addicts. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The book is beautifully written and harrowing. The stand-out scene, for me, is the storm and the confrontation between the rough equivalents of Dickens’s Ham and Steerforth. I know that scene will stay with me for a long time.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">(A friend who claims <i>David Copperfield</i> as his favorite novel said that <i>Demon Copperhead </i>left him feeling depressed, whereas David Copperfield left him with a spring in his step. I understand ) </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1461452762i/58696.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="521" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1461452762i/58696.jpg" width="130" /></a></i></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br />David Copperfield </i>by Charles Dickens</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">After finishing <i>Demon Copperhead,</i> and while it was still fresh in my mind, I hied me hence to Project Gutenburg for an ebook copy of <i>David Copperfield</i>. I hadn’t read it in many, many years, so much of it was as new to me as if I’d never read it at all. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">This was a satisfying three-day read, and it kept my attention sharp throughout its 64 chapters. Unique characters abounded, as one would expect from a Dickens novel, and I was pleasantly surprised by the tenderness and compassion with which Dickens portrayed the novel’s two “fallen” women (and one suspected of being on the brink). </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Also, as I read, I wondered who was the biggest villain – Murdstone and his sister, Steerforth, or Uriah Heep. I’m still undecided.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Listened:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8ClBSiKJ1g"> Lindstrom, “Little Drummer Boy”</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">If you have to lose the “Little Drummer Boy” challenge (which is probably inevitable), and you’re not fond of the Bing Crosby/David Bowie duet, you could do worse than to listen to Lindstrom’s 43-minute-long version. My youngest brother turned me on to this. The first time he heard it, he was on a long night drive through Oklahoma. I imagined the drum beat as measured as broken white lines on the highway, and enough development of the music to keep him interested and alert.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The begins with a sequence of old-school synthesizer bleeps and bloops. That drumbeat comes in at 1:15 minutes, growing louder and more distinct. The familiar melody joins the party about 3 minutes in, and more than halfway through, a ghostly chorus joins, sounding as if they are coming through long distance on an old rotary phone. The music builds to a crashing crescendo before abruptly halting.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <br />Viewed: </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Late Autumn</i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://asianwiki.com/images/a/a6/Late_Autumn-p1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="644" data-original-width="450" height="200" src="https://asianwiki.com/images/a/a6/Late_Autumn-p1.jpg" width="140" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Let me preface this by stating that this movie is one of my top three favorites, and that it is nearly impossible to get a hold of anymore. It was once available on Netflix, which must have been where I saw it first. Happily, I managed to score a legit Blu Ray copy from a dealer in Kuala Lumpur.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX5m9Quxne8"><i>Late Autumn</i></a> (2010) is a joint South Korean/Chinese/United States production set in Seattle, directed by Kim Tae-yong and starring Hyun Bin as Hoon and Tang Wei as Anna. The third star of the movie is Seattle itself, portrayed in all its grey drizzling beauty. Scenes are shot at the Pike Place Market, on a Ride the Ducks tour, and the Seattle Center Fun Forest (as it is being dismantled). It is the most beautiful film depiction of the city that I’ve ever seen.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Anna, an immigrant from China, is a battered wife who accidentally kills her husband when he finds out she’s in contact with her ex-boyfriend. She has been in prison for manslaughter for an unspecified time when she receives a call from family. Her mother has died. She is granted 70 hours parole to go to Seattle for her mother’s funeral. On the bus she meets Hoon, a young South Korean man who supports himself as a gigolo. She lends him $30 for his bus ticket, and he gives her his expensive watch until he can pay her back. Hoon is on the run from the husband of one of his clients. He is playful, unconcerned, and he enjoys flirting with Anna.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Anna, on the other hand, is so reserved that nothing changes the wary expression on her face. she barely speaks, even when among her family. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Anna and Hoon meet up again, and Hoon proposes that he show Anna the sights. Anna at last catches Hoon’s playfulness. From then on, their identities and stories become mutable. In a restaurant after the funeral, Anna’s ex-boyfriend and his young family are present. Hoon spins a story about running a restaurant in China where Anna works as a waitress. Anna plays along, even when a fight erupts between the two men.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">At the end of her 70-hour parole, Anna boards the bus that will take her back to prison. Hoon joins her, and they play that they are meeting for the first time. The ambiguous end of the movie, when Anna is finally released from prison, shows Anna has retained that sense of play that Hoon awakened in her.<br /></span><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnZOMuyuefDJFpM98X27oezA4rSepWRVNoYAcoFd6WWIqY0prmaNvFoabgiLDt0rVjErsUY2j2g4Tdb0ygZIPVLSl8MrhoxNVZAL29HiTfqoogCGI_WpObfLvTdrJABIptf8S505PTxNTyc47FOl9_ozNtCy4qn-QUcndtfrKFsEHkX7diXP-RDydKlJW3/s1000/wade-cvr-lr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="647" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnZOMuyuefDJFpM98X27oezA4rSepWRVNoYAcoFd6WWIqY0prmaNvFoabgiLDt0rVjErsUY2j2g4Tdb0ygZIPVLSl8MrhoxNVZAL29HiTfqoogCGI_WpObfLvTdrJABIptf8S505PTxNTyc47FOl9_ozNtCy4qn-QUcndtfrKFsEHkX7diXP-RDydKlJW3/s320/wade-cvr-lr.jpg" width="207" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>Holly Wade Matter's debut novel, <i>Damned Pretty Things, </i>was released in 2020 by Aqueduct Press. Her short fiction has appeared in <i>Asimov's Science Fiction, Century</i>,
and the Bending the Landscape anthology series. She is a graduate of
the University of Washington and of the Clarion West Writers Workshop.
She has twice been awarded literary funding from the Seattle Office of
Arts and Culture, and in 1998 she received a creative writing fellowship
from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Seattle with her
husband Brad and two house rabbits. </span></span></p>Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-206011454962362762023-12-19T06:00:00.000-08:002023-12-19T13:21:03.044-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 10: Erin K. Wagner<p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.aqueductpress.com/images/authors/ErinKWagner.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="533" height="320" src="http://www.aqueductpress.com/images/authors/ErinKWagner.jpg" width="213" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023<br />by Erin K. Wagner</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">In what has become a holiday movie, through unknown manipulations of nostalgia and music, Julie Andrews (or Maria), as optimistic au pair, assures her charges (and us) that recalling our favorite things will help ward us against the dog bites and bee stings of the world. In light of this, I provide a list of the favorite media I consumed this year.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />(I realize there is a theme here—of posthuman structural analyses—sharpened by my pedagogical emphases this year.)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Books & Shorts</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;">Between editing my own work and reading for lessons, I did not read as many books as I had hoped this year. That said, here are some that I really enjoyed—or that provided blueprints for the future. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">LaValle, Victor. “Ark of Light” in<i> Lightspeed</i> (2020).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I taught this for the first time in my class this semester. A very short story, with relatively anonymous characters, the narrative touches on immigration and marginalization. It forefronts, however, unquenched hope and faith for a better future. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Le Guin, Ursula K. <i>The Dispossessed</i>. Harper & Row, 1974.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I am conflicted about this book. There is a depiction of sexual assault (tw) that the book does not seem to fully grapple with. But the assault is of a piece with the book’s overall warning: that to possess items or people leaves yourself possessed, not free to pursue a society of true equity. A fascinating inquiry into nonauthoritarian socialism that reads almost like a treatise for the future. Like much of Le Guin’s work, it is truly haunting. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1654565596i/45154547.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="518" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1654565596i/45154547.jpg" width="130" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Martine, Arkady. <i>A Desolation Called Peace</i>. Tor, 2021.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">A year of duologies! I finally had a chance to read the sequel to Martine’s fabulous <i>A Memory Called Empire</i>. Though this book was less poignant imho, it was a riveting posthumanist and postcolonialist examination of identity.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Parry, H.G. <i>A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians </i>and<i> A Radical Act of Free Magic</i>. Orbit (2021 & 2022).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">A duology that swept me right up into the childhood joy of reading (one more page!). An alternate history of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars that questions the interplay of power and freedom. With vampires. And spellcasting. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Pratchett, Terry. <i>Going Postal</i>. Doubleday, 2004.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I have almost finished my first read-through of Pratchett’s Discworld (which I’ve mentioned in previous lists). I just wanted to give a quick shoutout to the delightful adventures, starting with Going Postal, of the entrepreneurial Moist Lipwig. A skewering of modern bureaucracy. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1668935201i/50998056.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="523" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1668935201i/50998056.jpg" width="131" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Robinson, Kim Stanley. <i>The Ministry for the Future</i>. Orbit, 2020.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Another treatise. A book of thought experiments, per Le Guin’s description of science fiction, that is intended to jumpstart real and radical change to save our environment. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Yoachim, Caroline M. “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relays Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” in <i>Lightspeed</i> (2016).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">A choose-your-own-adventure story that questions the reality of free-will? Why, yes, I don’t mind if I do. Fun and piercing at the same time.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">TV & Movies</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">What can I say? I really like the screen. These are the movies and TV that really stuck with me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Archer, Jim, dir. <i>Brian and Charles</i>. Focus Features, 2022.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">A truly ridiculous premise with a DIY look that gut-punches you in the most lovable way. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Brest, Martin, dir. <i>Beverly Hills Cop</i>. Paramount, 1984.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I have long thought that cop movies of the 80s dealt in more nuanced ways with intersectional identities than the 90s and 2000s. This movie is one such example.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Coscarelli, Don. <i>Bubba Ho-Tep</i>. Vitagraph Films, 2002. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">This movie is by no means perfect (or feminist). But it gets under your (mummified) skin and delivers a powerful message on how our society handles the concept of aging and the welfare of the aged. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b4/Spider-Man-_Across_the_Spider-Verse_poster.jpg/220px-Spider-Man-_Across_the_Spider-Verse_poster.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="327" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b4/Spider-Man-_Across_the_Spider-Verse_poster.jpg/220px-Spider-Man-_Across_the_Spider-Verse_poster.jpg" width="135" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Dos Santos, Joaquim, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson, dirs. <i>Spiderman: Across the Spider-verse</i>. Sony, 2023.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I’m not a huge fan of animated movies, so it often takes some arm-twisting to get me to watch one. But even I loved this film. It’s gorgeous—and I hope the studio recognizes the need to value the labor that goes into creations like these. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Gerwig, Grega, dir. <i>Barbie</i>. Warner Bros., 2023.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I admit it. I fell for it. It really hits you over the head with some of its messaging—but this belies the nuanced analysis running underneath as well. The performances, the look, the songs: perfect for what ails you. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Gilligan, Vince and Peter Gould. <i>Better Call Saul</i>. AMC, 2015-2022. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Visually, this series could not be more different from <i>Barbie</i>, especially in the black and white of the final season. But the last season also forefronts the viewpoint and empowerment of Kim, the counterweight to the titular Saul.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Gilroy, Tony, creator. <i>Andor</i> (s1) on Disney + (2022).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I have admired the <i>Star Wars</i> prequel <i>Rogue One</i> as the best of the movies released after the original series. This TV series is a notch even above that. Quiet, dark, and desperate, this series focuses on the real cost and sacrifice of rebellion and the real evil of bureaucratic annihilation. There isn’t much of the force here, but it is a forceful series. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Goldstein, Jonathan and John Francis Daley, dirs. <i>Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves</i>. Paramount, 2023.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I think we’ve already watched this movie four times (?) in order to share it with friends and family. It is fun, fun, fun.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Hernandez, Tara and Damon Lindelof. <i>Mrs. Davis</i>. Peacock, 2023.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">This show is really weird. Like, it’s weird and then it gets weirder. But its commentary on the “threat” of AI is extremely relevant and forces us to remember that even stories about AI are really about people.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/bb/PokerFaceTVPoster.png/220px-PokerFaceTVPoster.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/bb/PokerFaceTVPoster.png/220px-PokerFaceTVPoster.png" width="135" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Johnson, Rian, creator. <i>Poker Face </i>(s1) on Peacock (2023).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Oft compared to<i> Columbo</i>, <i>Poker Face</i> is a feminist take on the detective show with a truly beguiling performance by Natasha Lyonne. It also acknowledges the wider structures that drive us to act. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Judkins, Rafe, dev. <i>The Wheel of Time</i> (s2) on Amazon Prime (2023). </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">With a higher budget and a year’s experience under the actors’ belts, this season of <i>Wheel of Time</i> surpassed the first striking out from the source-text to complicate definitions of good and evil and to center the women’s experiences outside of Rand. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Kasdan, Jonathan, dev. <i>Willow</i> (s1) on Disney + (2022).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">A truly fun extension of the <i>Willow </i>movie that seems to have been cut short. It plays with the gender-inversion of classic fantasy tropes and questions the savior narrative. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/48/PoliteSocietyPoster.jpg/220px-PoliteSocietyPoster.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/48/PoliteSocietyPoster.jpg/220px-PoliteSocietyPoster.jpg" width="135" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Manzoor, Nida, dir. <i>Polite Society</i>. Focus Features, 2023.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">An updated look at the romance conventions encouraged by modern renditions of Austen. Enjoyable fight choreographies and a speculative plot-turn that is truly surprising. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Mazin, Craig and Neil Druckmann, creators. <i>Last of Us</i> (s1) on HBO (2023).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I’ll admit it. I cried with the rest of America. More than once. And I don’t cry easily. There has been some controversy around the series, but I read the violence of the series as a critique (if the paradox is possible). </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">McQuarrie, Christopher. <i>Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Pt. 1</i>. Paramount, 2023.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Often box-office hits, the <i>Mission Impossible</i> franchise is, I think, still underrated in terms of how solid its cinematography and storytelling is. Its presentation of women wavers between savior and saved, but I think the most recent additions have introduced some truly strong characters. The series, as a whole, grapples with the age-old philosophical problem: save the one or the many?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Nolan, Christopher, dir. <i>Oppenheimer</i>. Universal, 2023.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">There are valid criticisms of this film. But its harsh send-up of toxic masculinity (intended or not) as the foundation of many truly horrific events in history is still worth watching. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Polley, Sarah. <i>Women Talking</i>. United Artists, 2022.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">A quiet, and quietly disturbing film, that does not need to fully visualize assault in order to critique it (a criticism I often have of films on this topic). This centers on the women and their engagement with a fundamental religious worldview that is far from simple. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d0/John_Wick_-_Chapter_4_promotional_poster.jpg/220px-John_Wick_-_Chapter_4_promotional_poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d0/John_Wick_-_Chapter_4_promotional_poster.jpg/220px-John_Wick_-_Chapter_4_promotional_poster.jpg" width="135" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Stahelski, Chad, dir. J<i>ohn Wick: Chapter 4</i>. Lionsgate, 2023.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I’m a sucker for these films. They transcend many action films, I think, not merely in terms of cinematography and choreography, but in their embrace of a speculative underworld that reimagines the violence of our society (and its purpose). </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Wilson, Hugh, creator. <i>WKRP in Cincinnati</i>. CBS, 1978-1982.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I indulge in old sitcoms as a comfort blanket for the mind. Borrowed nostalgia, as it were. This is one that truly seems ahead of its time and grapples with some real issues occasionally (not always perfectly). </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Podcasts</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Hobbes, Michael and Peter Shamshiri, hosts. <i>If Books Could Kill</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">One of my new favorite podcasts. The hosts take the bestselling self-help tomes and societal commentaries of the last thirty years or so and point out the logical flaws of these too-easy analyses and grifts. With the sharp and unforgiving wit I’ve come to expect from Hobbes and Shamshiri (who is also a host on <i>5-4</i>, a podcast on the Supreme Court that I’ve added to my regular listening queue). <br /></span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggqcSFInWlY7O3mIwhZuNt5a6-20aUDhcHZui3SohlcX7NtlHB3P0rOIc6pfiEGORMWyYHPDm8I9TsSC1FL-cM2z01EYDuR6uzzlUhqhw6VoKiZcey4L9J2zFlHhXKzKRSU9CbYIFKWp0H1-mzUom2V-uZWdtzRtRQ3ZYkzSt58g37za0YL9vi8-mNtg/s1000/Wagner-home-cvr-lr.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="634" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggqcSFInWlY7O3mIwhZuNt5a6-20aUDhcHZui3SohlcX7NtlHB3P0rOIc6pfiEGORMWyYHPDm8I9TsSC1FL-cM2z01EYDuR6uzzlUhqhw6VoKiZcey4L9J2zFlHhXKzKRSU9CbYIFKWp0H1-mzUom2V-uZWdtzRtRQ3ZYkzSt58g37za0YL9vi8-mNtg/w127-h200/Wagner-home-cvr-lr.jpg" width="127" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;">Erin K. Wagner grew up in southeast Ohio on the border of
Appalachia, but now lives in central New York, where she hikes in the Catskills
and listens for ghostly games of nine-pins. She holds her Ph.D. in medieval
literature and teaches literature and writing in the SUNY system. Her stories
have appeared in a variety of publications, from <i>Apex </i>to <i>Clarkesworld</i>, and
her novella <i>The Green and Growing </i>is
available from Aqueduct Press. Her second novella, <i>An Unnatural Life, </i>was
released by Tor.com in September 2020. Aqueduct published her collection of short fiction, <i>When Home, No Need to Cry, </i>in 2022. </span><span style="font-size: medium;">You can visit her website at <a href="https://erinkwagner.com/" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">https://erinkwagner.com/</a>. </span>Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-4757440319711501112023-12-18T18:00:00.000-08:002023-12-19T12:01:20.545-08:00The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 9: Nisi Shawl<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5W9x9Z2gx_7xnSMf9sTPl6uL_BbxwrXuUQIDhX4G4ZNeGYp03Sb1fJ9BVCjtO9QhxAtBAoPUG3yOuTjAf_onVSbKzNTaVgcvs5WZkAKD5sokehM61njnnY4-hP8uAdlK5rBdEFcEGukeR981Jv3IKxTZyq2Ph8UjRW5Z5fpvi4V-0vyYLAoSF_3isow/s229/nisi.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="229" data-original-width="220" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5W9x9Z2gx_7xnSMf9sTPl6uL_BbxwrXuUQIDhX4G4ZNeGYp03Sb1fJ9BVCjtO9QhxAtBAoPUG3yOuTjAf_onVSbKzNTaVgcvs5WZkAKD5sokehM61njnnY4-hP8uAdlK5rBdEFcEGukeR981Jv3IKxTZyq2Ph8UjRW5Z5fpvi4V-0vyYLAoSF_3isow/w307-h320/nisi.jpg" width="307" /></a></div><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Backwards and Forwards: A Couple of Hopes<br />by Nisi Shawl</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">My fond affection for the music of my yesteryears remains untarnished by age. Steely Dan, Magazine, Prince--all still reign unchallenged in my aural heart. And lately I’ve (re)turned to the tight, sweet stylings of <a album="" en.wikipedia.org="" he_pointer_sisters_="" href="" https:="" ile:pointersistersalbum.jpg="" media="" wiki="">The Pointer Sisters.</a> Their big charting hit was “Yes We Can Can,” which encapsulates for me a lost spring of optimism I drank from carelessly in my youth. But the song that brought me back to their playlist this time was “Old Songs,” a tune all about nostalgia. It’s the fifth track on their first, self-titled album, an ambitious enterprise encapsulating decades of soul-stirring melodies in just a few lines. Longing for the times gone by has always been in fashion, even way back then, back in the 1970s. There have always been past greatnesses to mourn, to praise, to anthemize and grow lyrical over.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> I hope there always will be.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> My leisure activity continues to take the form of watching films and series, same as last year. In addition to the practically indistinguishable stream of exploding heads and grifters I prefer to decompress with, I’ve consumed a couple of tamer storylines. Of these, my favorite is <i>Dead to Me</i>, a “black comedy” starring <a href="https://occ-0-2794-2219.1.nflxso.net/dnm/api/v6/E8vDc_W8CLv7-yMQu8KMEC7Rrr8/AAAABXTC3BAO3qdMa7dYqzYejGwCJlqW0MYQEG6igBFo_RBZJPVVcLtVy4UjTp8QTGaKRYrd9FBM2e2taPDcXFO36U_My1g8tOCqlQt7.jpg?r=bd8"> Linda Cardellini and Christina Applegate</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://occ-0-2794-2219.1.nflxso.net/dnm/api/v6/E8vDc_W8CLv7-yMQu8KMEC7Rrr8/AAAABXTC3BAO3qdMa7dYqzYejGwCJlqW0MYQEG6igBFo_RBZJPVVcLtVy4UjTp8QTGaKRYrd9FBM2e2taPDcXFO36U_My1g8tOCqlQt7.jpg?r=bd8%22" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="450" src="https://occ-0-2794-2219.1.nflxso.net/dnm/api/v6/E8vDc_W8CLv7-yMQu8KMEC7Rrr8/AAAABXTC3BAO3qdMa7dYqzYejGwCJlqW0MYQEG6igBFo_RBZJPVVcLtVy4UjTp8QTGaKRYrd9FBM2e2taPDcXFO36U_My1g8tOCqlQt7.jpg?r=bd8%22" width="800" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The friendship Cardellini’s character foists on the grieving widow played by Applegate is built on lies: she’s pretending to suffer a comparable loss, though actually she’s the hit-and-run driver responsible for the death of Applegate’s husband. Nevertheless, the friendship proves itself truer than death and more reliable than life. There are three seasons. The third was delayed and somewhat rewritten due to Applegate’s sudden Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis. Poignant and funny and scary and smart. Can’t wait to watch it again--preferably in the company of someone as ride-or-die for me as these two are for each other.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />I continue to reserve much of my reading energy for work assignments. These break down into (A) books I’ve been invited to blurb and (B) texts by students/potential students. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">For full reportage on the blurb-ables, you’ll want to check the finished books. They are: </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">E. Lily Yu’s collection <i>Jewel Box</i> (October 24, 2023, Erewhon Books); </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1697614595i/198821089.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1697614595i/198821089.jpg" width="125" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%2Fw%2Fthese-fragile-graces-this-fugitive-heart-izzy-wasserstein%2F1144049793&psig=AOvVaw0Y97jIiHip1z0yWxQFXvt7&ust=1702343975114000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBIQjRxqFwoTCIDYndubhoMDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAI"><i>These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart</i></a>, Izzy Wasserstein’s debut novel (March 12, 2024, Tachyon Publications); and<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Rob Cameron’s middle grade fantasy <i>Daydreamer</i> (August 2024, Penguin Random House). </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Here I’ll restrict myself from saying much other than that the most thrilling surprise of these turns out to be Wasserstein’s post-apocalyptic, neo-Noirish <i>Graces</i>--mostly because I have yet to finish the Cameron ms., and because I knew of Yu’s prowess in advance. Following Wasserstein’s Dora Madsen through Kansas City’s pot-holed, climate-catastrophized streets is more exciting than I or any other reader have the right to expect. I recommend grabbing it up as soon as you possibly can.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Because Hugo House is “re-evaluating” their relationship to me as a teacher, my students and potential students for the past few months have come to me from Seattle’s <a href="https://www.jackstraw.org/program/jack-straw-writers-program/">Jack Straw program</a>. As of this writing, I’ve just finished winnowing this year’s 76 applicants down to a selection of 12 participants and two alternates. I read scads of mss.! Jack Straw emphasizes training students to give audio presentations--in person, online, broadcast, podcast--and has no restrictions concerning genre or form, so I spent a lot of time outside the comfort of my speculative-fiction wheelhouse. Memoir. Poetry. Plays. More memoir. More poetry.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Two draft excerpts really got me going. The first was from a hybrid form focused on links between a specific type of Filipinx monster, the shape-shifting manananggal, and negative takes on the feminine. The second was from an historical novel about the founding of a colony of anarchists in Western Washington in 1902. Yes, radical thinkers existed way back then! They led interesting lives! We can visualize them! We can understand their dreams--we can empathize!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />At least, I hope we can.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_dvZjOFLR0ZTlxbFj4spJfTCqaCvWyCt_UJsHLv4Sxt2idhupXIkL4M7PYoX3O-gaqzkT5MT2D-29LnMk5RfAzW7mFnjzdN39oUbbJiiUQWgiGBfPcNmprVmySecZ2ziNXbxif-lGKsdi_xTZv12NtjvoPM3hau_aBqjM5bZiA9lrXfiFojv1OBr_bsaT/s1000/cover-fruiting-bodies-lr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="646" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_dvZjOFLR0ZTlxbFj4spJfTCqaCvWyCt_UJsHLv4Sxt2idhupXIkL4M7PYoX3O-gaqzkT5MT2D-29LnMk5RfAzW7mFnjzdN39oUbbJiiUQWgiGBfPcNmprVmySecZ2ziNXbxif-lGKsdi_xTZv12NtjvoPM3hau_aBqjM5bZiA9lrXfiFojv1OBr_bsaT/s320/cover-fruiting-bodies-lr.jpg" width="207" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Nisi Shawl (they/them) is the multiple award-winning author, co-author, and editor of over a dozen books of speculative fiction and related nonfiction, including the standard text on diverse representation in literature, the Aqueduct Conversation Piece volume <i>Writing the Other</i>; the Nebula Award finalist novel <i>Everfair</i>; the first two volumes of the <i>New Suns </i>anthology series; and the Aqueduct Press story collection <i>Filter House</i> (co-winner of the 2009 Otherwise Award). They’ve spoken at Duke University, Spelman College, Stanford University, Sarah Lawrence College, and at many other learning institutions. Recent titles include a new horror-adjacent Aqueduct Press collection, <i>Our Fruiting Bodies</i>; and the Middle Grade historical fantasy novel <i>Speculation </i>(published by Lee & Low in February 2023). January will see the publication of <i>Kinning</i>, their sequel to <i>Everfair</i>. An excerpt is available on the <a href="https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/10/27/excerpt-reveal-kinning-by-nisi-shawl/">Tor/Forge blog</a>. </span><span style="font-size: medium;">“Sun River,” a short story sequel, has been published by <a href="https://www.tor.com/2023/12/06/sun-river-nisi-shawl/">Tor.com</a>.<br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><br /></span><p></p>Timmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.com0