Post Swancon
Originally published at Champagne and Socks. You can comment here or there.
Last weekend, Swancon finally happened. After being chair and convenor for two years, Easter 2011 finally came. Much happened. Maybe with time I’ll be ready to record some of it. I’m still trying to recover - I worked 100 hour weeks in the lead up which it turns out, hurt. A lot. And the weekend itself was pretty full on. Here then, to sum it up is the booty from the weekend:
Mine is the smaller pile and the tall one to the right is C’s. He will no doubt get through his quicker than I will mine. Still, I really am looking forward to having time to read and focus to read again. And I’m looking forward to all the books in my pile - Bold as Love by Gwenyth Jones, Dervish House by Ian McDonald, Shattered City by Tansy Rayner Roberts, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N K Jemisin.
The Madigan Mine was my con reading. Funnily enough, one of the things on my After Swancon To Do List was to relearn to read. I really have lost the attention span or skillset to read a full novel. And I’m sad and miss it. I hate not being able to join in or contribute to that section of Galactic Suburbia. I had teed up an interview with the author of Madigan Mine - Kirstyn McDermott - for Galactic Chat and was intent on reading the book as research.
I failed to finish the book in time for the interview but I got something else instead. I got hooked on reading a novel. I took it with me to the hotel and found that I needed some reading in bed before being able to fall asleep each night. I was so hyped with adrenalin (and so constantly AWAKE!) that I hadn’t been sleeping for weeks and was not finding watching TV before bed helpful. I had intended to be strict with myself once the con was over in terms of finding time to read by taking the last hour before sleep for just that and so figured no time like the present to begin. And it worked! I found a way to wind down for sleeping but I also found Madigan Mine gripping and engaging such that I forgot I was *reading a book* and just read the book. Dipping into it whenever I’ve had a free moment since, I’ve almost read a whole book, in one period of time, over one week.
I’m very excited to possibly have my reading groove back. And I must recommend Madigan Mine for being such a good book as to be able to do that without having had to work at it. (It is of the darker end of the genre spectrum though, for those not really into horror.)