Hugos (step 2), Orient Express movie, and NaPoWriMo
Hugos! The list of nominees is out.
Novel -- yay for Raven Strategem and Provenance, and zero surprise at The Stone Sky making an appearance (though I really hope something besides Broken Earth will win for once...). I will give the KSR book maybe 50 pages, ditto for the John Scalzi, but I'm definitely curious to read something by Mur Lafferty.
Novella -- no surprise at All Systems Red. I do plan to read Binti: Home (and I guess the first one, too...) and the Jack book. The other three I hadn't heard of, but looking forward to discovering.
Novelette -- I didn't nom it, but am pleased to see YHL's "Extracurricular Activities" on the list. I didn't finish "A Series of Steaks" during the nominations period, but will happil go back and do so now. The others are new to me, but most seem interesting.
Short story -- wow, something I nominated actually made the list! "Carnival Nine", which was the first story I put on my ballot. I'm already reading Vernon's "Sun, Moon, Dust" after cyanshadow's rec, and "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience" was another short story I started during the nominations period, so will finish out both of them. I hadn't seen the Fran Wilde story before, but it was short enough that I read it just now; not my sort of thing, but prettily done. "Fandom for Robots" didn't work for me, though I know it worked for a lot of people and I was not surprised to see it on the list. The last one I hadn't seen at all.
Dramatic presentation, long form -- I was expecting to have to watch Blade Runner 2049 and The Shape of Water for this, so I guess I better get on that (I got Blade Runner out of Redbox today). Get Out was the surprise for me -- from what I knew by osmosis, I didn't think it was SFF, but OK, maybe I'll give it a shot, too. I'm not planning to go back and finish Wonder Woman, I think, as I've watched enough to form an opinion. I *am* surprised that neither Logan nor GotG2 made it on the list (those were my other 2 noms, along with Last Jedi and Thor 3).
Dramatic presentation, short form -- hey, there's one song in among the episodes of TV shows I do not watch and don't have much interest in.
Series -- OK, this is going to be a pretty easy vote. I'd nominated Penric specifically, but I guess what made it through was The World of Five Gods, which is definitely going up in first place for me, because then it includes Paladin of Souls, and I'm pretty sure nothing on this list could beat that. Maybe this is a reason for me to give Stormlight Archive another shot, and to read more Raksura (I bet I know what you're voting for at the top, cyanshadow ;), but I've read what I could stomach of InCryptid, and I think the flaws of the Lady Trent books outweigh the positives enough that those both go below No Award for me. I'll need to check out Divine Cities, though -- I've heard good things about these books. I'm really bummed that Dragaera/Vlad didn't make the list (and wondering if they disqualified last year's Special Category fhinalists after all for some of the others), but ah well, there will be other years, hopefully.
YA category -- I'm thrilled In Other Lands, A Skinful of Shadows, and Summer in Orcus (which were 3 of my 4 noms) made the list! And two of the others are books I wanted to read anyway (The Book of Dust and Akata Warrior), though Th Art of Starving I never even heard of.
Best related work -- LeGuin essays and maybe Sleeping with Monsters are the only ones that really interest me here.
Best graphic -- none of these are things I've read, except for earlier volumes of Saga, but I guess this is as good a reason as any to catch up? And maybe check out a few of the others -- I've been curious about Monstress and Paper Girls.
The other things I'll have to purely rely on the portfolios for.
*
On Saturday, B discovered he had an extra two days of vacation, so we celebrated by watching a movie: Death on the Orient Express, which B had skimmed earlier but L and I both wanted to see. It was more enjoyable than I'd expected! I found it really funny, especially Brannagh's Poirot (and his ridiculous mustache, and his French accent), and the Beglian quips. But I enjoyed everyone's performances, actually, except for Johnny Depp's, but spoilers! fortunately it wasn't too long before he was offed, so if there had to be one character/performance I disliked, that was probably the best possibility. (L and B agreed with me on both counts.) We liked the Russian dancer, very authentically played by an actual Russian dancer. And it was a really pretty movie. I found the mystery a bit hard to follow, but that's always the case, in a visual medium, and the reason I don't watch mystery movies much even though I like reading the genre. I'm sure I've read the Agatha Christie story it's based on, btw, but this would've been at least 25 years ago, and I didn't remember which one it was, so I watched with a reasonable amount of success.
*
I'm going to try to do NaPoWriMo again this year. The first two prompts actually haven't been all that inspiring to me,
Day 1: Today, we challenge you to write a poem that is based on a secret shame, or a secret pleasure. It could be eating too many cookies, or bad movies, or the time you told your sister she could totally brush her teeth with soap. It’s up to you.
You may recall me mentioning that one of my guilty pleasures is watching the Jerry Springer Show [DW link], so that's what today's poem ended up being:
on this morning's show:
honey, I had a threesome
with your father's ex
and when we come back:
my brother stole my girlfriend
(secretly a guy)
paternity test --
on-air bombshell for stripper
who had sex with twins
surprise proposal!
Dominatrix confesses:
I slept with your mom
take care of yourself
and each other, too; take care,
until the next time.
[Blathering]Blathering (spoiler-cut on LJ/skippable on DW): Like I said, I wasn't terribly feeling the prompt, but was pretty sure it had to be about trashy reality TV, as I don't have too many other guilty pleasure kind of things. For a while I was toying with the idea of writing something about a Jerry Springer episode with fannish characters, since cracky crossovers are another guilty pleasure of sorts, but it just wasn't gelling into a poetic form -- I was just getting little headline-like snatches and that's about it. At which point it occurred to me that those lines were short and sort of standalone, like the lines of a haiku, and I decided to see if I could write a poem about a trashy talkshow in haiku, because it was the most incongrous combination of subject matter and form.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1075745.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).
Novel -- yay for Raven Strategem and Provenance, and zero surprise at The Stone Sky making an appearance (though I really hope something besides Broken Earth will win for once...). I will give the KSR book maybe 50 pages, ditto for the John Scalzi, but I'm definitely curious to read something by Mur Lafferty.
Novella -- no surprise at All Systems Red. I do plan to read Binti: Home (and I guess the first one, too...) and the Jack book. The other three I hadn't heard of, but looking forward to discovering.
Novelette -- I didn't nom it, but am pleased to see YHL's "Extracurricular Activities" on the list. I didn't finish "A Series of Steaks" during the nominations period, but will happil go back and do so now. The others are new to me, but most seem interesting.
Short story -- wow, something I nominated actually made the list! "Carnival Nine", which was the first story I put on my ballot. I'm already reading Vernon's "Sun, Moon, Dust" after cyanshadow's rec, and "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience" was another short story I started during the nominations period, so will finish out both of them. I hadn't seen the Fran Wilde story before, but it was short enough that I read it just now; not my sort of thing, but prettily done. "Fandom for Robots" didn't work for me, though I know it worked for a lot of people and I was not surprised to see it on the list. The last one I hadn't seen at all.
Dramatic presentation, long form -- I was expecting to have to watch Blade Runner 2049 and The Shape of Water for this, so I guess I better get on that (I got Blade Runner out of Redbox today). Get Out was the surprise for me -- from what I knew by osmosis, I didn't think it was SFF, but OK, maybe I'll give it a shot, too. I'm not planning to go back and finish Wonder Woman, I think, as I've watched enough to form an opinion. I *am* surprised that neither Logan nor GotG2 made it on the list (those were my other 2 noms, along with Last Jedi and Thor 3).
Dramatic presentation, short form -- hey, there's one song in among the episodes of TV shows I do not watch and don't have much interest in.
Series -- OK, this is going to be a pretty easy vote. I'd nominated Penric specifically, but I guess what made it through was The World of Five Gods, which is definitely going up in first place for me, because then it includes Paladin of Souls, and I'm pretty sure nothing on this list could beat that. Maybe this is a reason for me to give Stormlight Archive another shot, and to read more Raksura (I bet I know what you're voting for at the top, cyanshadow ;), but I've read what I could stomach of InCryptid, and I think the flaws of the Lady Trent books outweigh the positives enough that those both go below No Award for me. I'll need to check out Divine Cities, though -- I've heard good things about these books. I'm really bummed that Dragaera/Vlad didn't make the list (and wondering if they disqualified last year's Special Category fhinalists after all for some of the others), but ah well, there will be other years, hopefully.
YA category -- I'm thrilled In Other Lands, A Skinful of Shadows, and Summer in Orcus (which were 3 of my 4 noms) made the list! And two of the others are books I wanted to read anyway (The Book of Dust and Akata Warrior), though Th Art of Starving I never even heard of.
Best related work -- LeGuin essays and maybe Sleeping with Monsters are the only ones that really interest me here.
Best graphic -- none of these are things I've read, except for earlier volumes of Saga, but I guess this is as good a reason as any to catch up? And maybe check out a few of the others -- I've been curious about Monstress and Paper Girls.
The other things I'll have to purely rely on the portfolios for.
*
On Saturday, B discovered he had an extra two days of vacation, so we celebrated by watching a movie: Death on the Orient Express, which B had skimmed earlier but L and I both wanted to see. It was more enjoyable than I'd expected! I found it really funny, especially Brannagh's Poirot (and his ridiculous mustache, and his French accent), and the Beglian quips. But I enjoyed everyone's performances, actually, except for Johnny Depp's, but spoilers! fortunately it wasn't too long before he was offed, so if there had to be one character/performance I disliked, that was probably the best possibility. (L and B agreed with me on both counts.) We liked the Russian dancer, very authentically played by an actual Russian dancer. And it was a really pretty movie. I found the mystery a bit hard to follow, but that's always the case, in a visual medium, and the reason I don't watch mystery movies much even though I like reading the genre. I'm sure I've read the Agatha Christie story it's based on, btw, but this would've been at least 25 years ago, and I didn't remember which one it was, so I watched with a reasonable amount of success.
*
I'm going to try to do NaPoWriMo again this year. The first two prompts actually haven't been all that inspiring to me,
Day 1: Today, we challenge you to write a poem that is based on a secret shame, or a secret pleasure. It could be eating too many cookies, or bad movies, or the time you told your sister she could totally brush her teeth with soap. It’s up to you.
You may recall me mentioning that one of my guilty pleasures is watching the Jerry Springer Show [DW link], so that's what today's poem ended up being:
on this morning's show:
honey, I had a threesome
with your father's ex
and when we come back:
my brother stole my girlfriend
(secretly a guy)
paternity test --
on-air bombshell for stripper
who had sex with twins
surprise proposal!
Dominatrix confesses:
I slept with your mom
take care of yourself
and each other, too; take care,
until the next time.
[Blathering]Blathering (spoiler-cut on LJ/skippable on DW): Like I said, I wasn't terribly feeling the prompt, but was pretty sure it had to be about trashy reality TV, as I don't have too many other guilty pleasure kind of things. For a while I was toying with the idea of writing something about a Jerry Springer episode with fannish characters, since cracky crossovers are another guilty pleasure of sorts, but it just wasn't gelling into a poetic form -- I was just getting little headline-like snatches and that's about it. At which point it occurred to me that those lines were short and sort of standalone, like the lines of a haiku, and I decided to see if I could write a poem about a trashy talkshow in haiku, because it was the most incongrous combination of subject matter and form.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1075745.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).