Reading roundup and Hugo ballot
I meant to post about it before signups closed but missed that, but before I forget to post about it entirely: 
fandomtrees (the successor to
fandom_stocking) is happening again this year (reveals are planned for Jan 6). My tree is here :), and there are lots of trees to decorate collected in this super-handy master list.
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Things that I've been reading when I haven't been reading Perhaps the Stars or watching Sudoku videos:
46. Neil Gaiman, Audible's The Sandman, Act I -- I posted my first impressions from the first couple of episodes about a month ago, but have since finished Act I. I think what follows is non-spoilery and also just mostly about audio to GN comparisons, or rather my impressions thereof.
I said at the time that MacAvoy wasn't working for me particularly well as Dream, but he's actually grown on me. I think that as Morpheus becomes more human with his experiences throughout the plot, MacAvoy's take on him worked better for me, though he still doesn't feel inhuman/endless enough for those scenes that lean more heavily in that direction. Anyway, still not something I'm going to rave about, but I liked him on the whole. Sadly, the other Endless we've met so far worked even less well for me. Several people warned me about Death, and... yeah, Kat Denning as Death just doesn't feel at all right for me (I agree with
rachelmanija that the voice actor playing Rose Walker would've made a better Death). I'm not sure I would've recognized her as Darcy-from-MCU's voice if I hadn't already been thinking in the MCU direction after perpetual's comment, but it didn't help that I don't like Darcy, and it made Death sound kind of whiny, which is, like, totally wrong for Death IMO. Despair, on the other hand, was voiced by someone I'm fond of/associate with characters I like, Miriam Margoyles, but she just didn't sound right for Despair. Like, I don't know what I want Despair to sound like, but she is so barely-human-looking in the comics -- the least human-looking of all the Endless, between her hulking shape and being naked -- that I was expecting something unusual from the voice, and in audio she just sounded kind of bummed out. The other one we got was Desire, who is my favorite member of the Endless, and they're fine -- I don't have specific complaints like I do with Death and Despair, but they're still not quite right. I do think it's very good that Audible cast a genderqueer/nonbinary actor to play Desire, but the voice felt very ordinary, kind of petulant (which is right for Desire) but without anything special. I think probably it is very hard to transmit Desire without the visual component of their androgynously beautiful face. So I think that might just be a pitfall of an audio adaptation. I'm still really curious to see how they'll do Delirium, and Destruction (although he can probably be just someone with a booming voice; Delirium's rainbow squiggle speech bubbles are harder to approximate in audio) and wanting to know what they sound like is one of the main reasons I'm probably going to go on to Act II at some point.
Outside of the Endless, there were actually voice castings I liked. Gilbert was my favorite (which was a big deal, as he was one of my favorite characters in the book) -- so kind and Ent-y with his "hoom" noises! He is definitely my favorite in the adaptation (and I also really liked several other characters voiced by his voice actor, Ray Porter: Martin Tenbones was him, too, and Richard Burbadge in the Midsummer Night's Dream episode, and Beelzebub early on (though with heavy overlay of buzzing and stuff)). I really liked Hob Gadling, who is another one of my favorites, so I was very happy to see that. I liked Lucian the Librarian, and Mathew the Raven (Andy Serkis, so of course he was wonderful). And I liked Rose Walker, and continued to like the way Hecate were voiced. Oh, and Lady Johanna Constantine was great, too! I wish there had been more of her, actually. It took me a bit to get used to John Constantine, but once I did, I liked him. Who I never warmed up to though was the Corinthian -- he just sounded completely wrong to me. Again, too ordinary, but also too young, and I don't know... just wrong -- I don't understand this choice at all. Oh, and Abel continued to be annoying, and I found African!Abel annoying, too, so I guess that's a choice more than the individual voice actor, LOL. (And I found that voice actor's other characters unobjectionable.)
It was interesting to see which episodes worked well for me and which didn't, compared to how their GN counterparts worked. I was not overly impressed with the earliest episodes in the GN, but the very first one worked better for me in audio, with the scary chanting. Something that also worked better for me in audio was young Jed Walker's dream adventures -- the way the narrative voice and everyone's dialogue shifted into old-timey comics radio play worked so well for me! where I vaguely recall those bits just being boring/skimmable to me in the comics. "Sound of Her Wings" worked really well for me in audio even though I disliked Death's voice -- the sort of episodic brushing up against lives sketched in briefly ended up working really well for me with just the voices and the ambient sounds (and Old Harry saying the shma surprising himself actually made me tear up, and the infant death nearly did). I remember liking this a lot in GN, too, but I think it may have been even more affecting like this. "Calliope" was one that I didn't really remember from the GN, but found really effective here -- I think it was the combination of voice casting being really good, narration complimenting the dialogue nicely, and the way the wild torrent of ideas with which Maddox is affected just working better in audio than in graphic format. Conversely, I was curious to see how "24 Hours" would work in audio, since I found it deeply, deeply disturbing and thus very effective in graphic format, and it was kind of mixed for me like this. The beginning worked well, introducing the cast of characters, but once it got to the worst things -- the hour-by-hour flashes of what was going on -- it didn't have nearly the same effect. I feel like maybe the visual images piled on top of each other can hit you so fast, and audio has to happen sequentially, so the drawn out descriptions of mutilated bodies and the screams just ended up feeling over the top in a much less effective way, IDK... The duel in Hell also didn't really work for me, possibly for similar reasons, but I also remember it way less well from the book. I quite liked "The Doll's House" cast and the way their dreams worked. I liked the Hob Gadling episode a lot, and the Midsummer Night's Dream one; the former was also a favorite of mine in the books, and I think I liked the performance better in this format than in the book for the latter -- oh, yeah, I definitely did, having now checked my write-up for the GN, where I found it kind of superfluous -- so that was a nice high note to end on. On the other hand, the cat dreams one and the African storytime episodes I remember being meh on in the GN and finding them equally meh here. A bit of a surprise was looking over my write-up for Dream Country and discovering that "Facade" had been my favorite of those stories/episodes; I liked it fine in audio format, but definitely way less than "Midsummer Night's Dream" or "Calliope". I'm guessing that's partly a story that lends itself better to visual medium than audio, vs the other two that benefit from audio a lot, and partly probably that Death's VA spoils it for me.
So, there you go. I'm glad I listened to it, and on the whole enjoyed it. I will probably go for Act II at some point, now that I know the format can work for me.
47 was Ada Palmer's Perhaps the Stars, which got its own post for length.
48. Vera Brosgol, Be Prepared -- I'd read Brosgol's Anya's Ghost some years ago and enjoyed it, especially for the Russian immigrant protagonist angle, which is not something I'd seen before in a kids book, and it's nice -- like, this is not a group that absolutely needs representation, but it's cool to encounter it. Anyway, I had liked that book, but did not know she had another one out until
sophia_sol wrote about it, and then it turned out my library had a copy and I pounced. It was delightful! I actually liked it more than Anya's Ghost, for a couple of reasons. First, I guess I just like the way Brosgol writes the real life parts more than the supernatural angle, and here it's not diluted by the ghost stuff. Second, I'd found Anya kind of bratty, which is probably just a feature of her being a teenager; this book's protagonist is nine, and so her foibles and self-induced troubles were easier for me to sympathize with. Also, I feel like she's just a nicer kid. I hadn't realized until I started reading it and saw that the protagonist was named Vera that the story was autobiographical -- somwhat fictionalized, the author's note explains, with two summers worth of events compressed into a single stay and names changed, but it did feel very true-to-life in that Hyperble-and-a-Half writing about her kid self way, which worked for me really well.
The book was great fun from start to finish. First, the "crumpled note" on the first page totally got me -- I was semi-asleep at the time, but it was realistic enough that I tried to "unstick" the post-it note, LOL. And right as the action beings, the little details are just really great -- "Complicity" the historical doll with the ridiculous numbers of accessories and the "is that the Russian one?" doll conversation, Vera's mom going to school to be an accountant (I don't know if it's meant to be explicitly implied that she's someone who had that profession in the Old Country and needs to reinstate her credentials, but, you know, that's a ver common immigrant trajectory that I don't think I have seen before in a book, especially a kid's book), the way the birthday party group is diverse in some ways (there are two Asian girls and a heavier girl who is getting sent to "fat camp") but definitely not in other ways, and in this circle, foreign-born Vera is still the odd one out. There are a lot of great specific Russian details, too -- all the food (sour cream in borscht, kvass, medovik (child, don't go dissing medovic, though there are definitely better options for birthday cake, like Kievski tort, even though I personally am not a huge fan)), Verusik as a pet name, Vera's puzzlement at the "scarf... thing?" [galstuk] she gets for the scouts camp, actual correct Russian cursive (though I spotted some minor errors in the Russian spelling, actually -- understandable for someone who came to the US when she was 5 and probably speaks it well but doesn't read/write it, similar to my kids and my brother). I was a little surprised by Vera, Phillip, and Masha as the kids' names -- Vera is a common one -- it means "faith" but can have either religious connotations or "faith in the glorious future of communism" type of thing, and Masha is a very common nickname for a range of names, but Phillip is unusual for a Russian expat -- but the fact that they were Orthodox Christians explained that (and I liked the way this is first revealed by the tiny Orthodox cross above the doorway, before you get all the stuff with the actual church). Speaking of church, I loved the little detail where the priest speaking the words of prayer is rendered in cyrillic (it's weird archaic Russian) while Vera's repetition of it is phonetic in Latin characters -- I thought that was an excellent way to convey what she explains later, that she doesn't actually process the words, she's just chanting them like nonsense syllables mostly. Oh, and the camp counselors' exhortation to the kids to speak Russian -- that was very true to life, I bet! Anyway, so I thoroughly enjoyed all the background stuff.
The main story, though, is far more universal -- SPOILERS from here girl who feels she doesn't belong goes to camp, has trouble making friends there, gets into some trouble, ultimately makes a good friend after all. Like
sophia_sol, I appreciated that even after learning all the lessons and making a good friend, Vera's conclusion was still that camp was not for her, because lack of indoor plumbing is gross -- I wouldn't have expected that, but it was nice. I enjoyed the various kiddie travails, trying to buy friendship with her art skills and candy, inadvertently ostracizing another unpopular kid, throwing herself into several different approaches to "winning" camp. The rabies subplot was funny and also relatable, because as a kid I was definitely also terrified of rabies -- I think it's got almost folkloric status with Russians -- and "Dear God please don't let me die of rabies without biting the Sashas first" made me LOL, as did the PSA scene with Kira: "You should still tell a nurse." "I will"* ("*I didn't. This was dumb. If you're bitten by a wild animal, please go see a doctor and not a kid.") I was hoping Vera feeding the chipmunks was leading to the guinea pig being recovered (I was amused by the illicit guinea pig storyline after L's housemate drama).
From the blurb and author's notes, Brosgol was born in 1984, and from the story, she came to the US at age 5 -- which means in 1989, same as us, which was another neat point of commonality. Anyway, I was very happy to read this book, and also to pass it on to L as soon as she got home from college.
49. Alan Dundes and Carl L. Pagter, When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators: More Urban Folklore from the Paperowrk Empire -- this is a reread, actually, of a book I read when I was in uni, two decades ago. Alan Dundes was a popular professor at Cal, whose class I sadly never got to take, but his work came up in the folklore class I did take (with Prof N), and that got me to seek out his books at the university library. I recently mentioned Dundes to B in the context of a different book of his I'd read at the same time - First Prize, Fifteen Years: An Annotated Collection of Romanian Political Jokes, and I looked up whether our city library had a copy of that. It does, but only at the Main and for in-library use only, but this book was borrowable, so I decided to borrow it. It was definitely interesting to revisit!
Like the subtitle says, it's a collection of cartoons, parodies, "office rules", fake business cards, and the like that circulated around offices in the 70s and earlier; copyright is from 1987, and some items are much older than that, but it's basically from the time period about a decade or more before I started experiencing corporate life. It's an academic rather than pop sci text, and rather a large portion of the text that is not the actual folklore examples is hammering at the point that this stuff should, in fact, be considered folklore, because until then I guess it was pretty much ignored, except for a few similar collections in other countries. And it's so interesting, for a couple of different reasons. I first read this book in 1998-2000, at which point email was definitely already a thing, and a lot of this urban folklore type stuff had moved there rather than being passed around via copier. But of course there was no Web 2.0 yet, and so memes in the current internet sense weren't a thing -- and it's so interesting to revisit this book with the knowledge of modern memes and how that kind of stuff seems to be recognized as a field of study now (I really wonder what kind of book Dundes would've written about memes if he'd lived longer; he died in 2005, at age 70 -- there's a lot he could've written yet...)
Anyway, the book itself felt less interesting that I'd remembered, probably partly because the concept of office hohmy as folklore was no longer blowing my mind, since this wasn't my first exposure, and partly because I do think the electronic and collaborative nature of the modern equivalent is such that this kind of humour becomes both more widespread and more refined -- it's easy to modify things that are passed around in electronic format, drop the less funny bits, grow by accretion with new additions, become self-referential -- basically, I feel that I've been spoiled by the internet :) But one of the ways in which the book appealed to me is that, since Dundes was local, a lot of these items were collected locally, and felt more relevant for that. And it was curious to see how some things really haven't changed much in ~40 years -- like the "journalism exam" thing that included the question: "Q: A police officer with a known record of brutality shotfuns a 5-year-old black child for fleeing from the scene of a broken gumball machine. In your story you will emphasize: A: The child's Communist associations." And it was curious to see what things Dundes though he might need to explain for posterity (like what 60 Minutes was), and which things I actually needed explained to me, like a whole bunch of names that didn't ring a bell even when the authors explained who they were / why referencing them was funny (...and I've forgotten them again, LOL). It was interesting to see how different the anti-Republican and anti-Democrat versions of the Twnety Third Psalm parodies were. And some things were just still really funny, like the Western Union telegram ("FUCK YOU || STRONG LETTER TO FOLLOW"). Some things I was much better able to appreciate now, having actually worked in the paperwork empire for a couple of decades, like "Getting things done around here is like mating elephants: 1. It's done at a high level. 2. It is accomplished with a lot of roaring and screaming. 3. AND it takes two years to get any results!!!" and "How to be efficient with fewer violins" (Wordpress blog version), and some things are less applicable to my life now than when I first read the book but are still spot on and hilarious ("Compendium of Ground Rules for Laboratory Workers").
I'd enjoy revisiting the other Dundes titles, too, but doesn't look like that's going to happen -- they seem to be out of print.
50. Naomi Novik, The Last Graduate (Scholomance 2) -- I had a really weird experience with the first book (A Deadly Education, which I read basically one year ago) -- I mostly raced through it but I didn't like it much, other than El herself, and the worldbuilding choices made no sense to me. To be perfectly honest, the (additional) worldbuilding choices in this book make no sense to me either, but going in with adjusted expectations as far as the magic school narrative (i.e. this wasn't one) did help a lot -- I wasn't irritated by the book even when it wasn't working for me. And I still really enjoyed El's narrative voice and her character, and there were also several things newly introduced in this book that I liked a lot.
Let me start with those things: SPOILERS from here! First, the mouse familiars were a delight, in their little bandolier cups, with Precious acting as a chaperone and showing her displeasure and disgust by occasionally biting El. I had not been expecting the mouse familiar to turn out to be an actual character, so that was a pleasant surprise! Second, I was meh on the idea of El/Orion in book 1, but the way it was realized here was actually really fun! The way El is both consistently "ugggh why are you like this" and wanting to jump his bones never stopped being funny to me -- it's a dynamic I enjoy -- and the way they interacted throughout, the ill-fated picnic, the battle couple dynamic during the practice runs, the consummation of their relationship and "'Yes!' I said, in a despairing howl. 'Yes, fine, you utter wanker, you can come to Wales and meet my mum,' and then, I didn't add, he could also be shut up in the yurt for a year until she had cleared the rubbish out of his skull. , El coming to the realization that she wasn't the only thing he wanted, just the first thing he happened to notice enough to want that wasn't killing mals, and the cliffhanger ending -- I really enjoyed all that. I also really liked the training montage of the practice runs, with the growing number of students showing up -- I mean, that would be really fun to see as an actual training montage! And one of my favorite things about this book turned out to be Liesel, the valedictorian, with her terrifying efficiency and almost-but-not-quite willingness to murder: "She then hauled out four separate diagrams with multiple color-coded alternatives and spread them out on the table. 'We must systematically try each of these options over the next six runs.' [...] I'll draw a merciful veil over the rest. Liesel was clearly right, so we couldn't stop her marching us off firmly in the proper direction." Actually, for a while there I was kind of shipping Liesel/El, especially since El mentioned that "I'm only mildly motivated in that direction myself and I absolutely had taken both a first and a second glance at the cleavage and the bouncy golden curls and shiny pink lips" (AO3 doesn't seem to have caught on; while there are two stories featuring Liesel and one of them is femslash, it's not involving El). Also, speaking of new things, I don't actually care about Liu or her relationships much either way, but it was about time Novik wrote an actual F/F relationship, even in passing.
Anyway, I was enjoying the book a lot, reading along quickly, and when my library book disappeared off my Kindle app -- I thought I had one more day -- went ahead and bought a copy for that instant gratification. But then I hit the part of the book that didn't work for me: Liu's plan with the honeypot and everything to execute it, and it started wobbling for me. Just, like, everything about that plan makes no sense to me. Plenty of people have pointed out that Novik's numbers -- mortality rates for kids/teenagers vs number of children people seem to be having -- don't make any sesne, but that part doesn't seem to bother me -- it's just numbers. But the plan to lure all the mals in the world (apparently!!) into the school and thus render the world safe for teenagers outside the school just, and "the effect would last for at least a couple of generations"... I couldn't suspend my disbelief for that. And, like, there's a lot of talk about how "oh, we can't do [more sensible-sounding thing] because our enclaver scientists tried it ten years ago and it didn't work", ruling out thing after thing until a crazy plan is left, and fine, but the plan just doesn't make sense! It seems an awful lot to count on that you will be able to lure in ALL the mals, and if you don't -- as quickly as they seem to reproduce at the Scholomance, surely that population will bounce back. And, just, the way magic works in this world -- what it can do and can't do -- is so arbitrary, and that's really annoying. Like, if you can pipe in nutritious slurry into the kitchens, why not use the same magical technology to keep the agglos supplied with aluminium foil and out of the machinery?
But whatever, we've already established I'm not reading these books for the worldbuilding. I did enjoy El grudgingly shepherding the freshmen she was stuck with ("I could have avoided learning Chinese with absolutely no problem, just by not doing a thing"), and then coming to the realization that she felt duty-bound to extend her protection to everyone, because she could, getting to unleash her destructive powers for the greater good, her growing closeness with Aadhya and Liu, the school coming to work together, including most of the enclavers, like Alfie and the London/Manchester kids who stay to guard the passage through the graduation hall. But conversely I was also amused that it's a girl from the Santa Barbara enclave who thinks the seniors should just walk through the gates and forget all the nonsense with the plan, complete with ending-sentences-on-a-question way that sounded plausibly Cali to me (actually, I was amused that apparently there are at least two enclaves in CA, in Oakland (NorCal) and Santa Barbara).
Quotes:
"It's not even selfish. If you start trying to help other people, you get killed and most likely foul whatever they're doing to save themselves while you're at it."
"I suppose I should've felt sorry for [Sudarat], but I'd rather be sorry for someone who never had luck at all than for someone whose extreme luck ran out unexpectedly. Mum would tell me I could be sorry for both of them, to which I'd say she could be sorry for both of them, but I had a more limited supply of sympathy and had to ration it."
"She was offering more than fair value, even if it wasn't fair that she had it to offer."
"They were all delightedly hoping to give me exactly the post-Scholomance life I'd dreamed of for years. The bastards."
"But I was unenthusiastic about the prospect of being found attractive because I seem like a terrifying creation of dark sorcery instead of despite it."
"my entire gaggle of freshmen were waiting for me to lead them to whatever potential doom I was scheduled to save them from today [...] Zheng and Jingxi and Sunita -- I'd been trying really hard not to learn their names, but it wasn't going very well"
"there were four kids who'd gone missing during the mass exodus from the gym, so almost certainly the quattria had successfully scored itself four separate meals of sobbing kid [...] I suppose I'd traded those four kids for the ones from Shanghai who'd actually attacked me. Was that better because I hadn't meant to do it? Or was I just being a stupid wanker who thought she was too good to look people in the face while I killed them?"
"You couldn't choose people [for an alliance] because you liked them or because you wanted them to live. But we did scrape together good enough reasons to say yes to Jowani."
"I'd never seen Aadhya have a go at an enclaver before. She was[...] just too sensible to do anything that -- well, that stupid. Unlike certain other people who will remain me."
"If you turned back, you didn't save anyone, you just died along with them. At best you died instead of them"
"I was running from them, from any of them who might turn out to be a decent person, who might turn out to be just as special as the people I loved.Who might deserve to live just as much as they did."
"whoever had organized this protective scheme -- three guesses, all Liesel--"
"No human who cared enough to try could have stood it. But the school wasn't human, wasn't soft. It didn't love us. It just wanted to do its job properly, and here we were, dying all the time on its watch."
"I'd been ready to go down to the graduation hall and fight for my life; I'd been ready to fight for the lives of everyone I knew, for the chance of a future. I didn't need this much more to lose."
Anyway, so, despite the worldbuilding still not working for me at all, this was a fun ride, and I could see rereading the bits I like down the line. Definitely looking forward to the conclusion!
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Also, Hugo voting wrapped up -- in fact, I better post the below before the Hugo winners are revealed in just a week -- and while I didn't read anything else for it, I did browse through some other things and voted in the following categories:
Editor Long Form
- Brit Hvide -- of the titles I've read, The City We Became
- Diana M. Pho -- of the titles I've read, Ring Shout. Interesting approach to having author testimonials included, which I kind of like.
- Navah Wolfe -- nothing I've read, still have not forgiven her for Space Opera
- Nivia Evans -- nothing I've read, ever, I think, so just no opinion
- Sarah Guan -- nothing I've read, don't recognize the name, so no opinion
- Sheila E. Gilbert -- nothing I've read this year, had not been impressed with books she'd edited in years past
Editor long form: 2/6 (though I looked through everything in the packet) Diana M. Pho, Brit Hvide
Editor short form:
- Ellen Datlow -- a number of stories here with intriguing titles and authors I should remember to come back to check out later, but also two stories I read and enjoyed, Pinsker's nominated "Two Truths and a Lie" and "Yellow and the Perception of Reality" (which I encountered via Yuletide last year). Plus I've liked her stuff over the years, though I realize it's not meant to be a lifetime achievement award.
- Neil Clarke -- the only one on the list I had an actual firm opinion on 2020 specifically on before I opened up the packets, because I thought the way he had handled the Isabell Fall situation was very decent / making the best out of a very difficult, no-win situation. None of the stories in the packet are ones I've read before, but nominated "Monster" and "Helicopter Story" are also his, and I liked them both.
- Jonathan Strahan -- oh, I didn't realize he was the editor on The Order of PUre Moon Reflected in Water! He was also editor on nominated "A Guide for Working Breeds", which I found reasonably cute. I am also curious to check out both the "Made to Order" (robots) and "Book of Dragon" anthologies, because those sound relevant to my interests.
- Mur Lafferty and S.B. Divya -- I hadn't read any of the stories before, but was pleased to see a new-to-me Sarah Pinsker story on the list. I didn't make it through the whole story before voting closed, so didn't end up putting them on the ballot.
- C.C. Finlay -- nothing included in the packet, so no way to judge
- Sheila Williams -- no stories I recognize on this impressively long list.
Editor short form: Neil Clarke, Ellen Datlow, Jonathan Strahan
Related Work:
- Beowulf -- I don't know how related it is, but I enjoyed it wholeheartedly, so no argument from me if it wins
- Bronycon video by Jenny Nicholson -- another thing I had consumed in the wild; Nicholdson's videos don't always do it for me (though sometimes I do find them very fun), but I definitely enjoyed this one, as a glimpse into a fandom I was aware of by osmosis but had no experience with at all. It was funny and informative and all kinds of good things that I want from a Related Work, so was happy to see it on the list, and happy to rank it pretty high.
- Natalie Luhrs "GRRM Can Fuck Off into the Sun" -- I think I also encountered this in the wild, real time after the Hugo Ceremony; I certainly encountered many other things like it. The inclusion on the ballot initially made me LOL, but as time has gone on, I dunno, I do think I'm kind of meh on the proliferation of what
cahn aptly called "short-form rage" on the Related Works ballot. I hated it that Jeanette Ng's Campbell Acceptance speech was nominated as a Best Related Work (though weirdly hated it less when it won). This is a piece I agree with pretty much wholeheartedly, and yet, I dunno that stuff like this needs to be recognized with a Hugo. And I do believe that the crticism I heard right after nominations were announced (what feels like a hundred years ago), that this particular essay was chosen to make the presenters and transcripts and so on say "fuck off GRRM" over and over is probably correct, and I don't think that's to be encouraged. But, like, that ship has sailed with the nomination. But also I don't want to encourage that sort of thing in the future. But it is certainly Related...
- FIYAHCON -- this sounds like a really cool event! but I wasn't able to get into the linked archives, so I have no way by which to judge it. Alas.
- CoNZealand Fringe -- they did a really good job with their package! Unfortunately, many of the linked programming was either not very interesting to me or included a panelist I was actively trying to avoid. I sampled some stuff, but only ended up watching the beautifully named "And There Was Only One Panel: The Joy of Fanfic, or Squeeing About Our Favourite Tropes", which was a lot of fun.
- Octavia Butler book -- I wasn't going to read a book about an author I never read, but since the full thing was included in PDF, I leafed through it and it looks neat. (I'm not going to vote on the basis of that, though.)
Related work: 4/6 (though I looked through everything in the packet) Beowulf, Bronycon, CoNZealand Fringe, "GRRM Can Fuck Off"
Best Fancast:
- Be the Serpent -- they submitted the deep dive into The Untamed, the episode on war, on soulmates, and on mermaids -- which were actually none of them among my favorites for the year, but eh. I still love this podcast on the whole.
- Claire Rousseau -- I poked through the included playlist. Mostly I'm annoyed that nothing in her video titles (or in video descriptions, apparently?) actually mentions the book titles, which is very counterintuitive to how I do book media. Also I think this BookTube format just doesn't really work for me except in rare cases, and this is not one of those rare exceptions. Everything I heard sounded pretty generic. And also I don't vibe with her taste in books. I backbuttoned out of all the videos I tried within a few minutes.
- Worldbuilding for Masochists -- I was curious to check this out because of the title and the participation of Marshall Ryan Maresca, whose work I've been curious to check out. Barring some frustrating sound issues on the first episode I tried, this was really fun! I liked the discussion and the general vibe and what everyone contributed to the conversation. There was less talking about books and more talking about real world than I had expected, but it was a lot of fun anyway. Definitely planning to listen to more of this!
- Kalanadi -- another BookTuber, but with actual useful video titles which was refreshing. Nothing in the highlights playlist spoke to me, but I poked through the channel. I appreciated the openness about Angel of the Crows being Sherlock wingfic and also really appreciated that the review of it was not just "OMG this book is great!" but an actual list of pros and cons, including some general criticism and some "this is why it didn't work for ME", and I just liked the balance, which seems pretty rare. She also says she hates Aliette de Bodard's angels, which I also appreciated -- not just because it doesn't work for me either, but, like, I think you really need to hear what a reviewer dislikes to be able to find their review useful, and I feel like not enough people do that. I like her stats-driven approach to reading tracking (who's surprised). I would actually like to sample her channel more, but it seems tough to navigate for reasons I don't understand. It helps a lot also that her tastes are similar to mine -- her bookshelf has Vorkosiverse and Discworld piles prominently displayed and Murderbot peeking out. Also, LOL at Dickens hate. Relatable, my friend! Ditto on bouncing off Sanderson. And I randomly came across her channel when I searched for Ada Palmer on YouTube (like you do), because she's also a Terra Ignota fan.
- Skiffy and Fanty Show -- I've listened to them before and didn't care for them much, but I gave the P.Djeli Clark episode a shot. Well, I like listening to P.Djeli Clark, which I already knew from panels, but I find the hosts annoying, so I switched it off after 7 minutes.
- Coode Street -- I listen to them in the Hugo packet every year, for the authors I like. This year's crop included a pandemic lockdown special -- 10 minute chats with authors talking about what they're reading, including Sarah Pinsker (I'll try not to hold her liking Wayward Children against her), Martha Wells (who is a RoL fan! and loved Empress of Salt and Fortune), I also listened to a bit of the chat with Naomi Kritzer, Onyebuchi, and P.Djeli Clark, which was also fun.
Fancast: Be the Serpent, Worldbuilding for Masochists, Kalanadi, Coode Street Podcast, Claire Rousseau, Skiffy and Fanty Show -- but really, I like the first four, and don't care for the last two, but beyond wanting the Serpentcast to win while they're still active, I would be pleased with any of those four getting the recognition.
My full ballot:
Best Novel: Network Effect, Piranesi, Harrow the Ninth, The City We Became, The Relentless Moon, Black Sun (DNF)
Best Novella: Empress of Salt and Fortune, Ring Shout, Riot Baby, Finna, Upright Women Wanted, Come Tumbling Down
Best Novelette: Helicopter Story, Two Truths and a Lie, The Pill, Monster, The Inaccessibility of Heaven, Burn
Best Short Story: Metal Like Blood in the Dark, Little Free Library, A Guide for Working Breeds, The Mermaid Astronaut, Open House on Haunted Hill, Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse
Best Series: Murderbot, Lady Astronaut, Daevabad, October Daye, Interdependency, Poppy War
Best Related Work: Beowulf, The Last Bronycon, CoNZealand Fringe, "GRRM Can Fuck Off"
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Soul, Eurovision
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: She-Ra finale, The Good Place finale
Best Editor, Short Form: Neil Clarke, Ellen Datlow, Jonathan Strahan
Best Editor, Long Form: Diana M. Pho, Brit Hvide
Best Professional Artist: Rovina Cai, Alyssa Winans, Tommy Arnold, John Picacio, Galen Dara, Maurizio Manzieri
Best Fancast: Be The Serpent, Worldbuilding for Masochists, Kalanadi, The Coode Street Podcast, Claire Rousseau’s YouTube channel, The Skiffy and Fanty Show
Best Fan Artist: Sara Felix, Iain J. Clark, Laya Rose, Grace P. Fong, Maya Hahto, Cyan Daly
Lodestar: Raybearer, A Deadly Education, Cemetery Boys, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, Elatsoe, Legendborn
Astounding: Micaiah Johnson, A.K. Larkwood, Emily Tesh, Lindsay Ellis, Jenn Lyons, Simon Jimenez
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Finally, the next Rivers of London book has a title and a pub date (Amongst Our Weapons and April 2022, which is nearer than I'd expected). Yay!
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1160735.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).
fandomtrees (the successor to
fandom_stocking) is happening again this year (reveals are planned for Jan 6). My tree is here :), and there are lots of trees to decorate collected in this super-handy master list.
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Things that I've been reading when I haven't been reading Perhaps the Stars or watching Sudoku videos:
46. Neil Gaiman, Audible's The Sandman, Act I -- I posted my first impressions from the first couple of episodes about a month ago, but have since finished Act I. I think what follows is non-spoilery and also just mostly about audio to GN comparisons, or rather my impressions thereof.
I said at the time that MacAvoy wasn't working for me particularly well as Dream, but he's actually grown on me. I think that as Morpheus becomes more human with his experiences throughout the plot, MacAvoy's take on him worked better for me, though he still doesn't feel inhuman/endless enough for those scenes that lean more heavily in that direction. Anyway, still not something I'm going to rave about, but I liked him on the whole. Sadly, the other Endless we've met so far worked even less well for me. Several people warned me about Death, and... yeah, Kat Denning as Death just doesn't feel at all right for me (I agree with
rachelmanija that the voice actor playing Rose Walker would've made a better Death). I'm not sure I would've recognized her as Darcy-from-MCU's voice if I hadn't already been thinking in the MCU direction after perpetual's comment, but it didn't help that I don't like Darcy, and it made Death sound kind of whiny, which is, like, totally wrong for Death IMO. Despair, on the other hand, was voiced by someone I'm fond of/associate with characters I like, Miriam Margoyles, but she just didn't sound right for Despair. Like, I don't know what I want Despair to sound like, but she is so barely-human-looking in the comics -- the least human-looking of all the Endless, between her hulking shape and being naked -- that I was expecting something unusual from the voice, and in audio she just sounded kind of bummed out. The other one we got was Desire, who is my favorite member of the Endless, and they're fine -- I don't have specific complaints like I do with Death and Despair, but they're still not quite right. I do think it's very good that Audible cast a genderqueer/nonbinary actor to play Desire, but the voice felt very ordinary, kind of petulant (which is right for Desire) but without anything special. I think probably it is very hard to transmit Desire without the visual component of their androgynously beautiful face. So I think that might just be a pitfall of an audio adaptation. I'm still really curious to see how they'll do Delirium, and Destruction (although he can probably be just someone with a booming voice; Delirium's rainbow squiggle speech bubbles are harder to approximate in audio) and wanting to know what they sound like is one of the main reasons I'm probably going to go on to Act II at some point.
Outside of the Endless, there were actually voice castings I liked. Gilbert was my favorite (which was a big deal, as he was one of my favorite characters in the book) -- so kind and Ent-y with his "hoom" noises! He is definitely my favorite in the adaptation (and I also really liked several other characters voiced by his voice actor, Ray Porter: Martin Tenbones was him, too, and Richard Burbadge in the Midsummer Night's Dream episode, and Beelzebub early on (though with heavy overlay of buzzing and stuff)). I really liked Hob Gadling, who is another one of my favorites, so I was very happy to see that. I liked Lucian the Librarian, and Mathew the Raven (Andy Serkis, so of course he was wonderful). And I liked Rose Walker, and continued to like the way Hecate were voiced. Oh, and Lady Johanna Constantine was great, too! I wish there had been more of her, actually. It took me a bit to get used to John Constantine, but once I did, I liked him. Who I never warmed up to though was the Corinthian -- he just sounded completely wrong to me. Again, too ordinary, but also too young, and I don't know... just wrong -- I don't understand this choice at all. Oh, and Abel continued to be annoying, and I found African!Abel annoying, too, so I guess that's a choice more than the individual voice actor, LOL. (And I found that voice actor's other characters unobjectionable.)
It was interesting to see which episodes worked well for me and which didn't, compared to how their GN counterparts worked. I was not overly impressed with the earliest episodes in the GN, but the very first one worked better for me in audio, with the scary chanting. Something that also worked better for me in audio was young Jed Walker's dream adventures -- the way the narrative voice and everyone's dialogue shifted into old-timey comics radio play worked so well for me! where I vaguely recall those bits just being boring/skimmable to me in the comics. "Sound of Her Wings" worked really well for me in audio even though I disliked Death's voice -- the sort of episodic brushing up against lives sketched in briefly ended up working really well for me with just the voices and the ambient sounds (and Old Harry saying the shma surprising himself actually made me tear up, and the infant death nearly did). I remember liking this a lot in GN, too, but I think it may have been even more affecting like this. "Calliope" was one that I didn't really remember from the GN, but found really effective here -- I think it was the combination of voice casting being really good, narration complimenting the dialogue nicely, and the way the wild torrent of ideas with which Maddox is affected just working better in audio than in graphic format. Conversely, I was curious to see how "24 Hours" would work in audio, since I found it deeply, deeply disturbing and thus very effective in graphic format, and it was kind of mixed for me like this. The beginning worked well, introducing the cast of characters, but once it got to the worst things -- the hour-by-hour flashes of what was going on -- it didn't have nearly the same effect. I feel like maybe the visual images piled on top of each other can hit you so fast, and audio has to happen sequentially, so the drawn out descriptions of mutilated bodies and the screams just ended up feeling over the top in a much less effective way, IDK... The duel in Hell also didn't really work for me, possibly for similar reasons, but I also remember it way less well from the book. I quite liked "The Doll's House" cast and the way their dreams worked. I liked the Hob Gadling episode a lot, and the Midsummer Night's Dream one; the former was also a favorite of mine in the books, and I think I liked the performance better in this format than in the book for the latter -- oh, yeah, I definitely did, having now checked my write-up for the GN, where I found it kind of superfluous -- so that was a nice high note to end on. On the other hand, the cat dreams one and the African storytime episodes I remember being meh on in the GN and finding them equally meh here. A bit of a surprise was looking over my write-up for Dream Country and discovering that "Facade" had been my favorite of those stories/episodes; I liked it fine in audio format, but definitely way less than "Midsummer Night's Dream" or "Calliope". I'm guessing that's partly a story that lends itself better to visual medium than audio, vs the other two that benefit from audio a lot, and partly probably that Death's VA spoils it for me.
So, there you go. I'm glad I listened to it, and on the whole enjoyed it. I will probably go for Act II at some point, now that I know the format can work for me.
47 was Ada Palmer's Perhaps the Stars, which got its own post for length.
48. Vera Brosgol, Be Prepared -- I'd read Brosgol's Anya's Ghost some years ago and enjoyed it, especially for the Russian immigrant protagonist angle, which is not something I'd seen before in a kids book, and it's nice -- like, this is not a group that absolutely needs representation, but it's cool to encounter it. Anyway, I had liked that book, but did not know she had another one out until
sophia_sol wrote about it, and then it turned out my library had a copy and I pounced. It was delightful! I actually liked it more than Anya's Ghost, for a couple of reasons. First, I guess I just like the way Brosgol writes the real life parts more than the supernatural angle, and here it's not diluted by the ghost stuff. Second, I'd found Anya kind of bratty, which is probably just a feature of her being a teenager; this book's protagonist is nine, and so her foibles and self-induced troubles were easier for me to sympathize with. Also, I feel like she's just a nicer kid. I hadn't realized until I started reading it and saw that the protagonist was named Vera that the story was autobiographical -- somwhat fictionalized, the author's note explains, with two summers worth of events compressed into a single stay and names changed, but it did feel very true-to-life in that Hyperble-and-a-Half writing about her kid self way, which worked for me really well.
The book was great fun from start to finish. First, the "crumpled note" on the first page totally got me -- I was semi-asleep at the time, but it was realistic enough that I tried to "unstick" the post-it note, LOL. And right as the action beings, the little details are just really great -- "Complicity" the historical doll with the ridiculous numbers of accessories and the "is that the Russian one?" doll conversation, Vera's mom going to school to be an accountant (I don't know if it's meant to be explicitly implied that she's someone who had that profession in the Old Country and needs to reinstate her credentials, but, you know, that's a ver common immigrant trajectory that I don't think I have seen before in a book, especially a kid's book), the way the birthday party group is diverse in some ways (there are two Asian girls and a heavier girl who is getting sent to "fat camp") but definitely not in other ways, and in this circle, foreign-born Vera is still the odd one out. There are a lot of great specific Russian details, too -- all the food (sour cream in borscht, kvass, medovik (child, don't go dissing medovic, though there are definitely better options for birthday cake, like Kievski tort, even though I personally am not a huge fan)), Verusik as a pet name, Vera's puzzlement at the "scarf... thing?" [galstuk] she gets for the scouts camp, actual correct Russian cursive (though I spotted some minor errors in the Russian spelling, actually -- understandable for someone who came to the US when she was 5 and probably speaks it well but doesn't read/write it, similar to my kids and my brother). I was a little surprised by Vera, Phillip, and Masha as the kids' names -- Vera is a common one -- it means "faith" but can have either religious connotations or "faith in the glorious future of communism" type of thing, and Masha is a very common nickname for a range of names, but Phillip is unusual for a Russian expat -- but the fact that they were Orthodox Christians explained that (and I liked the way this is first revealed by the tiny Orthodox cross above the doorway, before you get all the stuff with the actual church). Speaking of church, I loved the little detail where the priest speaking the words of prayer is rendered in cyrillic (it's weird archaic Russian) while Vera's repetition of it is phonetic in Latin characters -- I thought that was an excellent way to convey what she explains later, that she doesn't actually process the words, she's just chanting them like nonsense syllables mostly. Oh, and the camp counselors' exhortation to the kids to speak Russian -- that was very true to life, I bet! Anyway, so I thoroughly enjoyed all the background stuff.
The main story, though, is far more universal -- SPOILERS from here girl who feels she doesn't belong goes to camp, has trouble making friends there, gets into some trouble, ultimately makes a good friend after all. Like
sophia_sol, I appreciated that even after learning all the lessons and making a good friend, Vera's conclusion was still that camp was not for her, because lack of indoor plumbing is gross -- I wouldn't have expected that, but it was nice. I enjoyed the various kiddie travails, trying to buy friendship with her art skills and candy, inadvertently ostracizing another unpopular kid, throwing herself into several different approaches to "winning" camp. The rabies subplot was funny and also relatable, because as a kid I was definitely also terrified of rabies -- I think it's got almost folkloric status with Russians -- and "Dear God please don't let me die of rabies without biting the Sashas first" made me LOL, as did the PSA scene with Kira: "You should still tell a nurse." "I will"* ("*I didn't. This was dumb. If you're bitten by a wild animal, please go see a doctor and not a kid.") I was hoping Vera feeding the chipmunks was leading to the guinea pig being recovered (I was amused by the illicit guinea pig storyline after L's housemate drama).
From the blurb and author's notes, Brosgol was born in 1984, and from the story, she came to the US at age 5 -- which means in 1989, same as us, which was another neat point of commonality. Anyway, I was very happy to read this book, and also to pass it on to L as soon as she got home from college.
49. Alan Dundes and Carl L. Pagter, When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators: More Urban Folklore from the Paperowrk Empire -- this is a reread, actually, of a book I read when I was in uni, two decades ago. Alan Dundes was a popular professor at Cal, whose class I sadly never got to take, but his work came up in the folklore class I did take (with Prof N), and that got me to seek out his books at the university library. I recently mentioned Dundes to B in the context of a different book of his I'd read at the same time - First Prize, Fifteen Years: An Annotated Collection of Romanian Political Jokes, and I looked up whether our city library had a copy of that. It does, but only at the Main and for in-library use only, but this book was borrowable, so I decided to borrow it. It was definitely interesting to revisit!
Like the subtitle says, it's a collection of cartoons, parodies, "office rules", fake business cards, and the like that circulated around offices in the 70s and earlier; copyright is from 1987, and some items are much older than that, but it's basically from the time period about a decade or more before I started experiencing corporate life. It's an academic rather than pop sci text, and rather a large portion of the text that is not the actual folklore examples is hammering at the point that this stuff should, in fact, be considered folklore, because until then I guess it was pretty much ignored, except for a few similar collections in other countries. And it's so interesting, for a couple of different reasons. I first read this book in 1998-2000, at which point email was definitely already a thing, and a lot of this urban folklore type stuff had moved there rather than being passed around via copier. But of course there was no Web 2.0 yet, and so memes in the current internet sense weren't a thing -- and it's so interesting to revisit this book with the knowledge of modern memes and how that kind of stuff seems to be recognized as a field of study now (I really wonder what kind of book Dundes would've written about memes if he'd lived longer; he died in 2005, at age 70 -- there's a lot he could've written yet...)
Anyway, the book itself felt less interesting that I'd remembered, probably partly because the concept of office hohmy as folklore was no longer blowing my mind, since this wasn't my first exposure, and partly because I do think the electronic and collaborative nature of the modern equivalent is such that this kind of humour becomes both more widespread and more refined -- it's easy to modify things that are passed around in electronic format, drop the less funny bits, grow by accretion with new additions, become self-referential -- basically, I feel that I've been spoiled by the internet :) But one of the ways in which the book appealed to me is that, since Dundes was local, a lot of these items were collected locally, and felt more relevant for that. And it was curious to see how some things really haven't changed much in ~40 years -- like the "journalism exam" thing that included the question: "Q: A police officer with a known record of brutality shotfuns a 5-year-old black child for fleeing from the scene of a broken gumball machine. In your story you will emphasize: A: The child's Communist associations." And it was curious to see what things Dundes though he might need to explain for posterity (like what 60 Minutes was), and which things I actually needed explained to me, like a whole bunch of names that didn't ring a bell even when the authors explained who they were / why referencing them was funny (...and I've forgotten them again, LOL). It was interesting to see how different the anti-Republican and anti-Democrat versions of the Twnety Third Psalm parodies were. And some things were just still really funny, like the Western Union telegram ("FUCK YOU || STRONG LETTER TO FOLLOW"). Some things I was much better able to appreciate now, having actually worked in the paperwork empire for a couple of decades, like "Getting things done around here is like mating elephants: 1. It's done at a high level. 2. It is accomplished with a lot of roaring and screaming. 3. AND it takes two years to get any results!!!" and "How to be efficient with fewer violins" (Wordpress blog version), and some things are less applicable to my life now than when I first read the book but are still spot on and hilarious ("Compendium of Ground Rules for Laboratory Workers").
I'd enjoy revisiting the other Dundes titles, too, but doesn't look like that's going to happen -- they seem to be out of print.
50. Naomi Novik, The Last Graduate (Scholomance 2) -- I had a really weird experience with the first book (A Deadly Education, which I read basically one year ago) -- I mostly raced through it but I didn't like it much, other than El herself, and the worldbuilding choices made no sense to me. To be perfectly honest, the (additional) worldbuilding choices in this book make no sense to me either, but going in with adjusted expectations as far as the magic school narrative (i.e. this wasn't one) did help a lot -- I wasn't irritated by the book even when it wasn't working for me. And I still really enjoyed El's narrative voice and her character, and there were also several things newly introduced in this book that I liked a lot.
Let me start with those things: SPOILERS from here! First, the mouse familiars were a delight, in their little bandolier cups, with Precious acting as a chaperone and showing her displeasure and disgust by occasionally biting El. I had not been expecting the mouse familiar to turn out to be an actual character, so that was a pleasant surprise! Second, I was meh on the idea of El/Orion in book 1, but the way it was realized here was actually really fun! The way El is both consistently "ugggh why are you like this" and wanting to jump his bones never stopped being funny to me -- it's a dynamic I enjoy -- and the way they interacted throughout, the ill-fated picnic, the battle couple dynamic during the practice runs, the consummation of their relationship and "'Yes!' I said, in a despairing howl. 'Yes, fine, you utter wanker, you can come to Wales and meet my mum,' and then, I didn't add, he could also be shut up in the yurt for a year until she had cleared the rubbish out of his skull. , El coming to the realization that she wasn't the only thing he wanted, just the first thing he happened to notice enough to want that wasn't killing mals, and the cliffhanger ending -- I really enjoyed all that. I also really liked the training montage of the practice runs, with the growing number of students showing up -- I mean, that would be really fun to see as an actual training montage! And one of my favorite things about this book turned out to be Liesel, the valedictorian, with her terrifying efficiency and almost-but-not-quite willingness to murder: "She then hauled out four separate diagrams with multiple color-coded alternatives and spread them out on the table. 'We must systematically try each of these options over the next six runs.' [...] I'll draw a merciful veil over the rest. Liesel was clearly right, so we couldn't stop her marching us off firmly in the proper direction." Actually, for a while there I was kind of shipping Liesel/El, especially since El mentioned that "I'm only mildly motivated in that direction myself and I absolutely had taken both a first and a second glance at the cleavage and the bouncy golden curls and shiny pink lips" (AO3 doesn't seem to have caught on; while there are two stories featuring Liesel and one of them is femslash, it's not involving El). Also, speaking of new things, I don't actually care about Liu or her relationships much either way, but it was about time Novik wrote an actual F/F relationship, even in passing.
Anyway, I was enjoying the book a lot, reading along quickly, and when my library book disappeared off my Kindle app -- I thought I had one more day -- went ahead and bought a copy for that instant gratification. But then I hit the part of the book that didn't work for me: Liu's plan with the honeypot and everything to execute it, and it started wobbling for me. Just, like, everything about that plan makes no sense to me. Plenty of people have pointed out that Novik's numbers -- mortality rates for kids/teenagers vs number of children people seem to be having -- don't make any sesne, but that part doesn't seem to bother me -- it's just numbers. But the plan to lure all the mals in the world (apparently!!) into the school and thus render the world safe for teenagers outside the school just, and "the effect would last for at least a couple of generations"... I couldn't suspend my disbelief for that. And, like, there's a lot of talk about how "oh, we can't do [more sensible-sounding thing] because our enclaver scientists tried it ten years ago and it didn't work", ruling out thing after thing until a crazy plan is left, and fine, but the plan just doesn't make sense! It seems an awful lot to count on that you will be able to lure in ALL the mals, and if you don't -- as quickly as they seem to reproduce at the Scholomance, surely that population will bounce back. And, just, the way magic works in this world -- what it can do and can't do -- is so arbitrary, and that's really annoying. Like, if you can pipe in nutritious slurry into the kitchens, why not use the same magical technology to keep the agglos supplied with aluminium foil and out of the machinery?
But whatever, we've already established I'm not reading these books for the worldbuilding. I did enjoy El grudgingly shepherding the freshmen she was stuck with ("I could have avoided learning Chinese with absolutely no problem, just by not doing a thing"), and then coming to the realization that she felt duty-bound to extend her protection to everyone, because she could, getting to unleash her destructive powers for the greater good, her growing closeness with Aadhya and Liu, the school coming to work together, including most of the enclavers, like Alfie and the London/Manchester kids who stay to guard the passage through the graduation hall. But conversely I was also amused that it's a girl from the Santa Barbara enclave who thinks the seniors should just walk through the gates and forget all the nonsense with the plan, complete with ending-sentences-on-a-question way that sounded plausibly Cali to me (actually, I was amused that apparently there are at least two enclaves in CA, in Oakland (NorCal) and Santa Barbara).
Quotes:
"It's not even selfish. If you start trying to help other people, you get killed and most likely foul whatever they're doing to save themselves while you're at it."
"I suppose I should've felt sorry for [Sudarat], but I'd rather be sorry for someone who never had luck at all than for someone whose extreme luck ran out unexpectedly. Mum would tell me I could be sorry for both of them, to which I'd say she could be sorry for both of them, but I had a more limited supply of sympathy and had to ration it."
"She was offering more than fair value, even if it wasn't fair that she had it to offer."
"They were all delightedly hoping to give me exactly the post-Scholomance life I'd dreamed of for years. The bastards."
"But I was unenthusiastic about the prospect of being found attractive because I seem like a terrifying creation of dark sorcery instead of despite it."
"my entire gaggle of freshmen were waiting for me to lead them to whatever potential doom I was scheduled to save them from today [...] Zheng and Jingxi and Sunita -- I'd been trying really hard not to learn their names, but it wasn't going very well"
"there were four kids who'd gone missing during the mass exodus from the gym, so almost certainly the quattria had successfully scored itself four separate meals of sobbing kid [...] I suppose I'd traded those four kids for the ones from Shanghai who'd actually attacked me. Was that better because I hadn't meant to do it? Or was I just being a stupid wanker who thought she was too good to look people in the face while I killed them?"
"You couldn't choose people [for an alliance] because you liked them or because you wanted them to live. But we did scrape together good enough reasons to say yes to Jowani."
"I'd never seen Aadhya have a go at an enclaver before. She was[...] just too sensible to do anything that -- well, that stupid. Unlike certain other people who will remain me."
"If you turned back, you didn't save anyone, you just died along with them. At best you died instead of them"
"I was running from them, from any of them who might turn out to be a decent person, who might turn out to be just as special as the people I loved.Who might deserve to live just as much as they did."
"whoever had organized this protective scheme -- three guesses, all Liesel--"
"No human who cared enough to try could have stood it. But the school wasn't human, wasn't soft. It didn't love us. It just wanted to do its job properly, and here we were, dying all the time on its watch."
"I'd been ready to go down to the graduation hall and fight for my life; I'd been ready to fight for the lives of everyone I knew, for the chance of a future. I didn't need this much more to lose."
Anyway, so, despite the worldbuilding still not working for me at all, this was a fun ride, and I could see rereading the bits I like down the line. Definitely looking forward to the conclusion!
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Also, Hugo voting wrapped up -- in fact, I better post the below before the Hugo winners are revealed in just a week -- and while I didn't read anything else for it, I did browse through some other things and voted in the following categories:
Editor Long Form
- Brit Hvide -- of the titles I've read, The City We Became
- Diana M. Pho -- of the titles I've read, Ring Shout. Interesting approach to having author testimonials included, which I kind of like.
- Navah Wolfe -- nothing I've read, still have not forgiven her for Space Opera
- Nivia Evans -- nothing I've read, ever, I think, so just no opinion
- Sarah Guan -- nothing I've read, don't recognize the name, so no opinion
- Sheila E. Gilbert -- nothing I've read this year, had not been impressed with books she'd edited in years past
Editor long form: 2/6 (though I looked through everything in the packet) Diana M. Pho, Brit Hvide
Editor short form:
- Ellen Datlow -- a number of stories here with intriguing titles and authors I should remember to come back to check out later, but also two stories I read and enjoyed, Pinsker's nominated "Two Truths and a Lie" and "Yellow and the Perception of Reality" (which I encountered via Yuletide last year). Plus I've liked her stuff over the years, though I realize it's not meant to be a lifetime achievement award.
- Neil Clarke -- the only one on the list I had an actual firm opinion on 2020 specifically on before I opened up the packets, because I thought the way he had handled the Isabell Fall situation was very decent / making the best out of a very difficult, no-win situation. None of the stories in the packet are ones I've read before, but nominated "Monster" and "Helicopter Story" are also his, and I liked them both.
- Jonathan Strahan -- oh, I didn't realize he was the editor on The Order of PUre Moon Reflected in Water! He was also editor on nominated "A Guide for Working Breeds", which I found reasonably cute. I am also curious to check out both the "Made to Order" (robots) and "Book of Dragon" anthologies, because those sound relevant to my interests.
- Mur Lafferty and S.B. Divya -- I hadn't read any of the stories before, but was pleased to see a new-to-me Sarah Pinsker story on the list. I didn't make it through the whole story before voting closed, so didn't end up putting them on the ballot.
- C.C. Finlay -- nothing included in the packet, so no way to judge
- Sheila Williams -- no stories I recognize on this impressively long list.
Editor short form: Neil Clarke, Ellen Datlow, Jonathan Strahan
Related Work:
- Beowulf -- I don't know how related it is, but I enjoyed it wholeheartedly, so no argument from me if it wins
- Bronycon video by Jenny Nicholson -- another thing I had consumed in the wild; Nicholdson's videos don't always do it for me (though sometimes I do find them very fun), but I definitely enjoyed this one, as a glimpse into a fandom I was aware of by osmosis but had no experience with at all. It was funny and informative and all kinds of good things that I want from a Related Work, so was happy to see it on the list, and happy to rank it pretty high.
- Natalie Luhrs "GRRM Can Fuck Off into the Sun" -- I think I also encountered this in the wild, real time after the Hugo Ceremony; I certainly encountered many other things like it. The inclusion on the ballot initially made me LOL, but as time has gone on, I dunno, I do think I'm kind of meh on the proliferation of what
cahn aptly called "short-form rage" on the Related Works ballot. I hated it that Jeanette Ng's Campbell Acceptance speech was nominated as a Best Related Work (though weirdly hated it less when it won). This is a piece I agree with pretty much wholeheartedly, and yet, I dunno that stuff like this needs to be recognized with a Hugo. And I do believe that the crticism I heard right after nominations were announced (what feels like a hundred years ago), that this particular essay was chosen to make the presenters and transcripts and so on say "fuck off GRRM" over and over is probably correct, and I don't think that's to be encouraged. But, like, that ship has sailed with the nomination. But also I don't want to encourage that sort of thing in the future. But it is certainly Related...
- FIYAHCON -- this sounds like a really cool event! but I wasn't able to get into the linked archives, so I have no way by which to judge it. Alas.
- CoNZealand Fringe -- they did a really good job with their package! Unfortunately, many of the linked programming was either not very interesting to me or included a panelist I was actively trying to avoid. I sampled some stuff, but only ended up watching the beautifully named "And There Was Only One Panel: The Joy of Fanfic, or Squeeing About Our Favourite Tropes", which was a lot of fun.
- Octavia Butler book -- I wasn't going to read a book about an author I never read, but since the full thing was included in PDF, I leafed through it and it looks neat. (I'm not going to vote on the basis of that, though.)
Related work: 4/6 (though I looked through everything in the packet) Beowulf, Bronycon, CoNZealand Fringe, "GRRM Can Fuck Off"
Best Fancast:
- Be the Serpent -- they submitted the deep dive into The Untamed, the episode on war, on soulmates, and on mermaids -- which were actually none of them among my favorites for the year, but eh. I still love this podcast on the whole.
- Claire Rousseau -- I poked through the included playlist. Mostly I'm annoyed that nothing in her video titles (or in video descriptions, apparently?) actually mentions the book titles, which is very counterintuitive to how I do book media. Also I think this BookTube format just doesn't really work for me except in rare cases, and this is not one of those rare exceptions. Everything I heard sounded pretty generic. And also I don't vibe with her taste in books. I backbuttoned out of all the videos I tried within a few minutes.
- Worldbuilding for Masochists -- I was curious to check this out because of the title and the participation of Marshall Ryan Maresca, whose work I've been curious to check out. Barring some frustrating sound issues on the first episode I tried, this was really fun! I liked the discussion and the general vibe and what everyone contributed to the conversation. There was less talking about books and more talking about real world than I had expected, but it was a lot of fun anyway. Definitely planning to listen to more of this!
- Kalanadi -- another BookTuber, but with actual useful video titles which was refreshing. Nothing in the highlights playlist spoke to me, but I poked through the channel. I appreciated the openness about Angel of the Crows being Sherlock wingfic and also really appreciated that the review of it was not just "OMG this book is great!" but an actual list of pros and cons, including some general criticism and some "this is why it didn't work for ME", and I just liked the balance, which seems pretty rare. She also says she hates Aliette de Bodard's angels, which I also appreciated -- not just because it doesn't work for me either, but, like, I think you really need to hear what a reviewer dislikes to be able to find their review useful, and I feel like not enough people do that. I like her stats-driven approach to reading tracking (who's surprised). I would actually like to sample her channel more, but it seems tough to navigate for reasons I don't understand. It helps a lot also that her tastes are similar to mine -- her bookshelf has Vorkosiverse and Discworld piles prominently displayed and Murderbot peeking out. Also, LOL at Dickens hate. Relatable, my friend! Ditto on bouncing off Sanderson. And I randomly came across her channel when I searched for Ada Palmer on YouTube (like you do), because she's also a Terra Ignota fan.
- Skiffy and Fanty Show -- I've listened to them before and didn't care for them much, but I gave the P.Djeli Clark episode a shot. Well, I like listening to P.Djeli Clark, which I already knew from panels, but I find the hosts annoying, so I switched it off after 7 minutes.
- Coode Street -- I listen to them in the Hugo packet every year, for the authors I like. This year's crop included a pandemic lockdown special -- 10 minute chats with authors talking about what they're reading, including Sarah Pinsker (I'll try not to hold her liking Wayward Children against her), Martha Wells (who is a RoL fan! and loved Empress of Salt and Fortune), I also listened to a bit of the chat with Naomi Kritzer, Onyebuchi, and P.Djeli Clark, which was also fun.
Fancast: Be the Serpent, Worldbuilding for Masochists, Kalanadi, Coode Street Podcast, Claire Rousseau, Skiffy and Fanty Show -- but really, I like the first four, and don't care for the last two, but beyond wanting the Serpentcast to win while they're still active, I would be pleased with any of those four getting the recognition.
My full ballot:
Best Novel: Network Effect, Piranesi, Harrow the Ninth, The City We Became, The Relentless Moon, Black Sun (DNF)
Best Novella: Empress of Salt and Fortune, Ring Shout, Riot Baby, Finna, Upright Women Wanted, Come Tumbling Down
Best Novelette: Helicopter Story, Two Truths and a Lie, The Pill, Monster, The Inaccessibility of Heaven, Burn
Best Short Story: Metal Like Blood in the Dark, Little Free Library, A Guide for Working Breeds, The Mermaid Astronaut, Open House on Haunted Hill, Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse
Best Series: Murderbot, Lady Astronaut, Daevabad, October Daye, Interdependency, Poppy War
Best Related Work: Beowulf, The Last Bronycon, CoNZealand Fringe, "GRRM Can Fuck Off"
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Soul, Eurovision
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: She-Ra finale, The Good Place finale
Best Editor, Short Form: Neil Clarke, Ellen Datlow, Jonathan Strahan
Best Editor, Long Form: Diana M. Pho, Brit Hvide
Best Professional Artist: Rovina Cai, Alyssa Winans, Tommy Arnold, John Picacio, Galen Dara, Maurizio Manzieri
Best Fancast: Be The Serpent, Worldbuilding for Masochists, Kalanadi, The Coode Street Podcast, Claire Rousseau’s YouTube channel, The Skiffy and Fanty Show
Best Fan Artist: Sara Felix, Iain J. Clark, Laya Rose, Grace P. Fong, Maya Hahto, Cyan Daly
Lodestar: Raybearer, A Deadly Education, Cemetery Boys, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, Elatsoe, Legendborn
Astounding: Micaiah Johnson, A.K. Larkwood, Emily Tesh, Lindsay Ellis, Jenn Lyons, Simon Jimenez
*
Finally, the next Rivers of London book has a title and a pub date (Amongst Our Weapons and April 2022, which is nearer than I'd expected). Yay!
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1160735.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).