Yuletide reveals, 2021 in books, and Snowflake
Yuletide reveals!
I had been very eager to learn who had been the authors of my fabulous gifts (
florahart for Other Side of Life and
misura for Food for Food, as I'd suspected -- it is such a pleasure to have a mystery gift from authors whose even-not-for-me writing I love!). I was happy to see both of my gift stories rec'd (by people other than me also, I mean), despite them being in tiny tiny fandoms even for Yuletide -- they absolutely deserve all the recognition!
And also I've been eager to claim this thing, which I've been referring to as "my chemistry nonsense" for the last month or so:
F is for Foul Play, Cl is for Clue (8715 words) by hamsterwoman
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: Periodic Table (Anthropomorphic), Object and Concept Anthropomorphism
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Fluorine Element (Anthropomorphic), Chlorine Element (Anthropomorphic), Fluorine (Periodic Table anthropomorphic), Chlorine (Periodic Table anthropomorphic)
Additional Tags: Mystery
Summary:
“A terrible crime has been committed!” cried Inspector Carbon, bursting into the banquet hall.
“Listen,” said Fluorine, backing away from Barium and twitching his cuffs straight, “it wasn’t me, I wasn’t there, and you can’t prove anything. Anyway, what got nicked this time? By someone other than me.”
“If only it were a matter of simple electron theft!” Inspector Carbon boomed. “No, dear guests -- I do not mean to shock or frighten you, but there has been… a murder.”
So, when I was browsing the Yuletide tagset when it first opened, I had been delighted not only to see "Periodic Table (Anthropomorphic)" as a nominated fandom, which is already very much up my alley, but to see the specific character of Fluorine nominated, because Fluorine -- well, as I've been telling Best Chat, Fluorine has been my "problematic fave" since I first found out about HF and xenon fluorides in freshman chem, 25 years ago. (In fact "problematic fave" was the title of my G!doc document where I kept the draft and the many random notes.) Two people ended up requesting this most marvelous of fandoms, and I ended up matching on it, and was also delighted about that.
My recipient wanted a gen story specifically, which was great, actually, but left me with the question of what to do for plot, since there wasn't a literary canon to fall back on the shape of the story for, the way I had always been able to do with Harriet or even 'Monday'. But browsing through
seal_girl's DW and AO3 pointed me in the direction of mysteries, and then I was like, hey, a mystery has a well defined story shape and some stock character types, I bet I could do something with that -- really I was just looking for a story structure on which I could hang a bunch of chemistry puns, but also, as I confided to Best Chat, "My crazy stretch goal idea is a murder mystery, but I have zero idea how to plot a mystery. It's just, they're both so deadly!" Right from the start my idea was, therefore, that F and Cl would be suspects who had to team up to clear their names.
Spoilers for the story I was actually originally going down the path of researching a way that a person could be killed by chlorine and/or fluorine (there are many), but I couldn't make a story with both humans and elements in it fit in my brain, both because of humans and anthropomorphic elements coexisting, and because then I would have to go down the path of deadly compounds, and I wasn't sure how exactly to make compounds work in an anthropomorphic elements fic either. So I was moving away from that idea and towards the victim being another element, but how do elements "die"? Which is when I hit on the idea of nuclear decay. At which point cyanshadow said, "Someone really did figure out how to turn Lead into Gold!" -- and while I didn't end up using those elements, that was the genesis of the "twist" that there was no actual murder, switched identities, etc. which eventually turned into the final shape of the thing. /spoilers
I went and (re)read Mary Soon Lee's "Elemental Haiku" for inspiration -- this ended up furnishing epigraphs for the story, and helping with Cl's characterization a lot, because while I had a very clear view of what F was like, it took me longer to "find" Chlorine, and it also helped me pick some traits to focus on for several other characters, including Astatine, Cesium, and Krypton. Really, I feel like the fic is as much for the canon of Mary Soon Lee's "Elemental Haiku" as it is for the Periodic Table.
Anyway, so I got that far before it was even Halloween, and I did a bunch of reading up on the bits of chemistry I was planning to use and scribbling down random chemistry jokes I wanted to fit in, but then I couldn't actually WRITE anything, because I didn't have any feeling for the shape of it as a story -- it turned out to be much harder to start writing in a canon that didn't have an existing literary "body", as such. Because while my canon review definitely reminded me of how much I love chemistry/fluorine, it was not actually helpful with the writing part, which rereading the source material had always been previously. Oops... So then I decided that what I needed was to read mystery short stories for inspiration, and managed to check out a collection of Agatha Christie short stories, which I'd read before but not in about three decades, since my mystery phase was quite a while ago. That turned out to do the trick -- after reading a couple, I felt like I had a framework to work with, as far as the beats and how it needed to unfold, and even just the "flavor" of the writing (a kind of sardonic, light-touch omniscient), and then the story took off. (I was also super pleased when several commenters mentioned Christie flavor specifically in their praise, because that had been exactly what I'd been aiming for without that being officially part of the canon, of course.)
Once I had the flavor and shape of the story from Dame Agatha, I actually also had to plot it out, which is something I never do voluntarily, because it's just no fun writing if I already know exactly what will be happening. But in this case I actually had to write out first what had been happening behind the scenes -- spoilers what Astatine was doing and why, how he framed Our Heroes, what was happening with Polonium, etc. -- and then outline everything a second time, to show what it looked like from the POV of the guests, throwing in some clues/foreshadowing, how the eureka moment would happen, confrontations, etc./spoilers Once all that was done, the story flowed pretty easily, especially when it came to Fluorine being his unrepentant disastrous self.
I did run into some things that were harder/trickier than with my previous fics. The first was that the Grand Reveal scene as I first wrote it was way too long and bored me deeply, but I couldn't tell if that was because I already knew everything revelaed in it or if it was just long and boring. With beta consultation, I cut out a bunch of things that were either already clear enough from the rest of the story or not actually important to know in detail and got it into a decent shape. Then both cyanshadow and L, whom I made read the story once she was home from uni, pointed out that my actual perpetrator's motive was unclear -- which it had been to me also -- so I had to figure that out and put that in. I also discovered that I had no idea how to write an ending for this story XD See, my previous Yuletide fics, Harriet and 'Monday', those canons have an actual signature way of ending each installment, so all I had to do for my stories was wind it up so they ended with the correct set of words in meaningful fashion, and voila, the end. I couldn't do that here, so I just came up with something that was a natural stopping point, hoped that inspiration would strike for something better, but just rolled with what I had in the end (since my betas said it was a decent way to end the story). But who knew endings were so hard!
The last editing challenge I blame on Ada Palmer. Elements, of course, do not have a gender. I decided on male Fluorine and Chlorine, and then made some other characters male as well, either because they fit the tropes I was going for (the bumbling policeman, the brilliant amateur detective), or because I didn't want my "bad guy" to be female, or because the plot required it. But the gender balance felt weird -- too many dudes for a story that had no reason for it -- so I decided I would later go through and play around with the pronouns of elements until I liked the balance and/or tropes and/or type of relationships better. The notable changes I made in editing in this space was making Silicon and Cesium female, making Beryllium male, making Neon female because I wanted at least one of the noble gases to be and that was the easiest one to switch, and then going back and forth on Tungsten and Titanium: they were both male in the first draft, but I knew I wanted one of them to be female. Originally I made Tungsten female (by a rand.org coin toss), but cyanshadow pointed out that making both Tungsten and Neon female made it less clear that Fluorine had a bunch of affairs with both male and female elements, which i definitely wanted to come through, so I made Tungsten male again and made Titanium female instead. And hopefully actually cleaned up all my stray pronouns, heh. Anyway, this was certainly an interesting way to write -- seeing how the story feels slightly different when you flip a pronoun switch for someone -- which is not something I'd ever done before, but I'm glad this story made me experience it.
I should also remark that one of the other key contributions of my betas, Cyan and L, was going through the story and being like, "This seems like it should also be a chemistry pun..." -- which I tried to oblige wherever possible. And then some additional chemistry puns just occurred to me on their own in editing (the "the only way Carbon could have a valid point" line, which was called out by several commenters, was one of those, and I'm super pleased with it).
Oh, and then I still needed a title. This was also harder than with previous fics. My usual go-to is a terrible pun, but I couldn't think of any good chemistry puns for once -- possibly I'd used yup them all on the fic itself. L, who is usually very good at titles, wasn't much help either -- we went through a list of Agatha Christie titles to see if we could pastiche something from there (but let's be real, Sarah Pinsker has already achieved the apotheosis of that). Lots of them were nursery rhyme based, so I actually looked up "chemistry nursery rhymes" and found that they exist, but while I enjoyed reading them, that didn't help me with a title either. Finally, I let go of the Agatha Christie idea and settled instead on Sue Grafton, which L and Best Chat agreed worked pretty well, so here we are.
For my record keeping: I had no idea what to expect from writing in what is both a 5 minute fandom and kind of an obscure one anyway. I think it results in lower kudos to hits ratio (though more hits overall, and thus more kudos). This story ended the anon period with 109 hits, 28 kudos, 5 bookmarks, and 13 comment threads (from 12 distinct people) -- definitely highest on comment threads than anything else I've written for Yuletide, and I think, if I'm back-calculating correctly (because I wasn't keeping track of my first Harriet story right at reveals) also highest on bookmarks and kudos as well. And now that it's just after reveals, it's already in my top 5 for kudos, bookmarks (tied for second), and comments (tied for first). I guess it is less obscure than a contemporary children's book about hamsters, a Russian fantasy from half a century ago, or Dragaera doggerel, but O.o
I saw a rec for it on my flist, which is always lovely (and serves as further evidence that one is friends with people of discerning taste ;), and then saw later that it had also been rec'd on the Yuletide Discord early on, which probably explains the bursts of hits and occasional kudos. Also, CAPSLOCK TITLE COALIE liked my title! :D (which was especially good to see because when I was casting about for a title, I was specifically thinking of their zany over-the-top titles for inspiration -- it seemed to fit Fluorine's chaos energy for this particular fic :D)
This wasn't the longest thing I've written for Yuletide (that would be Surrounding Wednesday), nor the one I found most intricate to write (that would also be the 'Monday' fic), but somehow writing this fic just took it out of me -- I didn't have any brainspace for not just treats, but anything else creative either. Or maybe that's just the effect of writing a long thing as my assignment? I think The Snowl Queen -- which is just about the same length if you ignore the second chapter of the chemistry nonsense which is not fic but just chemistry links -- had a similar effect, IIRC.) Hopefully my ability to be even a little bit creative returns at some point now that Yuletide season is done...
*
2021 book list:
1. Katherine Addison, The Angel of the Crows
2. Everina Maxwell, Winter's Orbit
3. Rhys Ford, Dim Sum Asylum
4. K.D. Edwards, The Hanged Man
5. K.D. Edwards, The Sunken Mall
6. K.A.Larkwood, The Unspoken Name
7. Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol
8. Martha Wells, Exit Strategy
9. Martha Wells, Network Effect
10. C.M.Waggoner, A Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry
11. Ben Aaronovitch, What Abigail Did That Summer
12. Jessie Q. Sutanto, Dial A for Aunties
13. Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace
14. Tochi Onyebuchi, Riot Baby
15. Nino Cipri, Finna
16. Sarah Gailey, Upright Women Wanted
17. K.J.Charles, Subtle Blood
18. P.Djeli Clark, Ring Shout
19. Seanan McGuire, Come Tumbling Down
20. Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune
21. Nghi Vo, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain
22. Aiden Thomas, Cemetery Boys
23. Lindsay Ellis, Axiom's End
24. Frederik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
25. Micaiah Johnson, The Space Between Worlds
26. Simon Jimenez, The Vanished Birds
27. Darcie Little Badger, Elatsoe
28. Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth
29. Martha Wells, Fugitive Telemetry
30. Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth
31. Freya Marske, A Marvelous Light
32. Tracy Deonn, Legendborn
33. T.Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking
34. N.K.Jemisin, The City We Became
35. Sarah Pinsker, We Were Satellites
36. Becky Chambers, The Galaxy and the Ground Within
37. Jordan Ifueko, Raybearer
38. Emily St John Mandel, Station Eleven
39. Victor Lavalle, The Changeling
40. Mary Robinette Kowal, The Fated Sky
41. Mary Robinette Kowal, The Relentless Moon
42. James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes
43. Nicky Drayden, Prey of Gods
44. Viktor Dragunsky & Denis Dragunsky, Deniskiny rasskazy... i o tom kak vse bylo na samom dele
45. Louis Sachar, Wayside School Under a Cloud of Doom
46. Neil Gaiman, Audible's Sandman, Act I
47. Ada Palmer, Perhaps the Stars
48. Vera Brosgol, Be Prepared
49. Alan Dundes and Carl L. Pagter, When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators: More Urban Folklore from the Paperowrk Empire
50. Naomi Novik, The Last Graduate
51. Jennifer Giesbrecht, The Monster of Elendhaven
52. P.Djeli Clark, The Haunting of Tram Car 015
Book meme for 2021:
The first book you read in 2021:
Katherine Addison's Angel of the Crows, which, well, for Sherlock wingfic it was not bad, I guess? But I found it largely disappointing and unnecessary.
The last book you finished in 2021:
P.Djeli Clark's The Haunting of Tram Car 015 novella, which I'd been planning to read for a while and finally bot around to. I'm now reading the other things in the Dead Djinn-verse.
The first book you will finish (or did finish!) in 2022:
Not sure... It might be Master of Djinn, which is my current Kindle book, or it might be Light from Uncommon Stars, which is my hard copy book, or it might end up being something else entirely.
How many books read in 2021
52. Which means I made my goal, with the help of a whole bunch of novellas :)
Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
I read, let's call it 1.5 nonfiction things: When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators (urban folklore) and the Denis Dragunsky half of the Deniskiny rasskazy... i o tom kak vse bylo na samom dele book, which is autobiographical (the other half are fictional short stories written by his father about his fictional namesake).
Male/Female authors?
I actually didn't keep track with charts this year because meh, I guess? But tallying up from my reading list:
Books: 35 books written by female authors, 15 books written by male authors -- even higher than my usual 2:1 female/male ratio that I'd observed in the first years I started counting (+ 2 books by authors who use they pronouns, as far as I know)
Authors: for this one, I'm counting just individual authors I've read, so that the effect of being swamped by series is factored out somewhat (although this year there was no serious series reading). I read 29 female authors (WAY up from last year) and 13-14 male authors (about the same as last year), plus 2 nb/other authors.
Also, because it's interesting, I tried to keep track of the gender of *protagonists*, too. The result (counting each book, not series, and excluding books that had a mix of them) is 25 female protagonists vs 13 male protagonists. I'm too lazy to check, but this might be the most female-skewed it's ever been... and while it's common, I've noticed, to have books with female authors but male protagonists (a lot of m/m, including this year), this year there were some that were the reverse, like the Abigail novella, Ring Shout, and the Backman book. Interestingly 6 books had neither-male-nor-female protagonists, the 4 Murderbots + the two Nghi Vo books, where I had a hard time figuring out whom to count as a protagonist and decided to just count Chih.
Breakdown by author:
Female:
- Wells -- 4
- Nghi Vo* -- 2
- Muir* -- 2
- MRK -- 2
- Maxwell (* = first time reading pro published work)
- Addison
- Ford*?
- Larkwood*
- Waggoner
- Sutanto*
- Martine
- K.J.Charles
- McGuire
- Ellis (* = first time reading fiction, I'm familiar with her writing for YouTube)
- Johnson*
- Little Badger*
- Deonn*
- Marske (* = first time reading pro published work)
- Kingfisher
- Jemisin
- Pinsker
- Chambers
- Ifueko*
- Emily St John Mandel*
- Drayden*
- Ada Palmer
- Brosgol
- Novik
- Giesbrecht*
Male:
- K.D. Edwards -- 2
- Clark -- 2
- Aaronovitch
- Onyebuchi*
- Thomas*
- Backman*
- Jimenez*
- Lavalle*
- James S.A. Corey* (= I read some short fiction by Abraham before)
- Dragunsky (x2) (* = the son's writing was new to me)
- Gaiman
- Sachar
- Dundes et al
Outside the binary:
- Gailey
- Cipri
* = new-to-me author this year. Much higher than last year since I was doing Hugo homework again. 6(.5) male new-to-me authors and a whopping 15 new-to-me female authors.
Most books read by one author this year?
Martha Wells with 4, all Murderbots (I needed to catch up so as to read Network Effect, then read Fugitive Telemetry once it became available). After that, it's a multi-way tie between K.D.Edwards, Mary Robinette Kowal (both of them I was catching up on series, too), Tamsyn Muir, Nghi Vo(reading first book and then sequel for those two), and P.Djeli Clark (two unrelated books set in different universes).
Favorite books read?
Perhaps the Stars. It was just *gestures helplessly* But another huge favorite was Network Effect, and I loved The Empress of Salt and Fortune, either of which could've easily been a favorite book in a different year -- it was just a really strong year.
Best books you read in 2021?
Network Effect and Empress of Salt and Fortune both won Hugos in their respective categories, so the SFF-reading publing seems to agree with me that they're great :) That said, I do think 'Empress' is objectively a best book, while Murderbot is a character/series people love, so it keeps winning everything, maybe not as objectively. So let's say Empress of Salt and Fortune. (I also thought The Space Between Words was a very strong debut that should've at least gotten a best novel nomination (it was on the long list, at least), and am still hoping Micaiah Johnson will win an Astounding Award for it next year.)
Least favorite?
It was a pretty good year, like I said, and so I can't think of a book I "had" to read that I actively hated... I had a very hard time pushing myself through The Vanished Birds, which I found pretensious and, like, falling short of its ambitions, but there were things about it I liked. I read the Teixcalaan sequel out of scab-picking and was annoyed by it more than anything else, but there are elements of worldbuilding in this series that I continue to enjoy. I had been hoping for fun urban fantasy m/m set in SF with Dim Sum Asylum but found it to have the SF and fantasy just kind of pasted on, and the m/m playing to different tropes than what I like in, so it didn't do any of the things for me I'd hoped. I was really disappointed by Come Tumbling Down, even with the pretty low expectations I had going in, but I think I'll save that for the next answer.
I think I'm going to go with A Desolation Called Peace as my least favorite, actually. It is not the worst by any means (I think Dim Sum Asylum has way less literary merit -- not that it pretends to much), but 'Desolation' hit that particular combination of book I personally did not like + book that got a lot of accolades (though not nearly as many as the first one) + sequel that retroactively made me like the preceding work less. I had not loved A Memory Called Empire the way most people seemed to, but there were things I liked about it, and I was disappointed that the book wasn't amazing, but I still liked it. But the flaws in 'Desolation' revealed that some of the things I'd been suspending judgement on with book 1 in case they were interesting POV tricks were indeed weaknesses/flaws, and so stripping away that benefit of the doubt made me like 'Memory' less, too. So, there you go, A Desolation Called Peace for least favorite book of 2021, for its overall effect.
Most disappointing book/Book you wished you loved more than you did?
Last year this went to "disappointing sequal to my favorite book of the year" and "disappointing entry in a series I've been reading for decades". There's nothing quite so dramatic this year. As I alluded above, Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children # whatever) was my most disappointing book. I do not have high expectations of this series -- in face, Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Beneath the Sugar Sky both managed to surprised me plesantly because my expectations were so low. But I was hoping a book centered on my favorite character in the series (Jack) would be fun, and it just absolutely wasn't for me. It was completely pointless, a string of Profound Authorial Quotes and not much else. Apparently I had also underestimated the power of how much I hate Sumi; it's very possible that the reason I had been pleasantly surprised by books 2 and 3 is that Sumi wasn't in them.
Honorable mention goes to the final Wayfarers book, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. It was fine, I enjoyed reading some of it, but after three books each of which I liked better than the last, which felt like Chambers becoming a better writer before one's eyes, this felt like Chambers returning to the meandering, plot-less, largely arc-less approach to writing a book that contributed to The Way to a Small Angry Planet being "my favorite book that I hate". Not AS bad! -- I was relieved to see that "good guys" are allowed to have flaws and to disagree with each other -- but it was still disappointing. Perhaps I'm feeling uncharitable, but it feels like now that Wayfarers have won a best series Hugo, she felt like she could just go back to writing the kind of stuff she prefers, and this was the result -- which is definitely much less to my taste than what I know she CAN write. It also makes me nervous that, given the validation of the establishment and the fact that there are certainly plenty of readers who seem to like this "soft" sci-fi, that's just what she'll keep writing, and I'll never really like another one of her books -- which would be a pity, because she DOES have a lot of really cool stuff in her books that I do like. I was also disappointed for reasons that are a little external to the book: I heard Chambers speak at a virtual con panel where she said that in this final book she tried to correct or address or otherwise "fix" (I forget what specific word she used) something she had come to realize was a flaw in her first book, which of course she couldn't do anything about post-publication. I was hoping that the fix would be for my least favorite aspect of that book, the way Corbin was treated. But apparently it was likely things like everyone thinking of Akaraks as pirates and not worrying about how they got to be that way (which, this was a cool fix!) and Pei keeping her relationship with Ashby on the downlow (so don't care).
There were also several books I liked that I wish I had liked MORE: Per tradition, Sarah Pinsker's We Are Satellites is on this list -- I loved a lot of this book, but then had the same problems with the second half of it as with Song for a New Day last year -- the way Pinsker writes about Evil Corporations on a much shallower and less realistic level than the rest of her interesting worldbuilding, my lack of interest in activism-as-plot, our difference of opinion on what constitutes a satisfying ending for this kind of story. I was less disappointed by it this year/in this book because I kind of already knew to expect it, but I still wish we were more simpatico in these respects, because I love the way she writes about people and families and many other things. The many-years-later Wayside School sequel was fine, and I even chuckled a couple of times, but was still disappointing in that I didn't feel the same energy from it as from Sachar's books I'd loved previously ; dunno if the problem is him or me. And, honestly, I didn't have high expectations for The City We Became, because I don't really care for that subgenre, and I probably enjoyed it more than I'd expected to, courtesy of some characters I liked a lot, but the broad-strokes worldbuilding of some things, especially to do with Staten Island, disappointed me in the sense of it's disappointing to know that this was produced by the author of the Broken Earth books, which I do think are some of the very best sci-fi of this century.
Best series you discovered in 2021?
Let's see -- I did read a fair bit of series books this year, but mostly it was continuing series I already knew. New series this year were Gideon the Ninth/Locked Tomb (read 2 books, which is all that's out right now), whatever the series by Nghi Vo is (ditto), The Unspoken Name (starting off a new series, where I'm waiting for book 2), A Marvelous Light (ditto), Raybearer (read book 1, started the sequel but haven't made much progress so far), Clark's Dead Djinn-verse (read a novella, in the process of reading more), Axiom's End (may or may not read the sequel), Legendborn (ditto), The City We Became (I may well read the sequel out of curiosity rather than because I expect to enjoy it), The Expanse (not planning to read on in the books, at least for now).
Of those, the ones I really like as series* are ones that have only a single book out, so it's hard to judge them as a series, but I'm still going to say The Unspoken Name + future series. Larkwood was my top pick for Astounding on the strength of that book, and I liked everything about it -- worldbuilding (social and magical and just the weirdness of the Maze), characters (especially Tal and Sethennai), writing. It's the one I'm most looking forward to the sequel for. (*what I mean by "as series" is that I really liked the Nghi Vo books, but I liked them as individual stories, not the way I like series, where what I really want to see more of is these characters and this world. I just really like these individual stories, but the common characters themselves (Chih and their bird friend) are not an important connection, and it's not important to me for the cool worldbuilding details to be connected, just to be there and be cool.)
Favorite new author you discovered this year?
Lots! In part courtsey of reading the Astounding ballot and other Hugo homework. My favorites were Nghi Vo, Micaiah Johnson, K.A.Larkwood, as well as pro fic entries from Freya Marske and Everina Maxwell, whose fic I'd previously read. This was also my first encounter with Frederik Backman, which I enjoyed enough that while I may not seek out more of his books intentionally, I'll definitely pick them up when they come my way.
Of other new authors, I was impressed by Joradn Ifueko's debut and am looking to see how she develops as an author from here. This year was my first experience of Nicky Drayden (after planning to read her for some years), and that was... a ride, certainly! I do want to check out more of her work, now that I kind of know what to expect. I did not really care for Riot Baby, but I was impressed by Onyebuchi's writing, and am curious to see more of it. Jessie Q. Sutanto's writing was very cute when it came to writing about family; I'll probably pick up another book if I hear about it. I was very mixed on Tamsyn Muir's writing, but am planning to read more in the series I already started, at least. I found some of Aiden Thomas's writing choices overly earnest and distracting, but I liked Cemetery Boys on the whole and would pick up another book by him, ditto Darcy Little Badger (Elatsoe), and Tracy Deonn (Legendborn). I had hoped to like Lindsay Ellis's Axiom's End more than I did, but if I'm not going to be able to enjoy her "content" via YouTube anymore, I guess I can read her books instead. The Monster of Elendhaven was not really my thing, but it is a very well executed not-my-thing, so I would cautiously check out Jennifer Giesbrecht's other work; ditto Victor Lavalle. I liked Emily St John Mandel's Station Eleven, but I'm not sure that her other books would be my speed. I think the only new-to-me authors I'd avoid in the future are Rhys Ford and Simon Jimenez, and possibly James S.A. Corey, which is not a bad hit rate.
I did not read anything more by my favorite new authors from last year, but in fairness, I'm not sure my top favorite (Emily Tesh) had published anything new.
Oldest book read?
Alan Dundes and Carl L. Pagter, When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators: More Urban Folklore from the Paperowrk Empire, from 1987. Everything else is much newer -- I think the next oldest are Leviathan Wakes (2011) and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (2013), Station Eleven (2014). Everything else is from the last 5 years.
Newest?
Perhaps the Stars finally came out on November 2 in the US. (Usually this is the late-in-the-year installment of the RoL GNs for me, but this year the publication will be in January 2022.)
Longest book title?
When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators: More Urban Folklore from the Paperowrk Empire -- 15 words, which is actually not that long for a nonfiction title (last year's winner on my list had 22).
Longest fiction title: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (9 words) -- and there are several other fiction titles in the 6-7 word range this year.
Shortest title?
Finna (5 letters), but there were several other one-word titles this year (Elatsoe, Raybearer, Legendborn -- a concenteration of them on the Lodestar ballot, apparently).
How many re-reads?
2.5, sorta? The full reread was the Alan Dundes nonfiction book. I'm also counting Audible's Sandman, Act I -- a "reread", but in a different format, which introduced additional text that just wasn't there in the GN version, but I'm counting it as a reread in translation, kinda. And the half is the part of Deniskiny rasskazy... i o tom kak vse bylo na samom dele that were the Deniska stories, all or almost all of which I'd read before. I also reread part of Taltos but did not finish.
(The last couple of years, my rereads came from Yuletide canon review, but this time my canon review required a different approach.)
Any in translation?
Yes -- My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry was translated from Swedish.
Also one book in Russian (the Deniska one).
How many of this year's books were from the library?
I should've kept better track this year, but I didn't... Let's see if I can figure it out retroactively:
- 35 (at least) were from the library -- I was back to using the library heavily this year, having missed it a lot. A bunch of these were in e-copy, but a fair number were in hard copy as well, first via curbside pickup, then via actual browsing.
- 4 were online freebies (including Sandman Act 1 and the Murderbot novellas which I collected from Tor)
- 3 were (ahem) of dubious online provenance
- 3 or so were from the Hugo packet (this gets complicated, because there were cases where I started reading a library copy, then switched to Hugo packet copy when the library copy went away)
- 2 were e-ARCs generously shared by connected friends
- 2 were gifts
- 2-3 were books I bought for myself -- the questionable 4th was The Last Graduate, which I started reading in library copy and then bought a copy when it disappeared off my Kindle app a day early. I subsequently also bought a hard copy of Network Effect, but it was after I read it.
Anyway, mostly from the library, mostly in ecopy. That's about all I can say.
Book that most changed my perspective:
Perhaps the Stars. As I put it to Best Chat, there were several chapters in that book which blew my mind in three different ways simultaneously, to the point that it was like galaxy brain calisthenics. (Honorable mention to Harrow the Ninth, which, even reading it fully spoiled, was an interesting ride. And Mary Robinette Kowal's Lady Astronauts short story, "We Interrupt This Broadcast".)
Favorite character:
Of new-to-me characters, Tal Charossa in The Unspoken Name, Julian in Cemetery Boys, Palamedes Sextus in the Locked Tomb books.
Most memorable character:
Of the new ones, Tal from above, Delly from A Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry, the grandmother from 'My Grandmother Asked', Johan in The Monster of Elendhaven. (But also, of the non-new ones, quite a few people from Perhaps the Stars, starting with Mycroft.)
Favorite scene:
The ones that occur to me immediately are not so much scenes as chapters from Perhaps the Stars -- the chapter 9A spends confined in bed, the chapter that's mostly radio transcript -- OK, no, that's not "favorite", that's most powerful, because i can't say I enjoyed those chapters.
So, for a simpler definition of favorite, let's go with:
- ART's real voice filling the feed in Network Effect (actually, like, 80% of Network Effect after that point, but to pick a particular scene)
- I kept waiting to get to the bear scene in Winter's Orbit, and it did not disappoint
Favorite quote:
I usually answer this question by going through all of my write-ups and excerpting the quotes I'd marked down that still ping me. So here are a few:
From The Unspoken Name:
"What does Archer do?"
"It's more about what it doesn't do," said Shuthmili. "For instance, it doesn't turn forests to ash. It doesn't boil rivers dry. It doesn't reduce cities to puddles of glass. If you're a neighbour of Aqrsazh and we've taken advantage of you in some way, and you don't feel friendly towards us, and you're thinking of getting back at us, you might first think carefully about how much you enjoy it when Archer doesn't do anything."
From Murderbots:
"What I was mostly thinking was that there wasn't going to be one dead SecUnit on this embarkation floor, there were going to be four."
"'SecUnit, you need to get to Medical!'
[...] 'What happened in Medical?'
'You happened, you got shot.'
Oh, right, that."
From The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry: "and within very short order an exceedingly irritated-looking warden reinflicted Dellaria Wells upon the populace."
From Subtle Blood (the Will Darling conclusion): "It's not your fault in the slightest," Will said strongly, then was forced to add, "Just goes to show, there's a first time for everything."
From The Space Between Worlds: "Even if you think you know yourself in your safe glass castle, you don't know yourself in the dirt. Even if you hustle and make it in the rough, you have no idea if you would thrive or die in the light of real riches, if your cleverness would outlive your desperation."
From A Marvelous Lifht:
"Charlie always liked people more once he'd explained something badly to them, and Bel just liked things that were Edwin's."
"You are the most fascinating thing in this beautiful house. I'd like to introduce my fists to whoever taught you to stop talking about the things that interest you."
From The Changeling: "Maybe having a child was like being drunk. You couldn't gauge when you went from being charming to being an asshole."
Most inspirational in terms of own writing?
Weirdly, Perhaps the Stars. Not weirdly in the sense that it was that book, but weirdly in the way it manifested. I did not write any TI fic or anything, but: 1) As I was writing my Yuletide fic, I kept feeling like it was feeling like Mycroft & JEDD adventures (though I went in and at least tried to give Chlorine a sense of humour to counteract this impression), and 2) At some point while I was writing the first draft of the story, I found myself randomly assigning pronouns to the background elements with the intention of going back and changing them to different pronouns later, once the story was complete, so I could tweak the balance to where it worked better for me. I did that in my second or third pass, and told my beta, "I went through and Ada Palmered my pronouns" -- which was an interesting experience.
How many you'd actually read again?
I want to reread the Terra Ignota books at some point, so Perhaps the Stars. Network Effect brought me so much joy, I could easily see myself rereading it, too.
A book that you never want to read again:
The Changleling. That was rough enough the first time. Also The Vanished Birds and A Desolation Called Peace, because I did find them both a slog to get through.
Book you recommended most to others in 2021?
I recommended/gifted The Unspoken Name, A Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry, and A Marvelous Light, of the ones I read this year. I also ended up recommending-with-caveats A Close and Common Orbit to several flisters who had read and hated A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.
The book series you read the most volumes of in 2021:
Murderbot, with 3 novellas and a novel. I read 2 novels of Locked Tomb and Lady Astronaut, a novel + novella in the Tarot Sequence, and two novellas.
The genre you read the most in 2021:
- 24 fantasy (including 11 urban fantasy, 6 secondary world, and 3 ~historical fantasy)
- 20 sci-fi (including some near-future sci fi and some far future stuff)
- 3 romance (1 het, 2 m/m, one non-supernatural, one paranormal)
- 2.5 kidlit
- 1.5 non-fiction
- 1 regular fiction
Some other stuff I kept track of this year tallied up after the fact:
- 1 was a graphic novels
- 1 was an audio book
- 14 were novellas
Your favorite "classic" you read in 2021:
I really don't think I read anything that qualifies as a classic, not even "classic SF". Well, I guess the Deniska stories are classics of the Soviet kidlit genre?
Most surprising (in a good way) book of the year?
I don't think I was surprised by liking any books I didn't expect to like, unlike in years past. I guess The Unspoken Name, The Space Between Worlds, and Raybearer surprised me a little by being as solid as they were given that they were first novels. And Perhaps the Stars surprised me (in a good way) by a bunch of its resolutions.
The hardest book you read in 2021 (topic or writing style):
I read a surprising number of horror-adjacent things in 2021 when I don't actually like horror: Gideon and Harrow had the wrong aesthetic for me, as did Monster of Elendhaven. But the book that takes the cake in this regard is The Changeling, which had a passage that was particularly difficult for me to get through.
I had read a pandemic novel without issues last year (Song for a New Day), and similarly had little issue reading Station Eleven this year, which I also felt like noting.
The funniest book you read in 2021:
I didn't read any humour books this year. I think I probably found funniest A Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry's droll narrative style, as well as My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry. Be Prepared was also very funny, and the Murderbot books and the Will Darling books also had a lot of very funny lines. And the Deniska stories, of course. Oh, and I should also mention Dial A for Aunties, which was very funny when dealing with the protagonist's family. I guess there were a lot of funny books this year, which is nice to see!
The saddest book you read in 2021:
Station Eleven, probably, even though it feels ultimately hopeful. I think The Vanished Birds was aiming for something similarly elegiac but, for my money, missed by a mile.
The shortest book you read in 2021:
The Wayside School book was 192 pages, but in large print, which I think might make it shorter than some of the novellas that have a lower page count. But the shortest I could find by page count, according to goodreads, was Finna at 92 pages.
The longest book that you read in 2021:
This one's easy: Perhaps the Stars is not even close: 586 pages according to Goodreads, but I think that must include small font, because this was a loooong book.
Best book that was outside your comfort zone/a new genre for you?
I guess the horror-adjacent ones would count for this -- The Changeling, the Locked Tomb books, Monster of Elendhaven. I think The Changeling is probably the best of them, for all that reading it was probably the hardest.
But I should also mention Riot Baby here too, because reading it definitely felt like reading a book written not for me, but I could still clearly see its merits.
Most thrilling, unputdownable book of 2021?
I did not read any actual thrillers, so I think I'm going to give this to The Last Graduate, which I did read in three pieces, with weeks-long interruptions, but when I was reading it, I did find it pretty unputdownable.
Most beautifully written book in 2021?
I think The Empress of Salt and Fortune takes this one, although I also found the prose very lovely in Station Eleven and, unexpectedly for what is basically paranormal m/m, A Marvelous Light.
Book you most anticipated in 2021?
Perhaps the Stars, which I'd been waiting impatiently for since 2018 -- and it didn't disappoint!
Favorite cover of a book you read in 2021?
I actually really like the Perhaps the Stars cover, especially in context of the other covers -- the way they get progressively darker:
I also really like the cover of The Changeling (more than the book, if I'm honest):
The Elatsoe cover is also very cool, and this doesn't even do it justice -- the title letters are sparkly foil on the hard copy:
And I also really like the cover of Legendborn -- Bree looks AWESOME in the cover illustration:
Book that had the greatest impact on you this year?
Perhaps the Stars, since reading it consumed my brain for a couple of weeks and then never really let me go.
Book you can't believe you waited till 2021 to finally read?
Leviathan Wakes, because I'd been saying I would check out The Expanse for YEARS. (And then I didn't like the book much. But at least now I know that.)
Book that had a scene that left you reeling and dying to talk to someone about it?
Several chapters of Perhaps the Stars, including the Odyssey one, the last chapter narrated by 9A, and, honestly, like half the chpters probably. And I guess maybe the twist ending of Legendborn?
Oh! And the Palamedes writing fanfic out of boredom in the River in Harrow the Ninth (I had been spoiled for a lot of mindbendy things in Harrow, but I had not been spoiled for that delightful bit).
Also, I keep trying to get L to read Be Prepared, because I want her to get to the "illegal guinea pig" bit, which made me think of her roommate drama.
Also some of the choices in The City We Became, but not in a good way.
Looking Ahead:
One book you didn't read this year that will be your #1 priority in 2022?
I plan to finish Light from Uncommon Stars, which I waited to read for several months, until my library got their copies in, but am currently not very far in. L also wants me to read Nights at the Circus, which she read for a class and really liked.
I did read the books that were my answers to this question last year (The Hanged Man and Angel of the Crows), but I still have not read any of the books that have been on this list for several years, like Sorcerer to the Crown, any of the Craft books I've started, Crooked Kingdom, Magnus Chase sequels, more Maggie Stiefvater books, or The Night Circus, or the Cloud Roads sequels, or finished any Hardinges this year.
New book you are most anticipating for 2022?
Amongst Our Weapons, the next Peter Grant book, with April 2022 publication.
I was hoping I would also have Tslamoth to look forward to, but looks like that's not expected until 2023 :((((
And here's the perennial list of shame (I kid! but these are books I've been carrying over for, what, probably 5 years)war
- Thorn of Emberlain
- Warboy (Warchild #4)
- Doors of Stone (Kvothe #3) -- apparently a release date will be announced soon
- Winds of Winter -- I've seen a Nov 2023 date out there, but no idea if it's accurate or what (and hopefully I will still care by the time it comes along, which seems increasingly unlikely)
*
And yay, Snowflake time!
Challenge #1: In your own space, update your fandom information!
Apparently it had been a while since I'd done so -- my improted-from-LJ profile still described me as "mid-30s". But now I updated my LJ and DW profiles, including a link to the fannish intro from a couple of Snowflakes back, and updated the links on my AO3 profile to include DW as well as LJ. With that, calling this challenge done.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1162358.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).
I had been very eager to learn who had been the authors of my fabulous gifts (
florahart for Other Side of Life and
misura for Food for Food, as I'd suspected -- it is such a pleasure to have a mystery gift from authors whose even-not-for-me writing I love!). I was happy to see both of my gift stories rec'd (by people other than me also, I mean), despite them being in tiny tiny fandoms even for Yuletide -- they absolutely deserve all the recognition!
And also I've been eager to claim this thing, which I've been referring to as "my chemistry nonsense" for the last month or so:
F is for Foul Play, Cl is for Clue (8715 words) by hamsterwoman
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: Periodic Table (Anthropomorphic), Object and Concept Anthropomorphism
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Fluorine Element (Anthropomorphic), Chlorine Element (Anthropomorphic), Fluorine (Periodic Table anthropomorphic), Chlorine (Periodic Table anthropomorphic)
Additional Tags: Mystery
Summary:
“A terrible crime has been committed!” cried Inspector Carbon, bursting into the banquet hall.
“Listen,” said Fluorine, backing away from Barium and twitching his cuffs straight, “it wasn’t me, I wasn’t there, and you can’t prove anything. Anyway, what got nicked this time? By someone other than me.”
“If only it were a matter of simple electron theft!” Inspector Carbon boomed. “No, dear guests -- I do not mean to shock or frighten you, but there has been… a murder.”
So, when I was browsing the Yuletide tagset when it first opened, I had been delighted not only to see "Periodic Table (Anthropomorphic)" as a nominated fandom, which is already very much up my alley, but to see the specific character of Fluorine nominated, because Fluorine -- well, as I've been telling Best Chat, Fluorine has been my "problematic fave" since I first found out about HF and xenon fluorides in freshman chem, 25 years ago. (In fact "problematic fave" was the title of my G!doc document where I kept the draft and the many random notes.) Two people ended up requesting this most marvelous of fandoms, and I ended up matching on it, and was also delighted about that.
My recipient wanted a gen story specifically, which was great, actually, but left me with the question of what to do for plot, since there wasn't a literary canon to fall back on the shape of the story for, the way I had always been able to do with Harriet or even 'Monday'. But browsing through
seal_girl's DW and AO3 pointed me in the direction of mysteries, and then I was like, hey, a mystery has a well defined story shape and some stock character types, I bet I could do something with that -- really I was just looking for a story structure on which I could hang a bunch of chemistry puns, but also, as I confided to Best Chat, "My crazy stretch goal idea is a murder mystery, but I have zero idea how to plot a mystery. It's just, they're both so deadly!" Right from the start my idea was, therefore, that F and Cl would be suspects who had to team up to clear their names.
Spoilers for the story I was actually originally going down the path of researching a way that a person could be killed by chlorine and/or fluorine (there are many), but I couldn't make a story with both humans and elements in it fit in my brain, both because of humans and anthropomorphic elements coexisting, and because then I would have to go down the path of deadly compounds, and I wasn't sure how exactly to make compounds work in an anthropomorphic elements fic either. So I was moving away from that idea and towards the victim being another element, but how do elements "die"? Which is when I hit on the idea of nuclear decay. At which point cyanshadow said, "Someone really did figure out how to turn Lead into Gold!" -- and while I didn't end up using those elements, that was the genesis of the "twist" that there was no actual murder, switched identities, etc. which eventually turned into the final shape of the thing. /spoilers
I went and (re)read Mary Soon Lee's "Elemental Haiku" for inspiration -- this ended up furnishing epigraphs for the story, and helping with Cl's characterization a lot, because while I had a very clear view of what F was like, it took me longer to "find" Chlorine, and it also helped me pick some traits to focus on for several other characters, including Astatine, Cesium, and Krypton. Really, I feel like the fic is as much for the canon of Mary Soon Lee's "Elemental Haiku" as it is for the Periodic Table.
Anyway, so I got that far before it was even Halloween, and I did a bunch of reading up on the bits of chemistry I was planning to use and scribbling down random chemistry jokes I wanted to fit in, but then I couldn't actually WRITE anything, because I didn't have any feeling for the shape of it as a story -- it turned out to be much harder to start writing in a canon that didn't have an existing literary "body", as such. Because while my canon review definitely reminded me of how much I love chemistry/fluorine, it was not actually helpful with the writing part, which rereading the source material had always been previously. Oops... So then I decided that what I needed was to read mystery short stories for inspiration, and managed to check out a collection of Agatha Christie short stories, which I'd read before but not in about three decades, since my mystery phase was quite a while ago. That turned out to do the trick -- after reading a couple, I felt like I had a framework to work with, as far as the beats and how it needed to unfold, and even just the "flavor" of the writing (a kind of sardonic, light-touch omniscient), and then the story took off. (I was also super pleased when several commenters mentioned Christie flavor specifically in their praise, because that had been exactly what I'd been aiming for without that being officially part of the canon, of course.)
Once I had the flavor and shape of the story from Dame Agatha, I actually also had to plot it out, which is something I never do voluntarily, because it's just no fun writing if I already know exactly what will be happening. But in this case I actually had to write out first what had been happening behind the scenes -- spoilers what Astatine was doing and why, how he framed Our Heroes, what was happening with Polonium, etc. -- and then outline everything a second time, to show what it looked like from the POV of the guests, throwing in some clues/foreshadowing, how the eureka moment would happen, confrontations, etc./spoilers Once all that was done, the story flowed pretty easily, especially when it came to Fluorine being his unrepentant disastrous self.
I did run into some things that were harder/trickier than with my previous fics. The first was that the Grand Reveal scene as I first wrote it was way too long and bored me deeply, but I couldn't tell if that was because I already knew everything revelaed in it or if it was just long and boring. With beta consultation, I cut out a bunch of things that were either already clear enough from the rest of the story or not actually important to know in detail and got it into a decent shape. Then both cyanshadow and L, whom I made read the story once she was home from uni, pointed out that my actual perpetrator's motive was unclear -- which it had been to me also -- so I had to figure that out and put that in. I also discovered that I had no idea how to write an ending for this story XD See, my previous Yuletide fics, Harriet and 'Monday', those canons have an actual signature way of ending each installment, so all I had to do for my stories was wind it up so they ended with the correct set of words in meaningful fashion, and voila, the end. I couldn't do that here, so I just came up with something that was a natural stopping point, hoped that inspiration would strike for something better, but just rolled with what I had in the end (since my betas said it was a decent way to end the story). But who knew endings were so hard!
The last editing challenge I blame on Ada Palmer. Elements, of course, do not have a gender. I decided on male Fluorine and Chlorine, and then made some other characters male as well, either because they fit the tropes I was going for (the bumbling policeman, the brilliant amateur detective), or because I didn't want my "bad guy" to be female, or because the plot required it. But the gender balance felt weird -- too many dudes for a story that had no reason for it -- so I decided I would later go through and play around with the pronouns of elements until I liked the balance and/or tropes and/or type of relationships better. The notable changes I made in editing in this space was making Silicon and Cesium female, making Beryllium male, making Neon female because I wanted at least one of the noble gases to be and that was the easiest one to switch, and then going back and forth on Tungsten and Titanium: they were both male in the first draft, but I knew I wanted one of them to be female. Originally I made Tungsten female (by a rand.org coin toss), but cyanshadow pointed out that making both Tungsten and Neon female made it less clear that Fluorine had a bunch of affairs with both male and female elements, which i definitely wanted to come through, so I made Tungsten male again and made Titanium female instead. And hopefully actually cleaned up all my stray pronouns, heh. Anyway, this was certainly an interesting way to write -- seeing how the story feels slightly different when you flip a pronoun switch for someone -- which is not something I'd ever done before, but I'm glad this story made me experience it.
I should also remark that one of the other key contributions of my betas, Cyan and L, was going through the story and being like, "This seems like it should also be a chemistry pun..." -- which I tried to oblige wherever possible. And then some additional chemistry puns just occurred to me on their own in editing (the "the only way Carbon could have a valid point" line, which was called out by several commenters, was one of those, and I'm super pleased with it).
Oh, and then I still needed a title. This was also harder than with previous fics. My usual go-to is a terrible pun, but I couldn't think of any good chemistry puns for once -- possibly I'd used yup them all on the fic itself. L, who is usually very good at titles, wasn't much help either -- we went through a list of Agatha Christie titles to see if we could pastiche something from there (but let's be real, Sarah Pinsker has already achieved the apotheosis of that). Lots of them were nursery rhyme based, so I actually looked up "chemistry nursery rhymes" and found that they exist, but while I enjoyed reading them, that didn't help me with a title either. Finally, I let go of the Agatha Christie idea and settled instead on Sue Grafton, which L and Best Chat agreed worked pretty well, so here we are.
For my record keeping: I had no idea what to expect from writing in what is both a 5 minute fandom and kind of an obscure one anyway. I think it results in lower kudos to hits ratio (though more hits overall, and thus more kudos). This story ended the anon period with 109 hits, 28 kudos, 5 bookmarks, and 13 comment threads (from 12 distinct people) -- definitely highest on comment threads than anything else I've written for Yuletide, and I think, if I'm back-calculating correctly (because I wasn't keeping track of my first Harriet story right at reveals) also highest on bookmarks and kudos as well. And now that it's just after reveals, it's already in my top 5 for kudos, bookmarks (tied for second), and comments (tied for first). I guess it is less obscure than a contemporary children's book about hamsters, a Russian fantasy from half a century ago, or Dragaera doggerel, but O.o
I saw a rec for it on my flist, which is always lovely (and serves as further evidence that one is friends with people of discerning taste ;), and then saw later that it had also been rec'd on the Yuletide Discord early on, which probably explains the bursts of hits and occasional kudos. Also, CAPSLOCK TITLE COALIE liked my title! :D (which was especially good to see because when I was casting about for a title, I was specifically thinking of their zany over-the-top titles for inspiration -- it seemed to fit Fluorine's chaos energy for this particular fic :D)
This wasn't the longest thing I've written for Yuletide (that would be Surrounding Wednesday), nor the one I found most intricate to write (that would also be the 'Monday' fic), but somehow writing this fic just took it out of me -- I didn't have any brainspace for not just treats, but anything else creative either. Or maybe that's just the effect of writing a long thing as my assignment? I think The Snowl Queen -- which is just about the same length if you ignore the second chapter of the chemistry nonsense which is not fic but just chemistry links -- had a similar effect, IIRC.) Hopefully my ability to be even a little bit creative returns at some point now that Yuletide season is done...
*
2021 book list:
1. Katherine Addison, The Angel of the Crows
2. Everina Maxwell, Winter's Orbit
3. Rhys Ford, Dim Sum Asylum
4. K.D. Edwards, The Hanged Man
5. K.D. Edwards, The Sunken Mall
6. K.A.Larkwood, The Unspoken Name
7. Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol
8. Martha Wells, Exit Strategy
9. Martha Wells, Network Effect
10. C.M.Waggoner, A Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry
11. Ben Aaronovitch, What Abigail Did That Summer
12. Jessie Q. Sutanto, Dial A for Aunties
13. Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace
14. Tochi Onyebuchi, Riot Baby
15. Nino Cipri, Finna
16. Sarah Gailey, Upright Women Wanted
17. K.J.Charles, Subtle Blood
18. P.Djeli Clark, Ring Shout
19. Seanan McGuire, Come Tumbling Down
20. Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune
21. Nghi Vo, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain
22. Aiden Thomas, Cemetery Boys
23. Lindsay Ellis, Axiom's End
24. Frederik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
25. Micaiah Johnson, The Space Between Worlds
26. Simon Jimenez, The Vanished Birds
27. Darcie Little Badger, Elatsoe
28. Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth
29. Martha Wells, Fugitive Telemetry
30. Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth
31. Freya Marske, A Marvelous Light
32. Tracy Deonn, Legendborn
33. T.Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking
34. N.K.Jemisin, The City We Became
35. Sarah Pinsker, We Were Satellites
36. Becky Chambers, The Galaxy and the Ground Within
37. Jordan Ifueko, Raybearer
38. Emily St John Mandel, Station Eleven
39. Victor Lavalle, The Changeling
40. Mary Robinette Kowal, The Fated Sky
41. Mary Robinette Kowal, The Relentless Moon
42. James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes
43. Nicky Drayden, Prey of Gods
44. Viktor Dragunsky & Denis Dragunsky, Deniskiny rasskazy... i o tom kak vse bylo na samom dele
45. Louis Sachar, Wayside School Under a Cloud of Doom
46. Neil Gaiman, Audible's Sandman, Act I
47. Ada Palmer, Perhaps the Stars
48. Vera Brosgol, Be Prepared
49. Alan Dundes and Carl L. Pagter, When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators: More Urban Folklore from the Paperowrk Empire
50. Naomi Novik, The Last Graduate
51. Jennifer Giesbrecht, The Monster of Elendhaven
52. P.Djeli Clark, The Haunting of Tram Car 015
Book meme for 2021:
The first book you read in 2021:
Katherine Addison's Angel of the Crows, which, well, for Sherlock wingfic it was not bad, I guess? But I found it largely disappointing and unnecessary.
The last book you finished in 2021:
P.Djeli Clark's The Haunting of Tram Car 015 novella, which I'd been planning to read for a while and finally bot around to. I'm now reading the other things in the Dead Djinn-verse.
The first book you will finish (or did finish!) in 2022:
Not sure... It might be Master of Djinn, which is my current Kindle book, or it might be Light from Uncommon Stars, which is my hard copy book, or it might end up being something else entirely.
How many books read in 2021
52. Which means I made my goal, with the help of a whole bunch of novellas :)
Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
I read, let's call it 1.5 nonfiction things: When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators (urban folklore) and the Denis Dragunsky half of the Deniskiny rasskazy... i o tom kak vse bylo na samom dele book, which is autobiographical (the other half are fictional short stories written by his father about his fictional namesake).
Male/Female authors?
I actually didn't keep track with charts this year because meh, I guess? But tallying up from my reading list:
Books: 35 books written by female authors, 15 books written by male authors -- even higher than my usual 2:1 female/male ratio that I'd observed in the first years I started counting (+ 2 books by authors who use they pronouns, as far as I know)
Authors: for this one, I'm counting just individual authors I've read, so that the effect of being swamped by series is factored out somewhat (although this year there was no serious series reading). I read 29 female authors (WAY up from last year) and 13-14 male authors (about the same as last year), plus 2 nb/other authors.
Also, because it's interesting, I tried to keep track of the gender of *protagonists*, too. The result (counting each book, not series, and excluding books that had a mix of them) is 25 female protagonists vs 13 male protagonists. I'm too lazy to check, but this might be the most female-skewed it's ever been... and while it's common, I've noticed, to have books with female authors but male protagonists (a lot of m/m, including this year), this year there were some that were the reverse, like the Abigail novella, Ring Shout, and the Backman book. Interestingly 6 books had neither-male-nor-female protagonists, the 4 Murderbots + the two Nghi Vo books, where I had a hard time figuring out whom to count as a protagonist and decided to just count Chih.
Breakdown by author:
Female:
- Wells -- 4
- Nghi Vo* -- 2
- Muir* -- 2
- MRK -- 2
- Maxwell (* = first time reading pro published work)
- Addison
- Ford*?
- Larkwood*
- Waggoner
- Sutanto*
- Martine
- K.J.Charles
- McGuire
- Ellis (* = first time reading fiction, I'm familiar with her writing for YouTube)
- Johnson*
- Little Badger*
- Deonn*
- Marske (* = first time reading pro published work)
- Kingfisher
- Jemisin
- Pinsker
- Chambers
- Ifueko*
- Emily St John Mandel*
- Drayden*
- Ada Palmer
- Brosgol
- Novik
- Giesbrecht*
Male:
- K.D. Edwards -- 2
- Clark -- 2
- Aaronovitch
- Onyebuchi*
- Thomas*
- Backman*
- Jimenez*
- Lavalle*
- James S.A. Corey* (= I read some short fiction by Abraham before)
- Dragunsky (x2) (* = the son's writing was new to me)
- Gaiman
- Sachar
- Dundes et al
Outside the binary:
- Gailey
- Cipri
* = new-to-me author this year. Much higher than last year since I was doing Hugo homework again. 6(.5) male new-to-me authors and a whopping 15 new-to-me female authors.
Most books read by one author this year?
Martha Wells with 4, all Murderbots (I needed to catch up so as to read Network Effect, then read Fugitive Telemetry once it became available). After that, it's a multi-way tie between K.D.Edwards, Mary Robinette Kowal (both of them I was catching up on series, too), Tamsyn Muir, Nghi Vo(reading first book and then sequel for those two), and P.Djeli Clark (two unrelated books set in different universes).
Favorite books read?
Perhaps the Stars. It was just *gestures helplessly* But another huge favorite was Network Effect, and I loved The Empress of Salt and Fortune, either of which could've easily been a favorite book in a different year -- it was just a really strong year.
Best books you read in 2021?
Network Effect and Empress of Salt and Fortune both won Hugos in their respective categories, so the SFF-reading publing seems to agree with me that they're great :) That said, I do think 'Empress' is objectively a best book, while Murderbot is a character/series people love, so it keeps winning everything, maybe not as objectively. So let's say Empress of Salt and Fortune. (I also thought The Space Between Words was a very strong debut that should've at least gotten a best novel nomination (it was on the long list, at least), and am still hoping Micaiah Johnson will win an Astounding Award for it next year.)
Least favorite?
It was a pretty good year, like I said, and so I can't think of a book I "had" to read that I actively hated... I had a very hard time pushing myself through The Vanished Birds, which I found pretensious and, like, falling short of its ambitions, but there were things about it I liked. I read the Teixcalaan sequel out of scab-picking and was annoyed by it more than anything else, but there are elements of worldbuilding in this series that I continue to enjoy. I had been hoping for fun urban fantasy m/m set in SF with Dim Sum Asylum but found it to have the SF and fantasy just kind of pasted on, and the m/m playing to different tropes than what I like in, so it didn't do any of the things for me I'd hoped. I was really disappointed by Come Tumbling Down, even with the pretty low expectations I had going in, but I think I'll save that for the next answer.
I think I'm going to go with A Desolation Called Peace as my least favorite, actually. It is not the worst by any means (I think Dim Sum Asylum has way less literary merit -- not that it pretends to much), but 'Desolation' hit that particular combination of book I personally did not like + book that got a lot of accolades (though not nearly as many as the first one) + sequel that retroactively made me like the preceding work less. I had not loved A Memory Called Empire the way most people seemed to, but there were things I liked about it, and I was disappointed that the book wasn't amazing, but I still liked it. But the flaws in 'Desolation' revealed that some of the things I'd been suspending judgement on with book 1 in case they were interesting POV tricks were indeed weaknesses/flaws, and so stripping away that benefit of the doubt made me like 'Memory' less, too. So, there you go, A Desolation Called Peace for least favorite book of 2021, for its overall effect.
Most disappointing book/Book you wished you loved more than you did?
Last year this went to "disappointing sequal to my favorite book of the year" and "disappointing entry in a series I've been reading for decades". There's nothing quite so dramatic this year. As I alluded above, Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children # whatever) was my most disappointing book. I do not have high expectations of this series -- in face, Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Beneath the Sugar Sky both managed to surprised me plesantly because my expectations were so low. But I was hoping a book centered on my favorite character in the series (Jack) would be fun, and it just absolutely wasn't for me. It was completely pointless, a string of Profound Authorial Quotes and not much else. Apparently I had also underestimated the power of how much I hate Sumi; it's very possible that the reason I had been pleasantly surprised by books 2 and 3 is that Sumi wasn't in them.
Honorable mention goes to the final Wayfarers book, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. It was fine, I enjoyed reading some of it, but after three books each of which I liked better than the last, which felt like Chambers becoming a better writer before one's eyes, this felt like Chambers returning to the meandering, plot-less, largely arc-less approach to writing a book that contributed to The Way to a Small Angry Planet being "my favorite book that I hate". Not AS bad! -- I was relieved to see that "good guys" are allowed to have flaws and to disagree with each other -- but it was still disappointing. Perhaps I'm feeling uncharitable, but it feels like now that Wayfarers have won a best series Hugo, she felt like she could just go back to writing the kind of stuff she prefers, and this was the result -- which is definitely much less to my taste than what I know she CAN write. It also makes me nervous that, given the validation of the establishment and the fact that there are certainly plenty of readers who seem to like this "soft" sci-fi, that's just what she'll keep writing, and I'll never really like another one of her books -- which would be a pity, because she DOES have a lot of really cool stuff in her books that I do like. I was also disappointed for reasons that are a little external to the book: I heard Chambers speak at a virtual con panel where she said that in this final book she tried to correct or address or otherwise "fix" (I forget what specific word she used) something she had come to realize was a flaw in her first book, which of course she couldn't do anything about post-publication. I was hoping that the fix would be for my least favorite aspect of that book, the way Corbin was treated. But apparently it was likely things like everyone thinking of Akaraks as pirates and not worrying about how they got to be that way (which, this was a cool fix!) and Pei keeping her relationship with Ashby on the downlow (so don't care).
There were also several books I liked that I wish I had liked MORE: Per tradition, Sarah Pinsker's We Are Satellites is on this list -- I loved a lot of this book, but then had the same problems with the second half of it as with Song for a New Day last year -- the way Pinsker writes about Evil Corporations on a much shallower and less realistic level than the rest of her interesting worldbuilding, my lack of interest in activism-as-plot, our difference of opinion on what constitutes a satisfying ending for this kind of story. I was less disappointed by it this year/in this book because I kind of already knew to expect it, but I still wish we were more simpatico in these respects, because I love the way she writes about people and families and many other things. The many-years-later Wayside School sequel was fine, and I even chuckled a couple of times, but was still disappointing in that I didn't feel the same energy from it as from Sachar's books I'd loved previously ; dunno if the problem is him or me. And, honestly, I didn't have high expectations for The City We Became, because I don't really care for that subgenre, and I probably enjoyed it more than I'd expected to, courtesy of some characters I liked a lot, but the broad-strokes worldbuilding of some things, especially to do with Staten Island, disappointed me in the sense of it's disappointing to know that this was produced by the author of the Broken Earth books, which I do think are some of the very best sci-fi of this century.
Best series you discovered in 2021?
Let's see -- I did read a fair bit of series books this year, but mostly it was continuing series I already knew. New series this year were Gideon the Ninth/Locked Tomb (read 2 books, which is all that's out right now), whatever the series by Nghi Vo is (ditto), The Unspoken Name (starting off a new series, where I'm waiting for book 2), A Marvelous Light (ditto), Raybearer (read book 1, started the sequel but haven't made much progress so far), Clark's Dead Djinn-verse (read a novella, in the process of reading more), Axiom's End (may or may not read the sequel), Legendborn (ditto), The City We Became (I may well read the sequel out of curiosity rather than because I expect to enjoy it), The Expanse (not planning to read on in the books, at least for now).
Of those, the ones I really like as series* are ones that have only a single book out, so it's hard to judge them as a series, but I'm still going to say The Unspoken Name + future series. Larkwood was my top pick for Astounding on the strength of that book, and I liked everything about it -- worldbuilding (social and magical and just the weirdness of the Maze), characters (especially Tal and Sethennai), writing. It's the one I'm most looking forward to the sequel for. (*what I mean by "as series" is that I really liked the Nghi Vo books, but I liked them as individual stories, not the way I like series, where what I really want to see more of is these characters and this world. I just really like these individual stories, but the common characters themselves (Chih and their bird friend) are not an important connection, and it's not important to me for the cool worldbuilding details to be connected, just to be there and be cool.)
Favorite new author you discovered this year?
Lots! In part courtsey of reading the Astounding ballot and other Hugo homework. My favorites were Nghi Vo, Micaiah Johnson, K.A.Larkwood, as well as pro fic entries from Freya Marske and Everina Maxwell, whose fic I'd previously read. This was also my first encounter with Frederik Backman, which I enjoyed enough that while I may not seek out more of his books intentionally, I'll definitely pick them up when they come my way.
Of other new authors, I was impressed by Joradn Ifueko's debut and am looking to see how she develops as an author from here. This year was my first experience of Nicky Drayden (after planning to read her for some years), and that was... a ride, certainly! I do want to check out more of her work, now that I kind of know what to expect. I did not really care for Riot Baby, but I was impressed by Onyebuchi's writing, and am curious to see more of it. Jessie Q. Sutanto's writing was very cute when it came to writing about family; I'll probably pick up another book if I hear about it. I was very mixed on Tamsyn Muir's writing, but am planning to read more in the series I already started, at least. I found some of Aiden Thomas's writing choices overly earnest and distracting, but I liked Cemetery Boys on the whole and would pick up another book by him, ditto Darcy Little Badger (Elatsoe), and Tracy Deonn (Legendborn). I had hoped to like Lindsay Ellis's Axiom's End more than I did, but if I'm not going to be able to enjoy her "content" via YouTube anymore, I guess I can read her books instead. The Monster of Elendhaven was not really my thing, but it is a very well executed not-my-thing, so I would cautiously check out Jennifer Giesbrecht's other work; ditto Victor Lavalle. I liked Emily St John Mandel's Station Eleven, but I'm not sure that her other books would be my speed. I think the only new-to-me authors I'd avoid in the future are Rhys Ford and Simon Jimenez, and possibly James S.A. Corey, which is not a bad hit rate.
I did not read anything more by my favorite new authors from last year, but in fairness, I'm not sure my top favorite (Emily Tesh) had published anything new.
Oldest book read?
Alan Dundes and Carl L. Pagter, When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators: More Urban Folklore from the Paperowrk Empire, from 1987. Everything else is much newer -- I think the next oldest are Leviathan Wakes (2011) and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (2013), Station Eleven (2014). Everything else is from the last 5 years.
Newest?
Perhaps the Stars finally came out on November 2 in the US. (Usually this is the late-in-the-year installment of the RoL GNs for me, but this year the publication will be in January 2022.)
Longest book title?
When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators: More Urban Folklore from the Paperowrk Empire -- 15 words, which is actually not that long for a nonfiction title (last year's winner on my list had 22).
Longest fiction title: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (9 words) -- and there are several other fiction titles in the 6-7 word range this year.
Shortest title?
Finna (5 letters), but there were several other one-word titles this year (Elatsoe, Raybearer, Legendborn -- a concenteration of them on the Lodestar ballot, apparently).
How many re-reads?
2.5, sorta? The full reread was the Alan Dundes nonfiction book. I'm also counting Audible's Sandman, Act I -- a "reread", but in a different format, which introduced additional text that just wasn't there in the GN version, but I'm counting it as a reread in translation, kinda. And the half is the part of Deniskiny rasskazy... i o tom kak vse bylo na samom dele that were the Deniska stories, all or almost all of which I'd read before. I also reread part of Taltos but did not finish.
(The last couple of years, my rereads came from Yuletide canon review, but this time my canon review required a different approach.)
Any in translation?
Yes -- My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry was translated from Swedish.
Also one book in Russian (the Deniska one).
How many of this year's books were from the library?
I should've kept better track this year, but I didn't... Let's see if I can figure it out retroactively:
- 35 (at least) were from the library -- I was back to using the library heavily this year, having missed it a lot. A bunch of these were in e-copy, but a fair number were in hard copy as well, first via curbside pickup, then via actual browsing.
- 4 were online freebies (including Sandman Act 1 and the Murderbot novellas which I collected from Tor)
- 3 were (ahem) of dubious online provenance
- 3 or so were from the Hugo packet (this gets complicated, because there were cases where I started reading a library copy, then switched to Hugo packet copy when the library copy went away)
- 2 were e-ARCs generously shared by connected friends
- 2 were gifts
- 2-3 were books I bought for myself -- the questionable 4th was The Last Graduate, which I started reading in library copy and then bought a copy when it disappeared off my Kindle app a day early. I subsequently also bought a hard copy of Network Effect, but it was after I read it.
Anyway, mostly from the library, mostly in ecopy. That's about all I can say.
Book that most changed my perspective:
Perhaps the Stars. As I put it to Best Chat, there were several chapters in that book which blew my mind in three different ways simultaneously, to the point that it was like galaxy brain calisthenics. (Honorable mention to Harrow the Ninth, which, even reading it fully spoiled, was an interesting ride. And Mary Robinette Kowal's Lady Astronauts short story, "We Interrupt This Broadcast".)
Favorite character:
Of new-to-me characters, Tal Charossa in The Unspoken Name, Julian in Cemetery Boys, Palamedes Sextus in the Locked Tomb books.
Most memorable character:
Of the new ones, Tal from above, Delly from A Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry, the grandmother from 'My Grandmother Asked', Johan in The Monster of Elendhaven. (But also, of the non-new ones, quite a few people from Perhaps the Stars, starting with Mycroft.)
Favorite scene:
The ones that occur to me immediately are not so much scenes as chapters from Perhaps the Stars -- the chapter 9A spends confined in bed, the chapter that's mostly radio transcript -- OK, no, that's not "favorite", that's most powerful, because i can't say I enjoyed those chapters.
So, for a simpler definition of favorite, let's go with:
- ART's real voice filling the feed in Network Effect (actually, like, 80% of Network Effect after that point, but to pick a particular scene)
- I kept waiting to get to the bear scene in Winter's Orbit, and it did not disappoint
Favorite quote:
I usually answer this question by going through all of my write-ups and excerpting the quotes I'd marked down that still ping me. So here are a few:
From The Unspoken Name:
"What does Archer do?"
"It's more about what it doesn't do," said Shuthmili. "For instance, it doesn't turn forests to ash. It doesn't boil rivers dry. It doesn't reduce cities to puddles of glass. If you're a neighbour of Aqrsazh and we've taken advantage of you in some way, and you don't feel friendly towards us, and you're thinking of getting back at us, you might first think carefully about how much you enjoy it when Archer doesn't do anything."
From Murderbots:
"What I was mostly thinking was that there wasn't going to be one dead SecUnit on this embarkation floor, there were going to be four."
"'SecUnit, you need to get to Medical!'
[...] 'What happened in Medical?'
'You happened, you got shot.'
Oh, right, that."
From The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry: "and within very short order an exceedingly irritated-looking warden reinflicted Dellaria Wells upon the populace."
From Subtle Blood (the Will Darling conclusion): "It's not your fault in the slightest," Will said strongly, then was forced to add, "Just goes to show, there's a first time for everything."
From The Space Between Worlds: "Even if you think you know yourself in your safe glass castle, you don't know yourself in the dirt. Even if you hustle and make it in the rough, you have no idea if you would thrive or die in the light of real riches, if your cleverness would outlive your desperation."
From A Marvelous Lifht:
"Charlie always liked people more once he'd explained something badly to them, and Bel just liked things that were Edwin's."
"You are the most fascinating thing in this beautiful house. I'd like to introduce my fists to whoever taught you to stop talking about the things that interest you."
From The Changeling: "Maybe having a child was like being drunk. You couldn't gauge when you went from being charming to being an asshole."
Most inspirational in terms of own writing?
Weirdly, Perhaps the Stars. Not weirdly in the sense that it was that book, but weirdly in the way it manifested. I did not write any TI fic or anything, but: 1) As I was writing my Yuletide fic, I kept feeling like it was feeling like Mycroft & JEDD adventures (though I went in and at least tried to give Chlorine a sense of humour to counteract this impression), and 2) At some point while I was writing the first draft of the story, I found myself randomly assigning pronouns to the background elements with the intention of going back and changing them to different pronouns later, once the story was complete, so I could tweak the balance to where it worked better for me. I did that in my second or third pass, and told my beta, "I went through and Ada Palmered my pronouns" -- which was an interesting experience.
How many you'd actually read again?
I want to reread the Terra Ignota books at some point, so Perhaps the Stars. Network Effect brought me so much joy, I could easily see myself rereading it, too.
A book that you never want to read again:
The Changleling. That was rough enough the first time. Also The Vanished Birds and A Desolation Called Peace, because I did find them both a slog to get through.
Book you recommended most to others in 2021?
I recommended/gifted The Unspoken Name, A Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry, and A Marvelous Light, of the ones I read this year. I also ended up recommending-with-caveats A Close and Common Orbit to several flisters who had read and hated A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.
The book series you read the most volumes of in 2021:
Murderbot, with 3 novellas and a novel. I read 2 novels of Locked Tomb and Lady Astronaut, a novel + novella in the Tarot Sequence, and two novellas.
The genre you read the most in 2021:
- 24 fantasy (including 11 urban fantasy, 6 secondary world, and 3 ~historical fantasy)
- 20 sci-fi (including some near-future sci fi and some far future stuff)
- 3 romance (1 het, 2 m/m, one non-supernatural, one paranormal)
- 2.5 kidlit
- 1.5 non-fiction
- 1 regular fiction
Some other stuff I kept track of this year tallied up after the fact:
- 1 was a graphic novels
- 1 was an audio book
- 14 were novellas
Your favorite "classic" you read in 2021:
I really don't think I read anything that qualifies as a classic, not even "classic SF". Well, I guess the Deniska stories are classics of the Soviet kidlit genre?
Most surprising (in a good way) book of the year?
I don't think I was surprised by liking any books I didn't expect to like, unlike in years past. I guess The Unspoken Name, The Space Between Worlds, and Raybearer surprised me a little by being as solid as they were given that they were first novels. And Perhaps the Stars surprised me (in a good way) by a bunch of its resolutions.
The hardest book you read in 2021 (topic or writing style):
I read a surprising number of horror-adjacent things in 2021 when I don't actually like horror: Gideon and Harrow had the wrong aesthetic for me, as did Monster of Elendhaven. But the book that takes the cake in this regard is The Changeling, which had a passage that was particularly difficult for me to get through.
I had read a pandemic novel without issues last year (Song for a New Day), and similarly had little issue reading Station Eleven this year, which I also felt like noting.
The funniest book you read in 2021:
I didn't read any humour books this year. I think I probably found funniest A Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry's droll narrative style, as well as My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry. Be Prepared was also very funny, and the Murderbot books and the Will Darling books also had a lot of very funny lines. And the Deniska stories, of course. Oh, and I should also mention Dial A for Aunties, which was very funny when dealing with the protagonist's family. I guess there were a lot of funny books this year, which is nice to see!
The saddest book you read in 2021:
Station Eleven, probably, even though it feels ultimately hopeful. I think The Vanished Birds was aiming for something similarly elegiac but, for my money, missed by a mile.
The shortest book you read in 2021:
The Wayside School book was 192 pages, but in large print, which I think might make it shorter than some of the novellas that have a lower page count. But the shortest I could find by page count, according to goodreads, was Finna at 92 pages.
The longest book that you read in 2021:
This one's easy: Perhaps the Stars is not even close: 586 pages according to Goodreads, but I think that must include small font, because this was a loooong book.
Best book that was outside your comfort zone/a new genre for you?
I guess the horror-adjacent ones would count for this -- The Changeling, the Locked Tomb books, Monster of Elendhaven. I think The Changeling is probably the best of them, for all that reading it was probably the hardest.
But I should also mention Riot Baby here too, because reading it definitely felt like reading a book written not for me, but I could still clearly see its merits.
Most thrilling, unputdownable book of 2021?
I did not read any actual thrillers, so I think I'm going to give this to The Last Graduate, which I did read in three pieces, with weeks-long interruptions, but when I was reading it, I did find it pretty unputdownable.
Most beautifully written book in 2021?
I think The Empress of Salt and Fortune takes this one, although I also found the prose very lovely in Station Eleven and, unexpectedly for what is basically paranormal m/m, A Marvelous Light.
Book you most anticipated in 2021?
Perhaps the Stars, which I'd been waiting impatiently for since 2018 -- and it didn't disappoint!
Favorite cover of a book you read in 2021?
I actually really like the Perhaps the Stars cover, especially in context of the other covers -- the way they get progressively darker:
I also really like the cover of The Changeling (more than the book, if I'm honest):
The Elatsoe cover is also very cool, and this doesn't even do it justice -- the title letters are sparkly foil on the hard copy:
And I also really like the cover of Legendborn -- Bree looks AWESOME in the cover illustration:
Book that had the greatest impact on you this year?
Perhaps the Stars, since reading it consumed my brain for a couple of weeks and then never really let me go.
Book you can't believe you waited till 2021 to finally read?
Leviathan Wakes, because I'd been saying I would check out The Expanse for YEARS. (And then I didn't like the book much. But at least now I know that.)
Book that had a scene that left you reeling and dying to talk to someone about it?
Several chapters of Perhaps the Stars, including the Odyssey one, the last chapter narrated by 9A, and, honestly, like half the chpters probably. And I guess maybe the twist ending of Legendborn?
Oh! And the Palamedes writing fanfic out of boredom in the River in Harrow the Ninth (I had been spoiled for a lot of mindbendy things in Harrow, but I had not been spoiled for that delightful bit).
Also, I keep trying to get L to read Be Prepared, because I want her to get to the "illegal guinea pig" bit, which made me think of her roommate drama.
Also some of the choices in The City We Became, but not in a good way.
Looking Ahead:
One book you didn't read this year that will be your #1 priority in 2022?
I plan to finish Light from Uncommon Stars, which I waited to read for several months, until my library got their copies in, but am currently not very far in. L also wants me to read Nights at the Circus, which she read for a class and really liked.
I did read the books that were my answers to this question last year (The Hanged Man and Angel of the Crows), but I still have not read any of the books that have been on this list for several years, like Sorcerer to the Crown, any of the Craft books I've started, Crooked Kingdom, Magnus Chase sequels, more Maggie Stiefvater books, or The Night Circus, or the Cloud Roads sequels, or finished any Hardinges this year.
New book you are most anticipating for 2022?
Amongst Our Weapons, the next Peter Grant book, with April 2022 publication.
I was hoping I would also have Tslamoth to look forward to, but looks like that's not expected until 2023 :((((
And here's the perennial list of shame (I kid! but these are books I've been carrying over for, what, probably 5 years)war
- Thorn of Emberlain
- Warboy (Warchild #4)
- Doors of Stone (Kvothe #3) -- apparently a release date will be announced soon
- Winds of Winter -- I've seen a Nov 2023 date out there, but no idea if it's accurate or what (and hopefully I will still care by the time it comes along, which seems increasingly unlikely)
*
And yay, Snowflake time!
Challenge #1: In your own space, update your fandom information!
Apparently it had been a while since I'd done so -- my improted-from-LJ profile still described me as "mid-30s". But now I updated my LJ and DW profiles, including a link to the fannish intro from a couple of Snowflakes back, and updated the links on my AO3 profile to include DW as well as LJ. With that, calling this challenge done.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1162358.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).