I've seen people refer to the Hugos as the Oscars of SFF literature. But I don't see it that way. They're really more the People's Choice Awards of SFF literature, because they are voted on by a wide array of people connected to the SFF community, many (if not most) of whom are fans. This tells me what was popular with a particular set of people ( Read more... )

I haven't yet made any kind of report on the books I've been reading this year, but I'm making good progress on both my book challenges for this year. These are presented in random order (certainly not the order in which I read them).

1. The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas. I read this because I'd never read it, and I wanted to read it as ( Read more... )

This was a weekend spent with friends, and I loved it. There was also the usual amount of chores and such that needed getting done, plus I carved out quiet time. But I had something every night, a little unusual for me.

Friday night was book club. Cassandra picked A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. This was my first introduction to Bill Bryson. ( Read more... )

Last week was an odd week. The long weekend was great, but there was a big move of servers to a new datacenter at work thing that ended up having a big impact on my day job. The primary server that hosts VIREO (the administrative tool I use to manage uploaded theses/dissertations) had some issue with the datacenter move, so they reloaded all our ( Read more... )

I got the idea for this from this link to a reader's blog (which was linked from the Half Price Books FB page). It's a simple challege. Between now and June, read 8 classic books in 8 different categories. One of my goals this year has been to read a lot more of The Classics. Sure, there may be different ways of interpreting what is meant by The ( Read more... )

The week did not manage to kill me after all, despite its best attempt. As such, I have been able to take good advantage of Half Price's Labor Day sale (20% off everything). It seemed like a good time to just go buy random stuff. I hit 3 different Half Price stores, and never wandered out of the fiction aisle. I figure between AramdilloCon last ( Read more... )

No angst here, just a nice, fun, relaxing weekend. Sometimes it just works out nicely that way ( Read more... )

I'm a little behind on both keeping up with the 50 book challenge, and in reporting. These will be kept fairly short, and are in random order (not necessarily the order in which I read them):

10. Succubus Shadows by Richelle Mead: continuation of her excellent Succubus series. An elusive entity is trying to get Georgina to kill herself, and she's ( Read more... )

I've had a hankering to read some Tolstoy ever since seeing The Last Station back in the spring. I loved that movie, and Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer both deserved their Oscar nominations for it. It is a sad, lovely film about two people who have been in love a long time, but can't seem to find common ground between each other as Tolstoy's ( Read more... )

I read a fair amount within what is considered the paranormal romance genre, that is, a mix of romance and paranormal elements. Sure, most of the paranormals in the last few years has been vampires, and those books are still going strong (although some people are tiring of them), but writers are branching out to other paranormal creatures ( Read more... )