Something I've done enthusiastically all my life, but being me, took a very long time to realize that just because I was enthusiastic didn't automatically mean another would be. You'd think I'd get a clue since from my earliest years, I became increasingly skeptical about the assumed authority of literary critics. But I've always been slow on the ( Read more... )

I don't care for second person present tense, but new writer (Cruel Beauty) Rosamund Hodge makes it work.

Katherine Eliska Kimbriel's dark, inexorably building magic-out-west YA, Kindred Rites. (It's second book in a series, but readers can pick up the story just fine.)

I wanted to wait on linking these two discussions in hopes they'd get good and long, for anyone wanting to try some new authors. Jo Walton over on Tor.com began this list, springing off James Nicoll's postPosters often provide a mini-vector for taste guidance by naming several authors, or beginning with a "If you like X, then you should like A, B ( Read more... )

So I'm on the Andre Norton jury this year, and I've been reading like a reading thing this past couple of months. Not only books from the big publishers who sent us boxes, but from small press and *gasp* even self-pubbed. If it made it into book form and it was published somewhere in English last year, it's eligible ( Read more... )

Well, my flist is full of everybody exhorting everybody else to vote, and I say everybody because even the non-USAns are reminding USAns they should get out and vote ( Read more... )

Grump grump, tell me something fun, some discovery that made you smile, if you've even read this far. Great new book? Wonderful movie? A special moment, like Onecrowdedhour getting to see an eagle take off straight into the white? I would have smiled all day, even though it's ninety-one in the patio, we've had less than an inch of rain since ( Read more... )