Fandom talks meta

From [Book Jockey Alex’s] blog:

• Notable Young Adult Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror of 2024 - while the original post was at the blog, the actual list is at ReacTor Mag.
• YA Book Bundles – Science Fiction & Fantasy, Part 1
• YA Book Bundles – Science Fiction & Fantasy, Part 2

general thought: Look, I get that the USA has a stranglehold on some aspects of publishing, and that someone writing from North America about books published in English is going to get a lot more options set in the USA. But for me to pick something set there to spend my precious reading time, the summary has to be spectacular. Ditto ‘class warfare (near) future dystopia’. I’m here for the escapism, dammit. In the Reactor article there were books more relevant to my interests later on, but I nearly noped out when the first five or so were so dire.

Overall - I didn’t quite make it through these lists. I found it near impossible to focus on the descriptions to see if there was something I was going to like; then I just skimmed to see if there was anything jumped out at me. Also, two of these are from 2020, so there were several I’ve either got on the wishlist, or have read. Of the ~80, I added four to the wishlist, but only one is a ‘really want to read’, and that’s because it is one of my must read authors.

The Spinoff’s best NZ books of 2024 - I found the summaries much more readable than the previous, and yet I added zero books to the reading wishlist.

The Best Books We Read in 2024—And What We’re Looking Forward to in 2025 by Words without Borders - books in translation. Another one where the summaries/reviews were interesting reading, but none sparked an interest in actually reading the books.

Read Palestinian Speculative Fiction Reading List by Sonia Sulaiman - to be fair here, I’ve read five booklists already, and I’m starting to flag. But this is the last one, and then I can close the window, and I’m very invested in that. So, I’m expecting to be unmotivated by any of the books, and that is not actually a commentary on what is written. … and then I started reading and discovered it is a stack of links. For now, I’ve shoved it into the ‘reading plans’ tab group, which is where anything online short fiction gets put until I have the oomph to read it.

Last year I captured all book acquisitions in storygraph and made a list of books I own to prioritise reading in librarything. And then I confused matters by creating two other storygraph tags: 2024-aquisitions---read and 2024-aquisitions---dnf. I had allowed for adding acquired books to the librarything list by only putting ~50 books on at the beginning of the year.

At the start of writing this post, there were books in the storygraph 'acquired' list that had been read, so I needed to transfer those; I also decided that renaming it was useful because it wasn't grouping properly. Now, in storygraph, I have 78 unread books (including 11 that are in progress at various levels of abandoned forgotten about), 2 DNF and 17 read for a total of 97.

The librarything list ended up with 98 books, 36 of them with 2024 entry dates, and thus theoretically new to me in 2024. I've put reviews/ratings on 13. I've finished Passing Strange in the last week, but haven't reviewed it yet, and have 7 in the wilderness of 'in progress'.

There is obviously a significant overlap between these two lists. I didn't put everything acquired in the librarything tag, because I was capturing that in storygraph.

I was going to look at these in some detail and make commentary on my reading habits and so on and so forth, but actually, I don't think I care to. The numbers are interesting, but not really a surprise, because I know that I rarely keep to a plan and I also have a dreadful track record of reading books I own.

Going forward: I intend to do the same data capture in storygraph; I have not done the same thing in librarything. Instead, I have a tag for thestoryinside and I pick a set of books each month that meet the current selected categories, and that is causing me to read some of the books languishing on my shelves (I'm trying to remember not to put recent acquisitions on that list).

Over on tumblr, someone shared some lovely pictures of red tailed black cockatoos. To which the response was 'what lovely parrots'. Hmmph said I, those are cockatoos.

So I asked that most helpful (if sometimes inaccurate and regularly overly didactic) of sources, wikipedia. Which told me there are three superfamilies of parrots, being cockatoos, true parrots, and New Zealand parrots.

Hmmph said I. Not reeeeally parrots then are they.

(Yes, I have a basic understanding of taxonomy, this is absolutely me being a grump)

I started cutting pieces for the borders of chaosmanor's quilt yesterday. I did an amount of math, and concluded that yes, I could do 18 pieces at the shorter length, rather than 9 pieces at the longer length. (each piece costs 1/4" of fabric for seams)

I have no idea where those numbers came from now, because I have four sides, and therefore however many I have has to be a multiple of four. Which I think means I need 24 pieces of each colour and I may have stuffed myself up right royally.

Off to look through my notes and see where the numbers went squirrelly. Also, because I needed 2 3/4" but there was an issue with the cutting mechanism, I cut the first two colours at 3", which means that I have a fair bit of extra, if I need it. Also, I was doing the math for slightly longer than needed in the hope that that would mean that if my seams were too wide I'd be fine, so possibly I just have to do very scant 1/4" seams.

ETA: worked it out. 24 pieces of each colour across the four sides, but three colours * 6 sets -> 18 pieces on a side, all three colours combined, so six pieces on a side.

• Why We Eat Each Other, Yoon Chung, 3 June 2024. This was so good. Very much body horror though. 5/5
• Shadow Films, Ben Peek, January 2024 - Peek is a name I recognise, but I don’t think I’ve read anything by them in a decade. This is exactly the kind of politically dark and yet hopeful I vaguely recall. 5/5
• The Robot, Lavie Tidhar, no obvious date - a name I recognise but don’t have works associated with, so I’m not sure if I’ve read anything by them before. I say I like gentle (not quite cosy) slow reads, and thus should have liked this slow character study over a very long time frame, and I didn’t. It was .. maybe comfortable is the wrong word, but it wasn’t comforting, it was cloying. 3 /5
• The Enceladus South Pole Base Named After V.I. Lenin, Zohar Jacobs, February 2024 - Both a close focus character study, and a wide ranging comments on humanity, set in the microcosm of a base so far from home that going back was never an option. I was very careful to not think about the logistics very hard. 4/5
• Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200, R.S.A. Garcia, Uncanny #53 - This is just fabulous. The vernacular isn't familiar to me, so it took a couple of readings of the first couple of paragraphs to work out what was happening, but once I got the rhythm it was fine. I loved Ignatius the goat and their absolute hatred of everyone not their person. Tantie Merle is the type of protagonist I wish I saw more of - older and practical and sure in themself about what they want out of life. And the commentary about how people treat robots is both pointed and subtle. 5 / 5

I was going to trim these down after finishing a couple of things, but as I want to be at the train station in ~20 minutes and I'm still at the computer, I'm doing a paste and go. Maybe I'll come back and fix later.

• currently reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, which I've had on the shelves at least a decade for 'later'
• I'm committing to attempting it as doing the course. Thus, today I'm reading the three introductory chapters (intro, basic principles, basic techniques). (done, done, in progress)
• basic techniques 'the morning pages' is something I've kind of being doing over at 750words.com for years (I have a lifetime membership because I was a very early adopter; I do recommend it if you can afford a subscription. But I also do almost the same writing in a pages document, it just doesn't have some of the bells and whistles that I like)
• I haven't been very consistent on the when of the morning pages. the book says 'roll out of bed and into the morning pages'. So, before shower, breakfast, morning exercises. It might actually work as a 'doing things differently in my mornings'. hat tip here to pedanther talking about this and about how they have changed things so their mornings (and evenings) work better for having me already on the path for having this realisation
• one of my issues with the morning pages is that I used to think of all the things that needed doing and then stress myself out by attempting to capture them in a to do list, and then I wouldn't have dealt with yesterday's, and it was an ongoing spiral of shame, and then I wouldn't do them for a while
• BUT! If I don't treat it that way, if I don't think of it as capturing to do tasks, but just as thought dumping, will I be okay with that?
• Cameron argues for doing this in paper. I don't have the wherewithal for that (I lose the book or the pen, or my shoulder hurts, or I have some other excuse; this is pretty consistent). But I almost always put the laptop on the bedside table at night, in the rack that I bought for this purpose. Which means that in the morning I can reach over, pick up the laptop (and a cardi, as the weather gets cooler) and do the writing
• If I can do this as a new habit, can I then piggy back on that to get my mornings back to the way I want them? The alarm goes off at 7am so I remember to take my first meds of the day; I've been going back to sleep lately. But if I instead I pick up the laptop, and I always leave 750words open on the screen, I should be able to build that. Which is then already three things (7am start, meds, writing).
• tl;dr: I'm going to attempt to leverage two existing things I do (7am alarm; writing sometime) by combining them in the morning and seeing if that will allow for a better morning routine

We have rain! And thunder! I am wondering whether I should be checking on the chickens, but I'm typing this from bed with half the household already in bed and theoretically asleep, and if the chickens are appropriately settled I don't want to disturb them.

it's been a bitty busy day. two medical appointments-chiro and spirometry-and I think overall i'm better for the first and not as bad as i might be on the second; I'm just over the threshold for the outside normal range on inflammatory markers, but I don't know what the measurement range for abnormal is (normal is <20, I was 24; I don't know what was being measured). I apparently have 'somewhat large lungs', which woodwind player.

hugos: one category down, now focusing on podcasts, because it will take a while. Am <1 episode in to one I haven't heard before; I'm giving them three before I abandon them entirely.

I experimented with dinner. The available packet of basil at the shops was a) $5 and b) not enough, so I bought spinach for more green. I think I should have just gone with not quite enough basil. I put a cup of almonds, the remnant pine nuts, some olive oil, and the greens in the thermomix and made a lovely green paste. I also grated some pecorino to go on the side, so Youngest didn't have to eat it. I don't think sprinkled works as well as mixed in, and I think the spinach needed to be heated more (we just stir through after the pasta is drained, which warms it up and everything is good, usually)

• life has been busy, and I have neither been writing my offline journal nor making blog notes through the day, and I've rather missed it. Today, I'm back to it. (plus, the other things I capture in the same document are links read - which has been mostly happening; and tasks, which are colour coded by whether they have been done or not, which is a bit of a disaster). I didn't do All! The! Things! but it was closer
• Because I work well with very specific tracking things, I've set up a spreadsheet that is capturing a set of email and browser tab numbers, and the plotting each of those plus the total. So far so good--I've missed two days since 18th March--and the numbers are slowly coming down. I'm not sure what I'll do at the point that I actually have these numbers under control, but that is a question for Later Me.
• more digital decluttering, moving subscriptions I want to keep from the dying email to gmail, and unsubscribing from others. Once I get the new email up and working, it will be the email address for people and organisations I'm working with to use, and gmail will be the gumph i read when i have the energy.
• The weather is turning, and we've put the heavier quilt on; at this point I don't have an extra on my side. We've also stopped leaving the bathroom door open at night to keep the place cooler. This has gone with me absolutely not wanting to shower and get dressed each day, leaving me wandering around naked until at least midday. I have, however, started eating breakfast at the table again, and am thinking I should make some washable seat covers (I'm using a scruffy old towel, which covers up how scruffy the seats are).
• I've done on two walks this week! I won't be doing ParkRun on Saturday, because the afternoon is Youngest's 21st family gathering which is being done out in the Swan Valley. I will, instead, be sleeping in and conserving spoons.
• I have done more Hugo reading Stuff, including reading all of the short stories. I may or may not post that in the near future. It needs some editing because the links etc won't carry over, and I don't have the oomph for that at the moment.
• I have discovered a ridiculous 'idle' game that I've been slightly obsessed with over the last little while, called Cells, with the conceit that this is a 'create a simulation' setup. It has three relaxed levels - Primary (starts with proteins, goes all sorts of ways), Beyond (solar system; you start with the sun and some planets, and then each level you get more. Currently I have up to Jupiter, and am attempting to 'discover' two of the moons), and Mesozoic ('dinosaur' clades, with levelling up done by triggering an asteroid). It also has a sequence of short term 'simulations' and I'm not entirely sure on that. I'm finding those stressful, because they are time limited, but I want to know what it is that has been included. The current one is infection, and includes a timeline; the previous one was cheese.
• we have got about half of the library floor clear. It helps to have a shelf that the mess of books can be moved to. I've already identified a handful that I don't think we need to keep, and there will probably be others.

A significant proportion of my junk mail is scams about publishing research/conference invites. Because the email address that these come to is going away by the end of the year, I'm not going to be getting any more (I hope).

But! I've decided to do a snapshot of 'who' they are coming from, according to the signoff:

• Scarlett Lili, Journal Manager, Annals of Breast Cancer Research (ISSN: 2641-7685), JSciMed Central, USA
• Martina Paula, Conference Secretary | GFAS2025
• Lark Allen, Conference Manager, Obesity 2025
• Stella Davison, Editorial Manager, Annals of Agricultural Science and Technology, USA
• Luna Cruz, Editorial Manager, USA

What I'll note here - these are more Western than I used to get. I guess because three are claiming to be from the USA and two are conferences that are ostensibly in Europe (Rome and Amsterdam, apparently). The two that don't clearly identify who they are 'came' from The Annals of Internal Medicine and 2nd Edition of Global Food & Agri Summit. So, three 'medicine' and two 'agriculture' which is kind of interesting.

(the other spam today were two pretending to be from my email provider, and an invitation to study at a for profit place)

This has been a week where each day is chewed up by something that wasn't on my radar at all.

• I've just spent multiple hours setting up my Hugo Voting documents, notes, and finding where links are and what I've already read. This will be valuable to future me, because it gives me the scaffolding for a) the actual voting (if I get it together) and b) the blot posts I'll (hopefully) make. I've read two novelettes, two novellas, half a Lodestar, and one novel; listen semi-regularly to one podcast; have vague opinions on artists; no opinions on editors, gaming or dramatic presentations (and not likely to vote in any of these five categories); and have a favourite in the best fan writer.
• I spent far more hours than I wanted to yesterday getting my scanner to talk to the 'new' (say, two years old?) laptop. And then scanning my stats honours thesis so I could send it off as an example of 'academic' writing, given that none of my papers am I first author on, and the abstracts I submitted as writing samples aren't long enough (which, fair, I get that). I was done about 11pm.
• Monday - I no longer remember what ate Monday. I do know that the original plans fell through. It might have been monday where my pain coverage wasn't sufficient and I just didn't do any of the things that needed doing.

However. I've been making steady tiny increments on J's quilt (ironing yesterday), tidying the library (moving books off the floor onto the temporary shelf, mostly) and umm, other projects, I believe. But I'm sore and I'm not coping wonderfully physically--which I say knowing that I've upped the difficulty of the physio exercises (incomplete today, because, ow my hips) and gone walking yesterday and today. So, swings, roundabouts. Also Hanon's yesterday where I used the lap timer on my watch, and got roughly half at or under a minute (fastest: 47s).