To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
Started: 7/8/20
Finished: 7/12/20
Astronauts doing science! Science fiction, but heavy on the science, and oh so optimistic.
Hugo packet
In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire
Started: 7/5/20
Finished: 7/8/20
Fourth in the Wayward Children series, this one takes one of our characters back in time to when she found her door. It’s so good, and the ending is so sad. It felt sadder than the others, but I’m not sure why – they’re all sad stories because they can’t find their way back to where they feel they belong. I should re-read the first one, at least.
City of Lies by Sam Hawke
Started: 7/5/20
Gave up: 7/5/20
First in a new series that could be really good, but again, I had formatting issues I can’t get past. It’s a PDF with a watermark across every page that says something like “DO NOT REPRODUCE OR WE WILL COME AFTER YOU”. The watermark is okay, but a PDF on a Kindle is annoying because I have to keep resizing the pages. I tried to convert it to a readable Kindle format (Amazon tells you how), and that process put the words from the watermark into the text of the book. But not in one sentence on each page, no. No, it broke up the watermark sentence and inserted the individual words into the text, making the actual book unreadable because it made no sense. I would like to read this book, but I’ll get it from the library or something. I’m not going to get it done in time for Hugo voting.
Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee
Started: 7/5/20
Gave up: 7/5/20
13-year-old goes to space to rescue her older brother, and I am not in the mood. The writing is good, the premise is good, but the formatting on my Kindle is atrocious (it’s a converted PDF), and the mind of this 13-year-old is not as comfortable to live in as the mind of the 12-year-old wizard was (from my last book). I’d like to come back to this later, but I’m not going to finish it in time for Hugo voting.
Minor Mage by Ursula Vernon
Started: 7/2/20
Finished: 7/5/20
Young wizard goes on an adventure! Light, quick read, good characters.
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
Started: 6/25/20
Finished: 7/2/20
Seanan McGuire is amazing. She writes SO many books, in SO many different universes, and they’re all fascinating and DIFFERENT. This one is weird but not hard to read, compelling while also making my brain work, and I really really really liked it.
Deeplight by Frances Hardinge
Started: 6/23/20
Gave up: 6/25/20
YA, possibly Lovecraftian (at least insofar as it includes monsters in the ocean deeps), with an Artful Dodger-like main character, but it didn’t grab me. It seems perfectly readable, and maybe I’ll go back to it, but I have a limited amount of time to read Hugo-nominated books, and I don’t want to spend time on this one.
The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
Started: 6/10/20
Finished: 6/23/20
The setting here is immediately weird and a little hard to understand, but fascinating, and I really want to know what’s going on and how it works. I still feel that way having finished the book. Good? Yes. Easy? No.
STET by Sarah Gailey
Started: 7/28/19
Finished: 7/28/19
Super short, and very moving, but it’s mostly in the footnotes and the editing comments, so it takes a little maneuvering to get at it.
A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies by Alix E. Harrow
Started: 7/28/19
Finished: 7/28/19
I LOVE THIS STORY SO MUCH. I am not ashamed to admit I cried at the end. I was reading it out loud to Jack and he wasn’t sure what to do with me.
The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington by P. Djèlí Clark
Started: 7/28/19
Finished: 7/28/19
The style of this short story was interesting – like encyclopedia entries – and I appreciate how each of the “donors” affected George Washington, but this was both a little too weird for me (I’m shuddering at the whole teeth thing) and a little not enough.
When We Were Starless by Simone Heller
Started: 7/27/19
Finished: 7/28/19
For a novelette, it took too long to reel me in. I considered not finishing it, and come on, it’s a novelette. I did finish it, and it did get good, but there’s too much left to the imagination after the end. And I’m not sure I care enough to imagine it.
The Thing About Ghost Stories by Naomi Kritzer
Started: 7/27/19
Finished: 7/27/19
LOVED this novelette – the style, the voice, the story. It’s about a woman who has just returned to her academic research after losing her mother (who she took care of for years). It rocketed to the top of my voting list for novelette this year.
The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society by Ursula Vernon
Started: 7/27/19
Finished: 7/27/19
SHORT short story, with a cute twist on the sly faerie folk genre.
Nine Last Days On Planet Earth by Daryl Gregory
Started: 7/26/19
Finished: 7/27/19
In contrast to the previous novelette, I felt like this one needed more. As a family story, I think it had enough (and it was really good). As a science fiction story, it felt a little empty.
The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections by Tina Connolly
Started: 7/26/19
Finished: 7/26/19
Oh, how I liked this novelette. A bad leader, a long-term revenge, pain and suffering. Really good stuff in a very small package. And food! Delicious food!
The Court Magician by Sarah Pinsker
Started: 7/25/19
Finished: 7/25/19
An eerie short story by the author of that portal fantasy with clones from last year that I liked so much. This one was pretty good. Learn the rules before you use magic!
The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat by Brooke Bolander
Started: 7/24/19
Finished: 7/25/19
I loved the voice of the narrator in this short story. Same author as the sad elephant novella, but I would never have guessed that. I feel like the plot is given away in the title, and I’m okay with that.
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
Started: 7/18/19
Finished: 7/24/19
This is the second novella in the Murderbot Diaries series, and it’s so great! Poor Murderbot.
Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
Started: 6/22/19
Finished: 7/1/19
Book 3 in the Wayfarers series. This was a NICE story, but I had a hard time getting into it at first. I enjoyed it, and I wholeheartedly recommend it (the whole series), but I don’t think it’s Hugo-worthy (this book is nominated, as is the series).