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Wednesday Reading Meme and Some Thoughts on the Hugos of 2024
What I’ve Read
The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older – Hugo nominee – I suspect I might have gotten more out of this book as a text rather than audio, but I didn’t mind the audiobook at all. It has interesting world building and a slightly Batman The Animated Series vibe, in that the setting has a blend of technology from the past and future working together in ways that surprise the reader and challenge expectations. (A key element of the world is ubiquitous rail lines running between human settlements around Jupiter, but there is no ticketing system! A human colony where transport is entirely free! Wild.) Overall, tho, I found this just not quite landing for me, bc it felt like there wasn’t space to dig into the two main characters’ romance. If you enjoyed Cat Sebastian’s Hither, Page, this might work for you!
Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold – a re-read of a favorite of the Vorkosigan early books. Partially picked up in order to have a book I could fall asleep to, but it’s too engaging to ignore and fall to snoozing. I love how Bujold writes *thinking*. I loved the image of Miles getting directly in between two factions of people trying to screw each other over and deciding to make it as inconvenient for them as possible.
What I’m Reading:
Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey – Barely into it, very foreboding. Too spooky for an audiobook. I have only read Upright Women Wanted, which I liked but found the writing a bit…. Simple? Repetitious? But not bad! Just not my favorite, but the story was quite engaging and I am considering this a second try. I am a big sucker for stories of women returning as adults to an awful childhood home. I picked this up again after a slow start bc of a Storygraph view that "RIP abigail hobbs, you would have loved this" and well, I'm sold.
Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle – An alternate history focused on a woman warrior – I picked this up from some recommendation online, I’m not sure precisely where, but it’s looking enormous and weird, very much fore me. The reviews on Storygraph are all clear that this is a long ass book and there is something very weird in the alternate history divergence, but I found out that there’s META, the book is presented as a translated document discovered for the first time, and I’m delighted to find that out.
In purchasing it I found out about the SF Gateway, a place to buy genre classics in ebook form - https://www.sfgateway.com –
Two Towers! - Tolkien – 42% Might listen on the plane, if possible.
Mo Dao Zu Shi - Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation – Mo Xiang Tong Xiu – Part 5 – 23% - No movement
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – 31% (aka 9%of audiobook #2)- back to reading this a bit
Conspiracy of Truths - abandoned, will have to restart.
What I’ll Read Next
Flouncing about a lot with the random feelings regarding what to read next. I just picked out a bunch of random things from the library and I'm all caught upon the book club, sooooo, I'm at leisure.
Hugo Award Thoughts
You can watch the archived live stream of the 2024 Hugo Award Ceremony in Glasgow here on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evGAZXdHH6Y I recommend it as a piece of good fun!
Ceremony Thoughts: Ruoxi Chen is utterly charming, I have a whole bunch of new things to engage with (Three Black Halflings, for one), the Best Graphic Novel category was the most boring choice possible, I’m irritated that no-one sends anyone for the film categories, and no one can stop T. Kingfisher from talking about weird fish.
Full Voting information is here - https://www.thehugoawards.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/2024_hugo_statistics.pdf I enjoyed going thru and finding the works that were nominated but didn’t make the short list.
This is the third year that I made some reading goals around the Hugo Awards. I pared back this year, tho, to just the Best Novel Nominees and a few interesting things in other categories. (In the past, I have tried to read all the nominated works that didn’t involve taking on a whole series; tho, a few times, I did commit to reading a whole series!)
Hugo Award for Best Novel 2024
1) WINNER - Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (Tordotcom,Orbit UK) – I was surprised this won, - not sure I should have been, tho. It’s got a view of fascism from the inside and a hopeful ending that shows people expanding the breadth of ‘who is worth caring about,’ and I think it was a competent piece of writing. Emily Tesh’s acceptance speech was excellent – she wished for a world where this book was a forgotten entry into the scifi canon, one where it will not be considered prescient or important or foreshadowing of our real world.
2) Translation State by Ann Leckie (Orbit US, OrbiTUK) – Did not read, because I haven’t read this series. Might, tho!
3) The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty (Harper Voyager, Harper Voyager UK) – Read and enjoyed, but I didn’t think it was a contender for the big prize due to being lighthearted and fun and more historic fantasy than epic fantasy. I would have loved it to win, and I recommend it.
4) Witch King by Martha Wells (Tordotcom) – Read and enjoyed before the Hugo Nominees were announced, but it has a structural element that I predicted would not work for the Hugos – most of the action has already happened and get revealed in flashbacks. It’s a great sandbox to play in, and I hear Wells will be doing more in it? I am glad that I had reason to watch The Untamed and read the associated webnovel, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, because there are elements of Chinese storytelling that Wells is working with here at kind of a structural level. Chinese SFF in translation is going to be very important in the coming years of the Hugos, and I hope it comes with a braver face about censorship than last year’s Hugos put to the issue.
5) The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom) – FASCINATING. Really interesting world, but I didn’t think it would win bc the main character doesn’t fit classical heroic tropes in some major ways and the story is very interested in trauma and social instability and what it means to actually resist those things personally. It’s not set in anything close to the Balkans, and yet it reminds me of literature I have read based in and around there - a similar flavor of layers of suffering painted right over each other and people just getting on with their lives. People flounder, sometimes. I will read his next book.
6) Starter Villain by John Scalzi (Tor, Tor UK) – Chose not to read – Scalzi seems like a nice man, but I don’t tend to enjoy his writing.
What I’ve Read
The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older – Hugo nominee – I suspect I might have gotten more out of this book as a text rather than audio, but I didn’t mind the audiobook at all. It has interesting world building and a slightly Batman The Animated Series vibe, in that the setting has a blend of technology from the past and future working together in ways that surprise the reader and challenge expectations. (A key element of the world is ubiquitous rail lines running between human settlements around Jupiter, but there is no ticketing system! A human colony where transport is entirely free! Wild.) Overall, tho, I found this just not quite landing for me, bc it felt like there wasn’t space to dig into the two main characters’ romance. If you enjoyed Cat Sebastian’s Hither, Page, this might work for you!
Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold – a re-read of a favorite of the Vorkosigan early books. Partially picked up in order to have a book I could fall asleep to, but it’s too engaging to ignore and fall to snoozing. I love how Bujold writes *thinking*. I loved the image of Miles getting directly in between two factions of people trying to screw each other over and deciding to make it as inconvenient for them as possible.
What I’m Reading:
Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey – Barely into it, very foreboding. Too spooky for an audiobook. I have only read Upright Women Wanted, which I liked but found the writing a bit…. Simple? Repetitious? But not bad! Just not my favorite, but the story was quite engaging and I am considering this a second try. I am a big sucker for stories of women returning as adults to an awful childhood home. I picked this up again after a slow start bc of a Storygraph view that "RIP abigail hobbs, you would have loved this" and well, I'm sold.
Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle – An alternate history focused on a woman warrior – I picked this up from some recommendation online, I’m not sure precisely where, but it’s looking enormous and weird, very much fore me. The reviews on Storygraph are all clear that this is a long ass book and there is something very weird in the alternate history divergence, but I found out that there’s META, the book is presented as a translated document discovered for the first time, and I’m delighted to find that out.
In purchasing it I found out about the SF Gateway, a place to buy genre classics in ebook form - https://www.sfgateway.com –
Two Towers! - Tolkien – 42% Might listen on the plane, if possible.
Mo Dao Zu Shi - Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation – Mo Xiang Tong Xiu – Part 5 – 23% - No movement
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – 31% (aka 9%of audiobook #2)- back to reading this a bit
Conspiracy of Truths - abandoned, will have to restart.
What I’ll Read Next
Flouncing about a lot with the random feelings regarding what to read next. I just picked out a bunch of random things from the library and I'm all caught upon the book club, sooooo, I'm at leisure.
Hugo Award Thoughts
You can watch the archived live stream of the 2024 Hugo Award Ceremony in Glasgow here on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evGAZXdHH6Y I recommend it as a piece of good fun!
Ceremony Thoughts: Ruoxi Chen is utterly charming, I have a whole bunch of new things to engage with (Three Black Halflings, for one), the Best Graphic Novel category was the most boring choice possible, I’m irritated that no-one sends anyone for the film categories, and no one can stop T. Kingfisher from talking about weird fish.
Full Voting information is here - https://www.thehugoawards.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/2024_hugo_statistics.pdf I enjoyed going thru and finding the works that were nominated but didn’t make the short list.
This is the third year that I made some reading goals around the Hugo Awards. I pared back this year, tho, to just the Best Novel Nominees and a few interesting things in other categories. (In the past, I have tried to read all the nominated works that didn’t involve taking on a whole series; tho, a few times, I did commit to reading a whole series!)
Hugo Award for Best Novel 2024
1) WINNER - Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (Tordotcom,Orbit UK) – I was surprised this won, - not sure I should have been, tho. It’s got a view of fascism from the inside and a hopeful ending that shows people expanding the breadth of ‘who is worth caring about,’ and I think it was a competent piece of writing. Emily Tesh’s acceptance speech was excellent – she wished for a world where this book was a forgotten entry into the scifi canon, one where it will not be considered prescient or important or foreshadowing of our real world.
2) Translation State by Ann Leckie (Orbit US, OrbiTUK) – Did not read, because I haven’t read this series. Might, tho!
3) The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty (Harper Voyager, Harper Voyager UK) – Read and enjoyed, but I didn’t think it was a contender for the big prize due to being lighthearted and fun and more historic fantasy than epic fantasy. I would have loved it to win, and I recommend it.
4) Witch King by Martha Wells (Tordotcom) – Read and enjoyed before the Hugo Nominees were announced, but it has a structural element that I predicted would not work for the Hugos – most of the action has already happened and get revealed in flashbacks. It’s a great sandbox to play in, and I hear Wells will be doing more in it? I am glad that I had reason to watch The Untamed and read the associated webnovel, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, because there are elements of Chinese storytelling that Wells is working with here at kind of a structural level. Chinese SFF in translation is going to be very important in the coming years of the Hugos, and I hope it comes with a braver face about censorship than last year’s Hugos put to the issue.
5) The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom) – FASCINATING. Really interesting world, but I didn’t think it would win bc the main character doesn’t fit classical heroic tropes in some major ways and the story is very interested in trauma and social instability and what it means to actually resist those things personally. It’s not set in anything close to the Balkans, and yet it reminds me of literature I have read based in and around there - a similar flavor of layers of suffering painted right over each other and people just getting on with their lives. People flounder, sometimes. I will read his next book.
6) Starter Villain by John Scalzi (Tor, Tor UK) – Chose not to read – Scalzi seems like a nice man, but I don’t tend to enjoy his writing.
