Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 21

My February Reading Log

Fiction:
Last October, my friend Natlyn recommended A Study In Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas to me. I’d read Thomas’ historical romances; she has really lovely prose, but I found her romances stressful (very good, just stressful!). I bought the book for Xmas reading, then was sick the whole time, and finally got to it this month. I then devoured it in a little over a day, buying the sequel, A Conspiracy in Belgravia, when I was about two-thirds done. The premise is that Sherlock Holmes is a...

My January Reading Log

Ursula K. LeGuin passed in January, and that was a very hard thing.

Fiction:
I ended up being sick over most of my winter holiday, and took refuge in The Comfortable Courtesan: Being Memoirs by Clorinda Cathcart (that has been a Lady of the Town these several years) by L. A. Hall, reading all the way through volume twelve. The series is set mostly in Regency England with a few visits to Italy, and though it is not a romance exactly, it appealed to me as a romance reader; if I had to classify...

My December Reading Log

Fiction:
The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt is space opera with a diverse crew of humans who encounter an old pre-wormhole, pre-alien-encounter ship with a single surviving crewmember frozen inside, a woman out of time. There’s an alien species, octopus-like with variant forms, that I found entrancing because their culture is so cleverly thought out and slowly revealed. The ship has a female captain, and there are several differently-abled characters including one with nifty cyborgian adaptations,...

My Arisia 2018 Schedule

Arisia, January 12-15, 2018.

Saturday, January 13, 2018, 10:00 am, Paine
“Shape Note Sing”
Participatory sing-along (music provided). Shape Note singing may just be the easiest way to get a roomful of people blasting out gorgeous harmonies, as singing from written notes is made easier by having different shapes (e.g., circle, square, triangle, and diamond) for the different notes. We’ll try to avoid the more explicitly religious stuff—work with us; you won’t regret it!
Bruce Randall [moderato...

My November Reading Log

Nonfiction:
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is worth reading even if you aren’t a history buff, because it shows how very pervasive the genocide of America’s indigenous peoples is in our history and our present and our future, through things like our national myth of The Frontier, and the organization and tactics of our military, and how our country honors or subverts treaties in its own interest. It was difficult reading sometimes, as you might exp...

My September and October Reading Logs

Nonfiction:
In War’s Dark Shadow: The Russians before the Great War by W. Bruce Lincoln took me a year or more to finish. This book is from the 1980s, when it was a big deal that Lincoln had actually been to the U.S.S.R. for research. I had known very little about Russian history, so it was as good a starting place as any. I now know that labor strife has a long and storied history in Russia, and how the peasant farmer commune system worked very badly for a very long time, and that the Russia...

My Philcon 2017 Schedule

This weekend, I’ll be at Philcon in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. My schedule is below.

Saturday, November 11, 5:00 PM, Plaza Two
“Things You Should Read”
Scheherazade Jackson [moderator], Janny Wurts, James L. Cambias, Russ Colchamiro, Victoria Janssen, Michael J. Walsh

Not every worthy novel or short story is noticed in time to be nominated for a Hugo, Nebula, or World Fantasy Award. Come discuss recent works which are definitely worth a read even though you haven’t heard people talking about t...

My CapClave 2017 Schedule

I’ll be attending Capclave 2017 October 6-8, 2017. My panel schedule is below.

“Doctor Who, End of an Era, Beginning of a New One”
Saturday, October 7, 10:00 AM
Rockville/Potomac
Moffatt’s era ends and Chibnall’s era begins.  What did we think of the Capaldi era, and Clara and Bill as companions?  What do we want from Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor?  What are our hopes for Chibnall as showrunner?  What do we think of the Moffatt era vs. the Davies era?
Victoria Janssen, A.C. Wise,...

My August Reading Log

Nonfiction:
Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction by John Rieder is highly recommended if if you’re at all interested in the subject. This book helped me make/clarify a plethora of mental connections between colonialism and Social Darwinism and racism and various types of early science fiction, from “undiscovered lands” adventures like H. Rider Haggard stories to time travel to alien invasions to dystopias. I’m going to keep this one, as it will likely reward re-reading.

Next was T...

My June and July Reading Log

Fiction:
All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells was so very fun and I wanted it to be so much longer. She’s an autobuy author for me, because her characterization is so very, very good and emotionally involving. There were also some great explorations of what makes a person and the potential evils of corporations, which are less moral than the supposedly moral-less beings they own.

The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch was engrossing and satisfying. I hope this trend of More! G...