Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 4

#TBR Challenge – Spooky (Gothic): All Clear by Connie Willis

October 16, Spooky (Gothic): All Clear by Connie Willis (2010) is the second half of Blackout, which I read for the September Drama theme. It actually does fit the Spooky theme a bit, as the characters navigate London during the Blitz in World War Two, stumbling through blackouts and huddling in Underground Stations as bombs drop overhead.

In Blackout, three time-traveling historians who’ve landed in different times and locations in England during World War Two are reunited and have begun trying...

#TBR Challenge – Drama!: Blackout by Connie Willis

Blackout by Connie Willis came out in 2010, the first of two books that are really one book, so it ends on a cliffhanger and continues in my next month’s book, All Clear. Does it fit the theme? Oh, yes, it does.

The book opens in Oxford, England, in 2060. For the past forty years, historians have been traveling into the past to observe events; from experience, they have figured out a few rules, such as you can’t be in two places at once, so if you’ve been to a time period, and you go there again...

My August Reading Log

Fiction:
Encore in Death by J. D. Robb/Nora Roberts is fifty-sixth in this massive series, which I continue reading not only because it’s a comfort read for its familiar characters and justice prevailing, but because I enjoy seeing, from a craft perspective, how the author walks a fine line between the formula that keeps readers returning and her own desire to mix it up; also, it has to reward new readers at the same time. This particular installment features famous actors and had a couple of go...

#TBR Challenge – Everyday Heroes: Dancing Bearfoot by Elva Birch

August 21, Everyday Heroes: Dancing Bearfoot by Elva Birch is a confection, a short paranormal romance set in Alaska between single dad Leland/Lee, who owns a construction company, and his daughter’s preschool teacher, Patricia. Lee is a big bear of a man who can turn into, you guessed it, a bear; Patricia struggles to stay afloat by working as a waitress when she’s not teaching.

Lee knows Patricia is his soulmate as soon as they meet. Patricia doesn’t get the greatest first impression of him, b...

My July Reading Log

Fiction:
The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki (Author) and Jesse Kirkwood (Translator) is set in contemporary Japan and opens with a former tv scriptwriter whose career took a downward turn; she is now writing scripts for a dating game. The eponymous Full Moon Coffee Shop appears, as you might imagine, at the full moon; the waiters are talking cats who can read your birth chart and help you with your problems. I felt this was a mosaic novel; there are different narrators who all experience...

#TBR Challenge – What a Wonderful World: The White Mosque: A Memoir by Sofia Samatar

What a Wonderful World: The White Mosque: A Memoir by Sofia Samatar (2022) hasn’t actually been on my TBR for very long; I just couldn’t wait any longer! I’ve been a fan of her poetic prose since reading her 2013 novel A Stranger in Olondria.

“A pilgrimage has a trajectory: the end is already known. But I’m interested in the randomness of movement. More than just interested: I’m desperate.”

The title of the book references the whitewashed church of a nineteenth-century group of Mennonites, who f...

“The Persistence of Enchantment,” Readercon 2024

Before my own panelist duties at Readercon 33 commenced, I attended a Readercon panel that was a conversation between Sofia Samatar and Greer Gilman about Greer’s Cloudish novels, Moonwise and Cloud and Ashes, and Sofia’s A Stranger in Olondria and The White Mosque. Below are my notes, which hopefully captures some of the flavor of their discussion.

Greer said The Owl Service by Alan Garner stuck with her, especially the aspect of people being taken over by Myth. In Cloud and Ashes, a person who...

My June Reading Log

Fiction:
Welcome to Boy.net (Earth’s Shadow Book 1) by Lyda Morehouse is set in Earth’s solar system a good while after the Archangel books, long enough that most people thing Earth is largely abandoned; also, you don’t have to have read (or remember) the prior books to enjoy this. Mars is now the dominant power, and the people farther out avoid their area of influence, and their ENForcer space marines, as much as possible. This book follows a lesbian couple, one from the science-focused and cul...

Readercon 2024 Schedule

I’ll be at Readercon 33, July 11 – 14, 2024 this weekend, in Quincy, Massachusetts, for the first time in several years. Check out my schedule below and stop by my Kaffeeklatsch if you’ll be there!

Salon A Friday, July 12, 2024, 12:00 PM EDT
History of Readercon
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; David G. Shaw; Greer Gilman; Michael Cisco
Veteran Readercon participants and organizers will tell stories of Readercon’s nearly 40 year history. Learn about the awards and ceremonies that are or have been ...

#TBR Challenge – Bananapants!: Cathy’s Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233 by Sean Stewart

Cathy’s Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233 by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman definitely fits this month’s category! First in a trilogy, it’s a teen mystery/thriller with speculative fiction and interactive elements, such as phone numbers you can call to get actual messages and websites you can visit, or at least could visit when the book came out in 2006. I did call the phone number in the title, and the message was still there in 2024! My hardcover edition also had supplemental print materials...