Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 5

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...

My May Reading Log

Fiction:
At the Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard follows The Hands of the Emperor and it took me a really long time. This is because it was 806 pages, which I found out when I was done. I’ll try not to spoil too much. It’s immersive and epic (in a literal sense) as Cliopher, left in charge of the world while the Emperor goes adventuring to find his successor and his old friends, ends up also going adventuring, but not intentionally at first. Many characters and themes show up from the first b...

#TBR Challenge – With a Little Help From My Friends: My Dear Watson by L.A. Fields

May 15, With a Little Help From My Friends: My Dear Watson by L.A. Fields only somewhat fits this month’s theme, as the friendships are complex. It’s narrated by the second Mrs. John Watson. She explores a queer relationship between gay Holmes and bisexual Watson throughout the Doylist canon, in sequence. I confess this bored me; I have already read the canonical stories and was hoping for more than having them reiterated, even through a new lens.

The most interesting parts were the small sectio...

My April Reading Log

Fiction:
The Hands of the Emperor (Lays of the Hearth-Fire Book 1) by Victoria Goddard was over 900 pages of fantasy about creating a good government and having your family recognize your achievements and figuring out how to incorporate your culture into a dominant social paradigm. I don’t think it needed to be quite that long; I am not fond of having the same events narrated to different people at different points in the narrative, and the same issues addressed, unless the repetition is present...

#TBR Challenge – No Place Like Home: The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

I don’t live in New York City, but I’m close enough and I’ve been there enough that I felt The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin (2020) worked for this month’s theme, No Place Like Home. The book expands on the story “The City Born Great” from Jemisin’s 2018 collection, How Long ’til Black Future Month?; in altered form, that story serves as a prologue.

The conceit is that cities will sometimes, rarely, achieve sentience. When they do, creepy other-dimensional predators await to battle and often de...