Ry Herman's Blog, page 11

THE RY AWARDS FOR 2021

Yes, yes, happy New Year, but that also means it’s time for the Ry Awards, literature’s least prestigious awards for the best books read this year by Ry.

I’ll start with the ginormous category of…

FANTASY

BEST OVERALL FANTASY: Strange Creatures, by Phoebe North

BEST DOORSTOPPER FANTASY: Rhythm Of War, by Brandon Sanderson

BEST CHILDREN’S FANTASY: Bridge Of Souls, by Victoria Schwab

BEST HORROR FANTASY: A Dowry of Blood, by S. T. Gibson

BEST HISTORICAL FANTASY: She Who Became The Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan

BEST FANTASY ROMANCE: Paladin’s Hope, by T. Kingfisher

BEST YA FANTASY (tie): The Last Graduate, by Naomi Novik & Winterkeep, by Kristin Cashore

BEST HAUNTED HOUSE STORY: White Is For Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi

BEST FANTASY MASHUP: The Affair Of The Mysterious Letter, by Alexis Hall

BEST TRILOGY ENDER (tie): The Wisdom Of Crowds, by Joe Abercrombie & The Empire Of Gold, by S. A. Chakraborty

Following up Fantasy, we go on to the next genre of…

SCIENCE FICTION

BEST SPACE OPERA: A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine

BEST SF MYSTERY: Fugitive Telemetry, by Martha Wells

BEST POST-APOCALYPTIC SF: The Past Is Red, by Catherynne M. Valente

BEST CLASSIC SF: Memoirs Of A Spacewoman, by Naomi Mitchison

BEST MODERN CLASSIC SF: Use Of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks

BEST COZY SF: The Galaxy And The Ground Within, by Becky Chambers

BEST WILD SF: Escaping Exodus, by Nicky Drayden

BEST SF NOVELLA: Defekt, by Nino Cipri

Next, we have the special category of whatever genre Ry read an unusual amount of over the year. Last year, that was Horror, but this year that goes to…

NONFICTION

BEST OVERALL NONFICTION: The End Of Policing, by Alex S. Vitale

BEST SCIENCE NONFICTION: Monarchs Of The Sea, by Danna Staaf

BEST SOCIOLOGICAL NONFICTION: Nomadland, by Jessica Bruder

BEST MEMOIR: Something That May Shock And Discredit You, by Daniel Lavery

BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL MEMOIR: The Secret To Superhuman Strength, by Alison Bechdel

Next up on the list is the category that for lack of a better term I’m going to call…

GENERAL FICTION

BEST CONTEMPORARY LITERARY FICTION: No One Is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood

BEST CLASSIC LITERARY FICTION: To The Lighthouse, by Viriginia Woolf

BEST MID-CENTURY LITERARY FICTION: Cassandra At The Wedding, by Dorothy Baker

BEST EPISTOLARY NOVEL: Lady Susan, by Jane Austen

BEST HISTORICAL FICTION: King Hereafter, by Dorothy Dunnett

BEST ROMAN À CLEF: Our Spoons Came From Woolworths, by Barbara Comyns

BEST NOVELLA: Who Was Changed And Who Was Dead, by Barbara Comyns

And now we come to our final category for genres that didn’t fit in especially well anywhere else but I didn’t read enough of to give their own category…

THE GRAB BAG

BEST CHILDREN’S STORY: The River Bank, by Kij Johnson

BEST YA: The Dark Beneath The Ice, by Amelinda Bérubé

BEST NOIR: Black Wings Has My Angel, by Elliot Chaze

BEST HUMOR: The Diary Of A Provincial Lady, by E. M. Delafield

BEST ROMANCE: Sick Kids In Love, by Hannah Moskowitz

BEST DIFFICULT-TO-CLASSIFY BOOK: Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu

BEST WTF BOOK (tie): The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne & A Void, by Georges Perec

And finally, the special award for best 2021-published book, which goes to (drum roll, please)…

BEST 2021-PUBLISHED BOOK: Strange Creatures, by Phoebe North

Favorite Books — December 2021

Lots of good books from December, and one I truly loved:

NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS, by Patricia Lockwood

A woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. An avalanche of images, details, and references accumulate to form a landscape that is post-sense, post-irony, post-everything. Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: “Something has gone wrong,” and “How soon can you get here?”

Patricia Lockwood writes with both style and insight, something which isn’t easy to pull off. The result is a beautifully written book about the ephemeral, the eternal, and the things that are both at the same time.

Other books I liked quite a lot in December included SHARDS OF EARTH by Adrian Tchaikovsky, THE STORM OF ECHOES by Christelle Dabos, WHEN I WAS A CHILD I READ BOOKS by Marilynne Robinson, CYTONIC by Brandon Sanderson, PALADIN’S HOPE by T. Kingfisher, WHERE FUTURES END by Parker Peevyhouse, OF SWORDS AND SPELLS and THE STICK PRINCESS by Delia Marshall Turner, WATCH OVER ME by Nina LaCour, and THE DIARY OF A PROVINCIAL LADY (and sequels) by E. M. Delafield.

New Books for Jólabókaflóðið

For Jólabókaflóðið this year, I received:

Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson
Paladin’s Hope by T. Kingfisher
The All-Consuming World by Cassandra Khaw
Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer
Lent by Jo Walton
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Cytonic by Brandon Sanderson
Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M. Valente
The Storm of Echoes by Christelle Dabos
Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee

Now on to the reading and hot chocolate portion of the day.

Favorite Books — November 2021

In November, I read a lot of very good books, and one truly great one:

WHO WAS CHANGED AND WHO WAS DEAD, by Barbara Comyns

It begins mid-flood, ducks swimming in the drawing-room windows. Then the miller drowns himself… then the butcher slits his throat… and a series of gruesome deaths plagues the villagers. The newspaper asks, “Who will be smitten by this fatal madness next?”

Barbara Comyns is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors. This is the third of her odd, short, difficult-to-classify books that I’ve read, and all three have been superb. This one takes a tone of wry observational humor to tell a horrific story about a wave of madness and death sweeping through a small village. If that doesn’t sound like it should work … well, all I can say is, somehow, it does.

Other good books I read in November included THORN and THE THEFT OF SUNLIGHT by Intisar Khanani, A QUEER AND PLEASANT DANGER by Kate Bornstein, TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING by Ada Palmer, NAMELESS MAGERY by Delia Marshall Turner, THE RAIN HERON by Robbie Arnott, THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES by Suzanne Collins, THERESE AND ISABELLE by Violette Leduc, TWO DARK REIGNS and FIVE DARK FATES by Kendare Blake, and WITCHES OF ASH AND RUIN by E. Latimer.

Draft 2 Complete!

Just finished the second draft of my current Work In Progress (tentative title: 12 Hunters). At 103,000 words, it is — by a hair — the longest book I have ever written.

Current plan is to give it a quick second pass through, and then send it off to some beta readers.

The Burning Question on Everyone’s Mind

I know what you’ve all been thinking — in Ralph Bakshi’s unfinished 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn isn’t wearing pants. Is this true to the character as conceived by Tolkien?

There is very little textual evidence that Aragorn wore pants. Within the books themselves, the issue goes completely unmentioned. However, we do have this letter Tolkien wrote in 1958:

“… males, especially in northern parts such as the Shire, would wear breeches, whether hidden by a cloak or long mantle, or merely accompanied by a tunic.” — The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien 211

If Tolkien emphasizes that breeches particularly *were* worn in the north, can we not infer that they were generally *not* worn in the south? And if we accept that, it is reasonable to point out that while Aragorn spent a good deal of time in the north, he was from further south by birth and heritage.

So pantsless Aragorn is, at the very least, a valid interpretation.

Favorite Books — October 2021

No book this month stood out as an especial favorite, but I did read quite a few that I liked very much — including SHE WHO BECAME THE SUN by Shelley Parker-Chan, SWITCH by A. S. King, THE GOOD NEIGHBOURS by Nina Allan, SEA WOLF by Anna Burke, BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL by Lewis Elliott Chaze, THE PAST IS RED by Catherynne M. Valente, THE FALLEN by Ada Hoffman, THE WISDOM OF CROWDS by Joe Abercrombie, and THE HOLLOW HEART by Marie Rutkoski.

They’re So Pretty!

My copies of the German language edition of my first book have arrived!

This is the entirety of the notes I made for chapter 13, by the way

My favorite editing note from my current Work-In-Progress is:

Chapter 13 — KISS

Die Unmöglichkeit, bei Tag die Liebe zu finden

The German language edition of my book is out today!

The title translates to “The Impossibility of Finding Love by Day”. Kind of love that, and also the cover.

https://www.bookdepository.com/Die-Unmoglichkeit-bei-Tag-die-Liebe-zu-finden-Ry-Herman-Yola-Schmitz/9783453424814