Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 160

Galactic Suburbia 14 Show Notes: the Last Short Story Edition

Episode 14 is available now at iTunes! It should be available from the Galactic Suburbia site for streaming & direct download later today.

In which we rise above a chorus of dogs, babies and technological glitches to discuss Grand Conversations, why we have no opinions about Robert Heinlein, and why we're crazy enough to be part of a project which means reading (almost) ALL the short stories.



News

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi wins Campbell Award

Jeff VanderMeer announces the closure of...

Beyond the Veil

Day 29 – Saddest character death OR best/most satisfying character death (or both!)

Ha, this one is surprisingly easy, and for once I don't feel the need to give a million different answers to a simple question.

To my mind, one of the absolute worst literary deaths of all time was Sirius Black, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

[spoilers for all but the last Harry Potter book in the post below, on the grounds that some of you are following the films rather than the books and don't...

Wolves and Hawks

Day 28 – First favorite book or series obsession

I'm going to take a leaf out of Alex's book and instead of talking about my childhood series obsessions (mostly in various shades of Enid Blyton) I'll talk about the first fantasy series I really obsessed about as a teen. Not Eddings, though he was certainly my gateway drug.

Jennifer Roberson. Chronicles of the Cheysuli.

Looking back on those books now, they are one hot mess of problematic gender relationships. Every female protagonist ends up ...

How to Suppress Women's Writing

This is a book I should have read fifteen years ago. This is a book someone should have put in my hands the week before I started university, and locked me in a room until I had read it. I should have read it again before I started my Honours degree, and every year I worked on my PhD. When I walked out of my head of school's office, numbed by his awful pronouncement that the work I had done over 5 years was not enough, that the thesis was simply not worthy of a doctorate because of its...

How to Suppress Women Writing

This is a book I should have read fifteen years ago. This is a book someone should have put in my hands the week before I started university, and locked me in a room until I had read it. I should have read it again before I started my Honours degree, and every year I worked on my PhD. When I walked out of my head of school's office, numbed by his awful pronouncement that the work I had done over 5 years was not enough, that the thesis was simply not worthy of a doctorate because of its...

Literary Sweet Spots

Day 27 – If a book contains ______, you will always read it (and a book or books that contain it)!

Romans. Especially sexy Romans. What am I talking about, all Romans are sexy!

I don't know if there's much that will make me always read a book, because I am way pickier than that, but some of my literary sweet spots include: things set in Italy, fairy tale rewrites, Greek myth, lady knights, superheroines, fencing, the 1920's, theatre backstage, and fantasy with frocks. Anything featuring one ...

Rosemary and Rue, by Seanan McGuire

October "Toby" Daye is living a lie. She may be a Changeling and Faery Knight, but she also has a human partner and child who don't even know what she looks like beneath her glamour. One fateful night, while hunting for her liege lord's missing family, she is captured and bespelled – and loses fourteen years.

When you're the mother of a two-year-old, it's tough to lose fourteen years.

This is probably one of the best combinations of faerie lore and detective noir fiction I've read in some t...

OMG WTF is that really the last page?

Day 26 – OMG WTF? OR most irritating/awful/annoying book ending

The first one that first comes to mind is the Mill on the Floss because WTF, drowning, seriously? Following my Lydia Bennet argument though, this one doesn't count for much because it's a book I don't love anyway. Finding an ending I hate in a book I love would be a better answer, I think!

The next reading experience that leaps into my head is Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones, a book I loved beyond reason. I still remember the...

To Be Read

Day 25 – Any five books from your "to be read" stack

Like Random Alex, I have some very old books in my TBR pile. Cough. On my TBR shelves. For a while there I added a coloured sticky note to books that had been there a year, with a different colour each year, to show how long it had been there, but that just got really depressing, so I stopped. I've had a few clear outs of the shelves in the last 12 months, but there are still books that have been there as long as we've lived in this...

Oh Ratty

Day 24 – Best quote from a novel

It's the only thing," said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing — absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

(Wind in the Willows, of course!)

Other Days of the Book Meme:

Day 01 – A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)
Day 02 – A book or series you wish more people were reading and...