#(number on this might be a little off cause i included the individual novellas in Loathe to Love You as books on Goodreads)

[thatonespriteobsessedbitch]

Books I've Read This Year (2023):

January:

The First to Die at the End - Adam Silvera, 5/5⭐

Belladonna - Adalyn Grace, 5/5⭐

February:

To Kill A Kingdom - Alexandra Christo, 4/5 ⭐

Sorcery of Thorns - Margaret Rogerson, 5/5⭐ (actually my third reread for this book, one of favourites)

The Love Hypothesis - Ali Hazelwood, 4/5⭐

Love On The Brain - Ali Hazelwood, 4/5⭐

Mysteries of Thorn Manor - Margaret Rogerson, 5/5⭐

The Poet X - Elizabeth Acevedo, 4/5⭐

The Inheritance Games - Jennifer Lynn Barnes, 5/5⭐

The Hawthorne Legacy - Jennifer Lynn Barnes, 5/5⭐

The Final Gambit - Jennifer Lynn Barnes, 5/5⭐

A Touch Of Darkness - Scarlett St. Clair, 5/5⭐

Why We Fly - Kimberly Jones, 5/5⭐

The Cheat Sheet - Sarah Adams, 4/5⭐

Loathe To Love You - Ali Hazelwood, 5/5⭐

March:

Icebreaker - Hannah Grace, 4/5⭐

Vespertine - Margaret Rogerson, 5/5⭐

This Vicious Grace - Emily Thiede, 5/5⭐

Nothing More To Tell - Karen M. McManus, 4/5⭐

King of Scars - Leigh Bardugo, 5/5⭐

Rule of Wolves - Leigh Bardugo, 5/5⭐

Off the Record - Camryn Garrett, 5/5⭐

Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare, 2/5⭐

April:

The Darkest Curse - Rachel Rowlands, 4/5⭐

My Killer Vacation - Tessa Bailey, 5/5⭐

The Nowhere Girls - Amy Reed, 5/5⭐

An Enchantment of Ravens - Margaret Rogerson, 5/5⭐

The Hate You Give - Angie Thomas, 5/5⭐ (reread)

Belladonna - Adalyn Grace, 5/5⭐(yes twice in four months)

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches - Sangu Mandanna, 4/5⭐

May:

The Awakening - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 4/5⭐

The Way I Used to Be - Amber Smith, 4/5⭐

The Crucible - Arthur Miller, 2/5⭐

The Good Girls - Claire Eliza Bartlett, 5/5⭐

Ruthless Fae - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 4/5⭐

The Reckoning - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 4/5⭐

The Awakening as Told by the Boys - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 4/5⭐

Perfect on Paper - Sophie Gonzales, 4/5⭐

Shadow Princess - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 5/5⭐

Cursed Fates - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 5/5⭐

Fated Throne - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 5/5⭐

Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid, 5/5⭐

A Witch's Guide to Fake Dating a Demon - Sarah Hawley, 5/5⭐

The Serpent and the Wings of Night - Carissa Broadbent, 5/5⭐

Six Scorched Roses - Carissa Broadbent, 5/5⭐

June:

The Cellist of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway, 1/5⭐

Kingdom of the Wicked - Kerri Maniscalco, 5/5⭐

Kingdom of the Cursed - Kerri Maniscalco, 5/5⭐

Kingdom of the Feared - Kerri Maniscalco, 4/5⭐

Heartless Sky - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 5/5⭐

Sorrow and Starlight - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 5/5⭐

Dark Fae - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 4/5⭐

Caged Wolf - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 5/5⭐

July:

Love, Theoretically - Ali Hazelwood, 4/5⭐

This Delicious Death - Kayla Cottingham, 5/5⭐

Legendborn - Tracy Deonn, 5/5⭐

Bloodmarked - Tracy Deonn, 5/5⭐ (the way I would die for Bree and Sel)

Savage Fae - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 3/5⭐

Vicious Fae - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 4/5⭐

Broken Fae - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 5/5⭐

Warrior Fae - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 5/5⭐

Alpha Wolf - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 4/5⭐

Feral Wolf - Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, 5/5⭐

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid, 5/5⭐

Princess of Souls - Alexandra Christo, 4/5⭐

Tools of Engagement - Tessa Bailey, 4/5⭐

This Poison Heart - Kalynn Bayron, 5/5⭐

The Deal - Elle Kennedy, 2/5⭐

The Weight of Blood - Tiffany D. Jackson, 4/5⭐

Bravely - Maggie Stiefvater, 5/5⭐

August:

The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King - Carissa Broadbent, 5/5⭐

This Wicked Fate - Kaylynn Bayron, 5/5⭐

Into The Bloodred Woods - Martha Brockenbrough, 4/5⭐

Trial of the Sun Queen - Nisha J. Tuli, 5/5⭐

September:

The Female of The Species - Mindy McGinnis, 5/5⭐ (the ending killed me, I ugly cried) (def read the trigger warnings tho)

Fourth Wing - Rebecca Yarros, 5/5⭐ (worth the hype)

Foxglove - Adalyn Grace, 5/5⭐ (I laughed, cried and swooned)

Fourth Wing - Rebecca Yarros, 5/5⭐ (twice in a week lol)

Rule of the Aurora King - Nisha J. Tuli, 5/5⭐

Ravensong - Cayla Fay, 4/5⭐

October:

Such Sharp Teeth - Rachel Harrison, 5/5⭐

House of Earth and Blood - Sarah J Maas, 5/5⭐ (part of my SJM reread for HOFAS)

House of Sky and Breath - Sarah J Maas, 5/5⭐ (part of my SJM reread for HOFAS)

The Assassin's Blade - Sarah J Maas, 5/5⭐ (part of my SJM reread for HOFAS)

Throne of Glass - Sarah J Maas, 5/5⭐ (part of my SJM reread for HOFAS)

Crown of Midnight - Sarah J Maas, 5/5⭐ (part of my SJM reread for HOFAS)

Heir of Fire - Sarah J Maas, 5/5⭐ (part of my SJM reread for HOFAS)

Macbeth - William Shakespeare, 4/5⭐

Queen of Shadows - Sarah J Maas, 5/5⭐ (part of my SJM reread for HOFAS)

November:

Empire of Storms - Sarah J Maas, 5/5⭐ (part of my SJM reread for HOFAS)

Iron Flame - Rebecca Yarros, 5/5⭐ (I cried like a baby reading the last 30 pages)

Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao, 5/5⭐ (my 100th book this year)

Wildfire - Hannah Grace, 4/5⭐

Raven - Kami Garcia, Gabriel Picolo, 5/5⭐

Beast Boy - Kami Garcia, Gabriel Picolo, 5/5⭐

Beast Boy Loves Raven - Kami Garcia, Gabriel Picolo, 5/5⭐

Robin - Kami Garcia, Gabriel Picolo, 5/5⭐

Tower of Dawn - Sarah J Maas, 5/5⭐ (part of my SJM reread for HOFAS)

Kingdom of Ash - Sarah J Maas, 5/5⭐ (part of my SJM reread for HOFAS)

Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward, 3.5⭐

December:

The Off-Limits Rule - Sarah Adams, 3/5⭐

Once Upon A Broken Heart - Stephanie Garber, 5/5⭐

The Importance of Being Ernest and Other Plays - Oscar Wilde, 4/5⭐

The Ballad of Never After - Stephanie Garber, 5/5⭐ (I read it twice in three days lol)

A Curse for True Love - Stephanie Garber, 5/5⭐ (actually my xmas present from my brother)

Check & Mate - Ali Hazelwood, 5/5⭐

Assistant to the Villain - Hannah Nicole Maehrer, 5/5⭐

Lightlark - Alex Aster, 4/5⭐

The Dead Romantics - Ashley Poston, 5/5⭐ (well... I finished the last 50 pages after midnight but Goodreads is still counting it, so I'm still counting it lol)

[theamazingstories]

(Note:  voting closes in a bit more than ten days from now on 7/21/19.  Membership sales (required for voting rights in most cases) also close soon.  Visit the Dublin in 2019 website for more information.)

This being a Monday, and Mondays being slow, I figured it was about time to share my 2019 Hugo Awards Finalist Ballot, which ballot will be used to help tally the vote for the 2019 Hugo Awards, which will be presented – for the first time ever – in my ancestral lands of Ireland.

(Start at 30 seconds in; the important part comes at 54 seconds)

Sadly, I will not be in attendance, but I am a supporting member and therefore, get to vote.

Below are screen captures of the individual categories and my placements (the Hugo Awards use a preferential voting system where you rank your picks).

The Retro Hugo Awards follow the contemporary Hugo Awards.

Some general comments:  I don’t vote for works I’m not personally familiar with, which happens for one reason and another;  I also don’t consider reading an excerpt from a longer work to be sufficient exposure to judge it properly.

This also means that I don’t necessarily rank everything in a category.

There are a handful of categories I didn’t vote in or opted to select No Award for – excercising my Ghu-given right to “vote” by not selecting anyone or picking No Award to indicate that I disagree with the inclusion of the category in the awards.

This is not pique over disagreeing with a categorie’s inclusion when I campaigned against its inclusion but lost the vote.  It’s actually three reactions:  1. I really don’t think that it should be an award category, find it problematic for various reasons and see it as more (eventual) trouble than it is worth – which gets a “No Award”;  2.  I disagree with the category but don’t care enough – or think it harmful enough – to bother with it and 3.  I’ve no interest in the category and therefore can’t vote because I really don’t engage with it.  Let those who do decide who should win without interference from me.

Note:  the screencaps are a bit difficult to read, so the email summary of my ballot is included after them.  I’m showing the screen caps first because the summary only includes those Finalists that I actually voted for.

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This category, over time I think, is going to cause problems, what with the possibility that a “series” can find itself up for the award in multiple years; not to mention some possible entrants getting short shrift because of availability & etc.

Hoo boy. I completely disagree with the Administrators on the eligibility of Archive of Our Own – not because it showcases “fan fic”, but because it is not a “new” work and has not been updated sufficiently broadly enough to be eligible. Making a website that updated some back-end capabilities eligible is like making The Moon is a Harsh Mistress eligibile again because they changed the type font in a new edition. Further, I am deeply concerned about A: AO3’s members deliberately misconstruing their individual status AND B. even more concerned about large internet “tribes” being able to sway the vote and using their numbers and reach to possibly negate the regular membership’s vote*. And, finally, this category needs to be refined in future to refocus it on academic and critical work within the field.

As stated earlier, if I don’t engage, I don’t vote – but, while I have mild reservations about this category’s inclusion, they’re not strong enough to want to deny others their fun.

It’s really, really difficult to figure out who did what in this category. I believe that editorial work should be awarded, I just think we need a better way to do it. What that might be, I’ve no idea,. so, therefore, I stay mum.

Another category whose inclusion I heartily disagree with. I am PERSONALLY far better off because when I began reading science fiction, there were no distinctions made over what was or was not appropriate for me to read. I believe this is an artificial, marketing-based divide, is detrimental to young readers by suggesting limitations and that we should not be basing awards on marketing categories.

*I’ve been vocal on the AO3 “controversy”.  Early on I asked that they detail the “sufficient” changes made to the site that would make it eligible in a year in which it was not first produced.  (In fact, I think its TEN years AFTER it was first created that we are being asked to vote for it.  As if The Martian appeared on the ballot AFTER the film rolled out, in a year in which the novel itself was not first published in English.)

I am not objecting to “new voters”  coming into the fold here.  We absolutely want that.  What I am finding issue with is an internet community that does not normally engage with the awards doing so to get their “thing” a win.  Just like the gamer gaters that were recruited by the Sad and Rabid puppies.  (No, they are not pups;  some of their actions are ‘puppy-like’.)

If this kind of thing becomes common (and I suspect it may), the awards turn into a defacto “popularity” contest:  how many people who never heard of the Hugo Awards before can we get to vote because their “friends” are up for an award?

But putting that argument aside for a moment:  the public display on the part of AO3 members (yay, all of my fan fic works are now Hugo Nominees:  I’m a Hugo Finalist author – gonna put that right up on my website!) AFTER being informed that they are not entitled to such honors individually, is, to me, more than enough reason to not vote for it.

Prior coverage of this debate here 

Finalist Vote Summary:

Novel:

The Calculating Stars

Trail of Lightning

Space Opera

Novella:

Artificial Condition

The Tea Master and the Detective

Binti: The Night Masquerade

Novelette:

“The Thing About Ghost Stories”

The Only Harmless Great Thing

Short Story:

“The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat”

“The Court Magician”

“The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington”

Related Work:

Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction

An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards

Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing

http://www.mexicanxinitiative.com: The Mexicanx Initiative Experience at Worldcon 76

The Hobbit Duology (documentary in three parts)

No award

Dramatic Long:

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Sorry to Bother You

Black Panther

Avengers: Infinity War

Annihilation

A Quiet Place

Dramatic Short:

The Good Place: “Janet(s)”

The Good Place: “Jeremy Bearimy”

Editor Short:

Gardner Dozois

Neil Clarke

Semiprozine:

Strange Horizons

FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction

Fireside Magazine

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Uncanny Magazine

Shimmer

Fanzine:

Rocket Stack Rank

Galactic Journey

Journey Planet

nerds of a feather, flock together

Fan Writer:

Foz Meadows

James Davis Nicoll

Alasdair Stuart

Fan Artist:

Spring Schoenhuth

Series:

No award

New Writer:

Jeannette Ng

Lodestar:

No award

The Retro Hugo Awards

(The older I get, the closer the Retros come to being THE Hugo Awards….)

Yes, seems that this year I have a ‘thing’ for Don Wollheim, Eric Frank Russell and C. L. Moore.

(Pretty sure I’ve always had a thing for them.)

Symbiotica (EF Russell) makes me laugh.  Every. Single. Time.  I think it takes the prize for most vomitous novelette in the history of the genre (though Sturgeon’s The Girl Had Guts comes a very close second).  And by vomitous, I don’t mean on the part of the reader.  I mean, more people vomit in that story than in any other.

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  Summary

Retro Novel:

Conjure Wife

Earth’s Last Citadel

The Weapon Makers

Gather, Darkness!

Perelandra

Retro Novella:

“Attitude”

“Clash by Night”

The Little Prince

“We Print the Truth”

Retro Novelette:

“Symbiotica”

“Mimsy Were the Borogoves”

“The Proud Robot”

“Citadel of Lost Ships”

“The Halfling”

Retro Short Story:

“Q.U.R.”

“Yours Truly – Jack the Ripper”

“Doorway into Time”

“King of the Gray Spaces” (“R is for Rocket”)

“Death Sentence”

Retro Graphic Story:

Flash Gordon: Fiery Desert of Mongo

Buck Rogers: Martians Invade Jupiter

Wonder Woman #5: Battle for Womanhood

Retro Dramatic Long:

Phantom of the Opera

Münchhausen

Heaven Can Wait

Batman

Retro Dramatic Short:

Super-Rabbit

Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman

The Ape Man

Der Fuehrer’s Face

Retro Editor Short:

Donald A. Wollheim

Mary Gnaedinger

Dorothy McIlwraith

John W. Campbell

Raymond A. Palmer

Retro Pro Artist:

Margaret Brundage

Hannes Bok

J. Allen St. John

Virgil Finlay

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

William Timmins

Retro Fanzine:

The Phantagraph

Le Zombie

Futurian War Digest

Guteto

Voice of the Imagi-Nation

Retro Fan Writer:

Jack Speer

Morojo (Myrtle Douglas)

Wilson “Bob” Tucker

Donald A. Wollheim

Forrest J. Ackerman

Art Widner

The 2019 Hugo Awards – Publisher’s Picks (Note:  voting closes in a bit more than ten days from now on 7/21/19.  Membership sales (required for voting rights in most cases) also close soon.