Kaylee ,'Serenity'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
R.I.P. Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Oh, how sad. I never read Love in the Time of Cholera even though I own a copy. I did enjoy One Hundred Years of Solitude, and I highly recommend Chronicle of a Death Foretold as well as the short story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.
I love everything Marquez. Even his very long biography. Went back to the original 100 Years and then some of the short stories and translated what I could, though my Spanish is terrible. I just wanted to hear how it sounded in the original because I loved it so in English. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, and some of his short stories about saints, and The General in His Labryinth... augh. I am so glad he wrote, and so sad right now.
I should read more Marquez. I loved 100 Years of Solitude so much, but then I was meh on Love in the Time of Cholera and stopped looking for stuff of his to read.
Not surprised about GGM, but still sad.
I am definitely sad about this one.
I will just leave this here: [link]
Ginny Potter, nee Weasley, covering this year's Quidditch World Cup on Pottermore
Hugo Award nominations! It's a verrrrrry interesting ballot this year for several reasons. Lots of first-timers. Fan Writer category has no straight white men. The entire Wheel of Time series is up for Best Novel. A blog post nominated for Best Related Work. The "Time" xkcd nominated for Best Graphic Story.
Aaaaand then there's Larry Correia and Vox Day, but. Still. Change is in the air.
Still loving Night Circus. Oh my God this chapter about Night Circus fandom. Oh my God.
I loved that chapter. That was a good chapter.
I'm so pleased Ancillary Justice got nominated. It's such a weird, smart, surprising book. I liked the plot, and the themes, and found the characters both sympathetic and occasionally alienating. And I loved the way the pronoun use challenged my cultural expectations of gender.
I'm also super-pleased Liz Bourke, Kameron Hurley, Foz Meadows, and Abigail Nussbaum got nominated for fan Hugos. They're all brilliant writers, although I think pound-for-pound, Abigail's probably the best of them as a critic: her reviews are really sharp and insightful.
In other news, I finished my reread of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell yesterday. Such an unusual book, so amazingly-written. And it's rather sly, really, because while the book is officially about the two white English gentlemen magicians, it's the people with less official social power who actually bring about the change in the world--the black footman, the unmarried girl of good family, the homeless vagrant covered with tattoos, the lank-haired and disturbingly-knowledgeable servant.
Plus, the footnotes are awesome.