Noemí Taboada likes being escorted to glamorous parties by handsome men, and she has every anticipation that she can go on doing so — until her father orders her to go into the Mexican countryside to check on her cousin Catalina. Since Catalina’s marriage to Virgil Doyle — an Englishman and scion to a family that once owned a silver mine but has fallen on hard times — they have heard very little from her, until they receive a letter in which she begs them to come save her. There are ghosts in the walls, she says. They are speaking…
Leave a CommentAuthor: Gin Jenny
Or: Inside baseball, the podcast! Today, I welcome Adrian of the Spectology podcast to talk about this year’s Hugo Awards, which were, in technical terms, a shitshow. Before we begin, here’s a link full of links about what happened at the ceremony, in case you are curious. You can also check out the full list of this year’s winners, who were terrific. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below, or download it directly to take with you on the go! Bonus Episode Here’s a list of everything we talked about! Robert Silverberg and his whole deal…
Leave a CommentFor some reason, it feels like all of my links are along the theme “untenable situation is untenable.” I am not sure why, except I guess we are all feeling exceptionally untenable about life these days. I read a New York Times article (link) about how we’ve all hit a wall, quarantine-wise, which seems accurate to my own experience and that of my friends-and-relations. If you’ve got anything that’s making you happy in quarantine, hit me up and let me know what that thing is! (My happy things are Indian food and Harrow the Ninth.) Anyway, on to the links!…
Leave a CommentWay back in February, so long ago that dinosaurs still walked among us and we had to use spider skillets to make baked goods at the flames of an open hearth, the absolute angels at Tor sent me an ARC of Tamsyn Muir’s Harrow the Ninth. It would be hard for me to convey the pure, all-consuming joy that I felt while read Tamsyn Muir’s Harrow the Ninth — hard both because language fails when one attempts to express transcendence, and also because in these quarantimes one struggles to understand happiness. Still, though, if you cast your mind back through the…
2 CommentsWe each spend these quarantimes dowsing for happiness, waving our rods hither and yon in the ever-more-vain hope that happiness will appear just beneath the surface. There is a happiness drought, and we are denounced as frauds for believing we can find it. But there is hope! Kit Rocha’s Deal with the Devil is here, and it has all the happiness (and waving rods1) you could desire! In the aftermath of enormous solar flares and governmental collapse, Nina and her team of mercenary librarians have carved out a home for themselves. They share knowledge and stories with their community and…
Leave a Commenttl;dr I liked a lot of things about The Angel of the Crows but a few other things, most notably how the book talks about asexuality, caused me to inhale sharply through my teeth and pinch the bridge of my nose for ten hours in a row So the matter as it stands is that I have never enjoyed a piece of Sherlock Holmes media, with the exception of Elementary, which I watched for two seasons. I would have watched a lot more of it if Natalie Dormer had been the co-lead with Lucy Liu. As a gesture of intellectual…
Leave a CommentA weird thing has befallen me, and I need help understanding how to feel. The Millions finally released their second half of 2020 book preview, and I have read it but yet somehow I have added… very few books to my own TBR list? Is it possible that 2020 has finally broken me? Do I no longer possess the capacity to feel joy? Is that what… Nevertheless: The Millions Book Preview, July – December 2020 Edition. (link) Hope Wabuke on the KKK joke. (link) Isabel Wilkerson considers the persistent caste system and the old, broken-down house that is America. (link)…
Leave a CommentLulu Shapiro is rather famous on Snapchat Flash, not least because of the video she took of herself kissing another girl — the video that led to her breakup with her boyfriend Owen. In the aftermath of going viral, Lulu has hidden in plain sight, shutting herself off from her real life friends while creating an image on Not!Snapchat of a perfect life of elegant parties and beautifully framed selfies. But at one of those parties, she meets Cass, who takes her to spend time at her rich friend Ryan’s new work-in-progress, The Hotel. No phones are allowed at the…
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