(1) 100 LOVED BOOKS. PBS series The Great American Read premieres May 22. One hundred books, one winner:
THE GREAT AMERICAN READ is an eight-part series that explores and celebrates the power of reading, told through the prism of America’s 100 best-loved novels (as chosen in a national survey). It investigates how and why writers create their fictional worlds, how we as readers are affected by these stories, and what these 100 different books have to say about our diverse nation and our shared human experience.
- How many have you read? Take the quiz. At 31 books, I’ll probably register one of the lowest scores around here.
- Click on the link to see The Great American Read’s list of America’s 100 most-loved books. It includes 26 books (and series) classified as SFF.
- George R.R. Martin was delighted to find his A Game of Thrones series on the list.
(2) AMAZING OPENS SUBMISSIONS WINDOW. Steve Davidson announced “General Submissions for Amazing Stories Opens Today”. See detailed guidelines at the link. Davidson had more to say on Facebook:
(3) COMPTON CROOK AWARD. Nicky Drayden announced on April 19 that her book Prey of Gods won the 2018 Compton Crook Award. [Via Locus Online.]
(4) RINGO’S WORLD. John Ringo’s April 16 Facebook post about his withdrawal as ConCarolinas special guest continues gathering moss, now with over 900 likes. Today Ringo showed everyone what they’ll be missing with a new comment that explains to his sycophants why ConCarolina’s Guest of Honor can’t compete with him.
No. Because nobody but people who pay close attention to the industry and awards has ever heard of her.
Her Amazon rankings are pretty low. Her bookscan ratings are low. That indicates she’s not particularly popular just heavily promoted and ‘popular’ with the ‘right crowd’. (Which is a very small crowd.)
James Patterson is a big name. JK Rowling is a big name. Hell, China Meville is a big name.
Seanan McGuire is not ‘a big name’.
I have no clue where we stand representationally in sales comparison to me but I suspect I sell more books. Just a suspicion, though, and it probably depends on the series.
Honestly, I suspect A Deeper Blue sold more books than all of hers combined.
(5) ENCHANTED MUSEUM. Atlas Obscura reveals the “Hidden Elves at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science”.
Back in the 1970s, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science hired artist Kent Pendleton to paint the backdrops for many of the museum’s wildlife dioramas. Little did it know that Pendleton’s penchant for hiding tiny mythical creatures in these paintings would add a whole new dimension to the museum experience.
It all began with eight elves—or gnomes, or leprechauns, depending who you ask—hidden in Pendleton’s wildlife dioramas. An elf hiding in the lowland river. An elf riding a dinosaur along a cretaceous creekbed. Another elf sat on a rock in the Great Smoky Mountains. And others, hard to spot but definitely there, in various backdrops throughout the museum.
In 2018, Pendleton told the Denverite: “It was just kind of my own little private joke. The first one was so small that hardly anyone could see it, but it sort of escalated over time, I guess. Some of the museum volunteers picked up on it and it developed a life of its own.”
(6) THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE. Kevin Standlee is running for office in his home town:
I’m Kevin Standlee, and I’m running for a seat on the Board of Directors of the North Lyon County Fire Protection District, which serves the city of Fernley, Nevada.
I grew up in a fire station. As the child of a US Forest Service officer, I lived a lot of my formative years on a series of fire outposts in the Sierra Nevada….
June 12 is Election Day.
(7) HISTORIC DUNES. ABC News tells about “Visiting the desert where ‘Star Wars’ was filmed”.
There’s a reason the original “Star Wars” movie was filmed in the deserts of southern Tunisia. This stark, remote landscape looks like another planet.
One of Tunisia’s vast desert regions is even called Tataouine (ta-TWEEN), like Luke Skywalker’s home planet, Tattoine.
And the underground home where Luke Skywalker first appeared living with his uncle and aunt is a real hotel in the town of Matmata, one of various desert locations used in the movies.
Masoud Berachad owns the Hotel Sidi Driss. He says visitors have dropped off since Tunisia’s democratic revolution in 2011 and attacks on tourists in 2015.
Still, devoted “Star Wars” fans keep the hotel in business….
(8) CURSED CHILD IN NEW YORK. David Rooney goes into great detail – perhaps too much – in his “‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’: Theater Review” for The Hollywood Reporter. Here’s a relatively spoiler-free excerpt:
…Pockets of racist outrage exploded online when it was first announced that a black actress had been cast as Hermione, which Rowling shot down in her no-nonsense style by pointing out that the character’s ethnicity was never mentioned in the books. In any case, only the most bigoted idiot could find fault with the brilliant Dumezweni’s performance, her haughtiness, quicksilver intellect and underlying warmth tracing a line way back to the precociously clever girl Harry first met on the train all those years ago.
Thornley’s Ron, too, is readily identifiable as the perennial joker of the trio. He’s acquired substance and a charming mellowness over the years, though a glimpse of him in a time-warped present tells a heartbreakingly different story. Miller takes the early indicators of Ginny’s strength and builds on them, shaping a smart, grounded woman capable of handling Harry’s complicated baggage. And Price’s Draco is still peevish and moody, his bitterness exploding in an entertaining clash of wands with Harry, but he’s found a softer side in maturity as well.
At the center of it all is Parker’s Harry, grown up and more confident but still pensive and troubled as ever, plagued by memories of the orphaned boy who slept under the stairs at his aunt and uncle’s home, and the reluctant hero he was forced to become. It’s a finely nuanced performance, with gravitas and heart, particularly as he wrestles with and eventually overcomes his struggles as a parent. Even with the sweet sentimentality of the closing scenes, what lingers most about Parker’s characterization is the stoical knowledge he carries with him that every moment of happiness contains the promise of more pain to come.
Of equal importance in the story are Albus and Scorpius, and while Clemmett is affecting in the more tortured role, at war with himself as much as his father, the discovery here is Boyle. His comic timing, nervous mannerisms and endearing awkwardness even in moments of triumph make him a quintessential Rowling character and a winning new addition. “My geekness is a-quivering,” he chirps at one point, probably echoing how half the audience is feeling. It’s stirring watching these two young outsiders conquer their self-doubt to find courage and fortitude….
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- Daniel Dern doesn’t want Filers to miss xkcd’s cartoon “Misinterpretation.”
- Lise Andreasen asks, “Things men weren’t meant to know?”
????by @tomgauld pic.twitter.com/ahOG6EltU4
— New Scientist (@newscientist) April 23, 2018
(10) GENESIS. In “How Stan Lee Became the Man Behind Marvel” Chris Yogerst of the LA Review of Books reviews Bob Batchelor’s biograpahy of the comics icon.
STAN LEE WAS FINISHED with comics. “We’re writing nonsense,” he once told his wife Joan. “It’s a stupid business for a grownup to be in.” After riding the early success of comic books, Lee was concerned about the future of the medium. He wanted to write more intelligent stories, something adults could connect to.
Following his wife’s advice, Lee decided to write one last story. With characters that were grounded in reality, stories that channeled Cold War tensions, and a narrative influenced by popular science fiction, Lee created the Fantastic Four. This was the type of story Lee would have wanted to read. If it was successful, maybe he would stick with comics a little longer.
Popular culture historian Bob Batchelor’s latest book turns a critical eye on the life of Lee, who ultimately became “the man behind Marvel.” Batchelor’s Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel focuses on where Lee came from, what influenced him, and how he became the immortal face of the comic book industry. In other words, to use the vernacular of the superhero genre, Batchelor gives us Lee’s origin story.
(11) AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #800.Here’s another variant cover for the upcoming milestone issue.
It’s all been building to this – the biggest Peter Parker and Norman Osborn story of all time, and the first Marvel comic EVER to hit 800 issues! In celebration of the 800th issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and the now historic run of Dan Slott, Marvel is excited to show a variant cover from legendary artist Frank Cho and colorist David Curiel!
Witness the culmination of the Red Goblin story as Slott is joined for his final issue by epic artists such as Stuart Immonen, Humberto Ramos, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Nick Bradshaw!
(12) SKYWATCH. Bill Gates among backers of proposed live-video-from-space satellite constellation called EarthNow:
EarthNow takes advantage of an upgraded version of the satellite platform, or “bus,” developed originally for the OneWeb communications service. Each satellite is equipped with an unprecedented amount of onboard processing power, including more CPU cores than all other commercial satellites combined. According to Greg Wyler, Founder and Executive Chairman of OneWeb, “We created the World’s first lowcost, high-performance satellites for mass-production to bridge the digital divide. These very same satellite features will enable EarthNow to help humanity understand and manage its impact on Earth.”
Use cases are said to include:
- Catch illegal fishing ships in the act
- Watch hurricanes and typhoons as they evolve
- Detect forest fires the moment they start
- Watch volcanoes the instant they start to erupt
- Assist the media in telling stories from around the world
- Track large whales as they migrate
- Help “smart cities” become more efficient
- Assess the health of crops on demand
- Observe conflict zones and respond immediately when crises arise
- Instantly create “living” 3D models of a town or city, even in remote locations
- See your home as the astronauts see it—a stunning blue marble in space
(13) TODAY’S COPYEDITING TIP. From Cherie Priest:
Nice try, BBC, but none of us are including the word “planet” when we relate this story to friends. https://t.co/QeBYY9Ik6T
— Cherie Priest, Allegedly (@cmpriest) April 23, 2018
(14) LOSING FACE. Motherboard says “This Is the Facial Recognition Tool at the Heart of a Class Action Suit Against Facebook”.
On Monday, a federal judge ruled that a class action lawsuit against Facebook can move forward, paving the way for what could turn out to be a costly legal battle for the company.
As Reuters reports, the lawsuit alleges that Facebook improperly collected and stored users’ biometric data. It was originally filed in 2015 by Facebook users in Illinois, which passed the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) in 2008. The law regulates the collection and storage of biometric data, and requires that a company receive an individual’s consent before it obtains their information.
According to the lawsuit, Facebook ran afoul of BIPA when it began using a tool called Tag Suggestions, which was originally rolled out in 2011. Like many Facebook features, it’s designed to make your user experience better while also providing the company with your data—in this case, very specific facial features.
(15) KNOT OF THIS WORLD. Gizmodo’s Kristen V. Brown advises “Forget the Double Helix—Scientists Discovered a New DNA Structure Inside Human Cells”.
The double helix, though, is not the only form in which DNA exists. For the first time ever, scientists have identified the existence of a new DNA structure that looks more like a twisted, four-stranded knot than the double helix we all know from high school biology.
The newly identified structure, detailed Monday in the journal Nature Chemistry, could play a crucial role in how DNA is expressed.
Some research had previously suggested the existence of DNA in this tangled form, dubbed an i-motif, but it had never before been detected in living cells outside of the test tube. Researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia, though, found that not only does the structure exist in living human cells, but it is even quite common.
(16) ROCKET MAN. In his book What Were They Thinking? The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, author David Hofstede ranked William Shatner’s 1978 performance of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” at #17 on the list. Details from the Wikipedia —
At the 5th Saturn Awards Ceremony, which aired as the Science Fiction Film Awards in January 1978, Taupin introduced William Shatner’s spoken word[29] interpretation of the song. It used chroma key video techniques to simultaneously portray three different images of Shatner, representing the different facets of the Rocket Man’s character….
How can you not want to watch it after a build-up like that?
(17) MAKING A BIGGER BANG. Wil Wheaton has been having fun —
Since last week, I’ve been working on the season finale of The Big Bang Theory, and today we shot Amy and Sheldon’s wedding.
It was an incredible day, and I am still in disbelief that I got to be in multiple scenes with Kathy Bates, Laurie Matcalf, Jerry O’Connell, Brian Posehn, Lauren Lapkus, Teller, Courtney Henggeler, and this guy, who is not only one of the kindest people I’ve ever worked with, but is also from a science fiction franchise, just like me!
You're not so bad yourself @wilw. Let this episode be dedicated to the countless @bigbangtheory fans who love the #STARS– both #TREK & #WARS & begin to heal a divided galaxy…#MayTheLivingLongAndProsperingBeWithUs https://t.co/9FetGyLRSj
— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) April 19, 2018
[Thanks to David K.M. Klaus, JJ, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Michael Toman, Carl Slaughter, Lise Andreasen, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Camestros Felapton.]
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I have a one-volume HarperCollins paperback of The Lord of the Rings. The copyright page says “First published in one volume 1968.”. There is a “Note On The Text” by Douglas A. Anderson, dated 1993, the first sentence of which reads, “The Lord of the Rings is often erroneously called a trilogy, when it is in fact a single novel, consisting of six books plus appendices, sometimes published in three volumes.”
@magewolf Your contention that Ghost makes up the bulk of his career sales is rather bizarre. That isn’t even his bestselling title. There are at least two other titles that outsold that one, handily. Beyond which, authors rarely have access to other people’s sales, especially back then, and even especially of other publishing houses. (Hint, Baen only has one spot on the top fifty mass-market paperback list, for last week. Eight other publishers dominate, with multiple books.) And even with all its faults, Bookscan is mostly good for 2010 onwards.
@Tracy Bookscan allows you to pull up an entire author’s list, along with a grand total of units sold. It isn’t particularly useful, without context, mind you. But for a quick comparison, it works well enough, I guess?
I doubt John Ringo has access to people’s book sales, now or even ten years ago, so he is just projecting. There is no reason to think he has any special insight into the industry, as such, as Baen is but one part of it, really.
I think it’s probably true that Mieville has wider recognition than McGuire. ‘Wider recognition’ here is not the same as ‘bigger sales’; I mean that a greater variety of people have heard of him, that he’s more known by people who aren’t fans, who don’t follow the field closely. (Possibly this is more true in the UK, though? The BBC is doing an adaptation of The City and the City right now. )
On the other hand, what applies to McGuire here equally applies to Ringo. He is likewise a fannish author, mostly recognised within the field, as far as I can see. And since the people who follow the field are the people who go to cons, this would actually seem to make McGuire very appropriate as a con guest.
The Pilgrim’s Progress is said to be one of those books everybody read at one time. Allusions to it are not uncommon in fairly recent literature. John Buchan’s WW1 thriller Mr. Standfast for example is practically shaped by them, as I recall. (Must reread that.). I have my father’s Folio Society copy and I mean to read it one of these days.
4) Hopefully John Ringo will have the self-awareness and decency to come back at a later date and blame those words on his Evil Idiot Drunk-Ass Twin.
(Reading Seanan McGuire’s work makes me want to read more Seanan McGuire. Reading John Ringo’s work makes me want to read less John Ringo.)
I never claimed that John Ringo had any knowledge about anything although He should have some info about his own sales.
I was trying to point out that when he suspected he was a better seller then McGuire as show by your numbers he was right. A couple of people had seemed to think that was unlikely.
I used older numbers because they were the first ones I found because people were arguing about his place on one of those books sold list in 2008. I wrote that I thought Ghost was a big part of that because of the timing though after I checked Ghost came out in 2005 I thought it was 2007.
@Cora: “I’m not surprised that there isn’t much overlap between Seanan McGuire’s readership and John Ringo’s.”
As part of that overlap…
Percentage-wise, I have probably read more of Ringo’s output than McGuire’s. This is primarily because I haven’t gotten to the October Daye books (yet), and a lack of cash has prevented me from keeping current on new Big Five releases for the last couple of years. (Thank Ghu for Meredith Moments!) However, I look forward to her books a lot more than I do to his, and I’m not even sure what he’s published since the “Black Tide Rising” anthology – which I mainly know about because I saw Scalzi mention contributing to it.
Basically, Ringo started out as an A-list “buy upon release” and has faded into near obscurity for me. A substantial component of that was his annoying habit of wandering away from series without finishing them; when was the last Posleen/Aldenata book, and will there ever be another Council War book? McGuire, OTOH, started as a “not into fairies, thanks” (Daye), graduated to “this looks interesting” (InCryptid), and now has a solid place on that A-list… although, as mentioned, that list is now “buy when able” instead of “upon release.” Not her fault!
If I were to respond to Ringo’s comment directly, I would point out that at least McGuire can count to ten in print. This comes from something I noticed while reading the second BTR novel, toward the end of which Ringo manages to add three to five and get seven:
This is from a long sequence which primarily consists of the top dog giving out medals to a bunch of characters. That quote is followed by a seven-item list naming the awards (and badge), but I’m still trying to figure out how six plus one is the same as three plus five.
Faith, incidentally, is the thirteen-year-old asskicking sex symbol of the series. She is described in that book as six feet tall, bearing a passing resemblance to a Barbie doll, and the recipient of frequent marriage proposals from military men who fall in love after hearing her opinions on various firearms.
I am not making that up. Chapter 28:
Yeah, that exists. In print and everything. OJRN!
The only John Ringo who means anything to me is Michael Biehn.
Every time I read a Ringo quote, it makes me less likely to pick up a Ringo book. I know the current theme is to pick out the “OH JOHN RINGO NO” moments, but there seems to be a lot of them.
For the Ringo fans out there: What book of his would you reccomend?
Only 20. plus 2 on mt tsundoku. Plus a couple Im not sure about. Well, never claimed Im a mainstream reader…
On Ringo: What Cora said. McGuire is sold in english bookstores here, Ringo isnt (Ive seen Correira though). International reach massively outsells US niche markets. Who knew?
To kill a mockingbird In self defense.
Of item #1, I admit to disappointment that the list isn’t limited to stories by USers. I’m not a nativist, but surely we don’t need another amorphous “novel-ish bucket list.” The name of the survey suggests something more specific, and the list could have been more pointed in these fraught times. (Although maybe the point is that, even with all the jingoistic demagoguery being bandied about, USers are in the main not all that nativist. Kudos Americanos!)
For the record, if you take the most liberal meaning of “read,” I have read 8 of these, most of them as a teenager, which surely no longer counts. That was a different person who read A Separate Peace, Watchers and To Kill a Mockingbird. Of those eight, I enjoyed all of them enough to finish them, but I remember very little. Of them, I liked Watchers the most as I read it…in one sitting. Unputdownnable.
@Peer
Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter books are also available in German, with beautiful covers that put Baen’s to shame, so he has more name recognition than Ringo.
Those of you who remember what happened the last couple of times clueless Puppies, who diidn’t understand how Amazon rankings work, bragged about how their work was more popular than that of other authors, will have been expecting this:
A Comparison of McGuire’s and Ringo’s publishing and readership statistics from Amazon, GoodReads, and LibraryThing
Why are we arguing about various author’s sales? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that McGuire behaves nicely and Ringo doesn’t.
Selling a lot of books does not provide an excuse for bad behavior. If it was King or Rowling who had behaved badly, they would also – hopefully – have been disinvited.
Thomas Jefferson said “Be polite to all” not be polite to people who sell more books than you.
JJ: Thanks. So, based on reviews, copies & the other stuff tracked, McGuire is on the rise and Ringo is on the decline.
If you believe that book sales are a zero sum game, I can see why he was trying to diminish her presence.
Of course, book sales aren’t zero sum, attacking another author is bad form and doing so when facts contradictory to your statements are generally available is kinda stupid…so, Triple Win…?
(1) 22, and a few of them I wish I could unread and have the time spent reading refunded (all the ones on the list I was required to read for school minus Crime and Punishment which I didn’t read despite being required, plus a fanfic series involving a apotheotic lion and another book that does not involve orcs). Two I haven’t read that maybe I will someday, if I get enough round tuits.
@Bookworm1398 – nicely said.
1) 31, I think. There’s a few I’m not sure of, the precise count may be a little higher or lower. Actually I find it interesting how many of the classics I read in my teens and how few I’ve read since.
@arifel:
I suspect you may have almost gotten your wish there – because I think the only books I’ve seen that in are Beaulieu’s “Lays of Anuskaya”-trilogy. All three books have a list of Dramatis Personae, and book two and three have recaps of the previous books.
1.) I wound up with about 29-30 books, depending on how you count. It’s an odd list and would be curious how it got put together.
As to China Mieville, I suspect his role as a public intellectual also plays a role in expanding his influence. He also has an interesting niche within genre criticism as well. But I also agree with bookworm1398 and others that the comparative influence of authors has nothing to do with their value as guests.
It’s also more than a little strange that Ringo is now going after McGuire, who as far as I can tell, stayed out of the debate about the conference despite being asked to take a stand on it.
@Cora
Both of it makes sense: The former because Baencovers are ugly and the later because Correiras stories are more international accessible. What I have read about Ringos books (haven’t read them, not going to) his themes are very US centric, and even there catered to a specific audience. I doubt he is known in Europe at all (but since European politics is probably „communist“ from his perspective, he probably doesn’t care. At least not in public)
@Rev Bob – For my money, this is the point at which my stomach turned and stayed that way (TW: rape)
Murphy and Gowen had gotten pretty chummy in those two weeks. He’d stomped on that, hard. The subject of Gowen being the only split in the compartment had been raised nearly the first day. But he’d pointed out that zombie virus was a blood pathogen. Like, say, AIDS. Which had put the kibosh on fooling around. For a while. But you couldn’t have five guys and one girl in a compartment for forever without something happening.
Which meant he had to have a ‘talk’ with Gowen…
“Gowen, I’ve been holding the guys back by my rank and the fact of the blood pathogen,” Januscheitis said. “Smitty and Derek both know the bit about it no longer being an issue. I think Patel probably does. Gowen, there is one female in a compartment with five males. The next part is the…” He stopped and grimaced.
“Staff,” Gowen whispered. “If… If you really need to…?”
“I’m not the only one that will, does,” Januscheitis pointed out. “If we knew when we were leaving… No problem. But this is like prison. Except with an unknown date or release. If it’s not a death sentence…”
“So you want to pass me around?” Gowen said, angrily.
“Keep your voice down,” Januscheitis said.
“The hell with…”
“Listen, you little idiot,” Januscheitis snapped, grabbing her arm. “I don’t want to use you as MWR issue. I’m trying to make sure you get some control, okay? But that will only last so long if you keep playing cock-tease in a compartment where there are five testosterone laden males who haven’t had any in months and are thinking that you’re pretty much all they’ll have for the rest of their lives. So. There is no way in God’s green earth that I can legally order you to put out. But if you don’t agree to set up some sort of a schedule, if you think you’re going to do the guy you like and not the rest and play petty games with your body in this hotbox, pretty soon you’re not going to have a say. Hell, pretty soon I won’t have a say anymore then we might as well all be zombies…”
That’s from the second Black Tide Rising book.
You can argue that a character’s POV isn’t the same as an author’s, but in some cases it’s extremely difficult to separate them. Sometimes it’s just not possible to regard the art and disregard the artist.
Robert Wood: It’s also more than a little strange that Ringo is now going after McGuire, who as far as I can tell, stayed out of the debate about the conference despite being asked to take a stand on it.
And now a bunch of Ringo’s sycophants are accusing McGuire of being the one who caused Jonathan Ross to not be the host of the Loncon Hugo Ceremony — even though he had already withdrawn himself from the program before she ever woke up in the U.S. and saw all the tweets. Because of course feeding their persecution narrative is far more important the actual truth: that it was Brits complaining who were the impetus for the change — after the con chairs deliberately did an end-run around procedure and invited him without the support of the rest of the committee, having been told that he was not an appropriate choice.
Yegods, these people are malicious morons. 🙄
Stross’s recent Dark State has some nice getting-the-reader-up-to-speed reference material.
I’ve seen quite a few Fantasy and SF series which include lists of Dramatis Personae — K.B. Wagers’ Indranan War series and Martha Wells’ Raksura books being a couple of examples in recent memory. Obviously, those will have some background, but they rarely serve as “The Story So Far” catch-ups, which are far rarer. IIRC, Julie E. Czerneda did that for her last 2 Clan Chronicles/Reunification books (although I thought the synopsis in the last one was insufficient).
I read 34 on the list. Couldn’t bring myself to read Twilight or 50 Shades of Gray
POC actors on Broadway: Disney did blind casting for many of the parts in Frozen and wound up with Jelani Alladin as Kristoff, which got some of the usual sorts whinging about ” … but, but Scandanavian!” and so on and so forth. His instagram feed has some great pics of him with children on the rope line at the stage door.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhuBmbAjAG-/
Also, Aisha Jackson is Patti Murin’s (Anna) understudy, and Patti has had to miss some performances. Most recently due to an anxiety attack, which she was very open about. (Her twitter feed is awesome, and she recommends a book a day that she has read!)
In any case, there was a review on the St. James Theater web site that basically was: “I paid good money to see Anna, not have her morph from a young white girl into an adult black girl.” It was actually funny, because King Agnarr, the father, is also unmistakeably a POC. Which didn’t get mentioned. So … (Also, Queen Iduna is Asian, so Disney wasn’t fooling around here.)
Having seen the musical in person now, all I can say is, “Hooray for blind casting.” Patti was in the performance, but Jelani was amazing. And this is his Broadway debut to boot.
1) 31 for me (including both Moby Dick – I think the digressions on shipboard life and the taxonomy of whales are some of the best bits – and The Pilgrim’s Progress). Not that it particularly matters… looks like just another list compiled by people with too much time on their hands.
@Chip Hitchcock: “I still regret the time I spent reading Confederacy of Dunces.”
I didn’t count that one because I didn’t finish it, which was a great disappointment. It sounded like a book written just for me. If anyone would like to lobby me to give it a second chance, well, I didn’t regret it with Gravity’s Rainbow, so a sufficiently compelling argument will probably get it back into my hands.
@GSLamb: If you liked Kushiel’s Dart, you should try Ghost.
Well, if you’re talking about the likes of J.K. Rowling being the definition of a ‘big name’, no. But in the context of events like ConCarolinas, McGuire certainly qualifies as a big name. McGuire has been a GoH at three recent SF/F cons I’ve been to myself (ICON 41, Minicon 51, Chambanacon 47) in the past three years, and one of the reasons she’s been a GoH at many cons is that she’s a multi-talented, personable, and just an all-around fun person.
John A Arkansawyer: If you liked Kushiel’s Dart, you should try Ghost.
I knew that Kushiel’s Dart had erotic content in it, but I’ve never seen anyone say that it’s steeped in misogyny.
Given that McGuire was guest of Honor at both the New Zealand Natcon (Lexicon) and Australia Natcon (Continuum) last year (which I was both at thanks to DUFF), yeah, I’d say that she’s a big name in the context we are talking about. The flights alone were not cheap (I should know!) even with the two cons pooling resources to get her down there.
(1). Call me cynical, but I have a more than sneaking suspicion that some of those books ended up on the list to help round out the themes they planned shows around– ” five one-hour theme episodes that examine concepts common to groups of books on the list,”.
And just who were these people that could come up with ONE favorite novel? I can’t come up with a choice like that if the category was narrowed down to some authors, let alone all the books I’ve read.
Whenever I played “Pick 5 books for the desert island” game, I’ll agonize over what to pick because it always changes.
You have to admit, it’s getting a lot of attention, though. And I’ll probably watch just to see who’s going to be on it commenting about books.
And I got 21, including books that I “really ought to read” and then tossed aside.
(4) Bless his heart.
Won’t be reading Ringo.
@ Cassy
Thanks for the tip!
Those who are looking up stats for Seanan McGuire, for whatever reason, should keep in mind that she’s also the author of the very popular Newsfeed series under her other name: Mira Grant. I’m not sure, but I was under the impression it’s her biggest seller.
Some sources may lump the two together, but others may not. But it’s not like it’s a secret. Mira Grant fans know she’s actually named McGuire. It’s to confuse computers, not people. So Grant fans will want to come to this convention, even though the GoH is named McGuire. 🙂
@Kip — there’s a Patrick Dennis I haven’t read AND it’s available on Kindle??? THANK YOU! It sounds as good as Little Me, so maybe I’ll save it for my next airplane ride.
I am probably being wicked for snickering over the juxtaposition of people (a) being snide about the books on the (1) list which they’ve never heard of; (b) being snide about certain folks being dismissive of authors/books they’ve never heard of. At the moment I am highly in favor of books I haven’t heard of (yet), because it looks like I just discovered an unread book by a favorite author, and that doesn’t happen every day.
I found my mom’s copy of Pilgrim’s Progress while cleaning out her room earlier this year. It has points of minor interest I’ll expand upon with it in front of me.
@JJ: Ghost and Kushiel’s Dart are roughly equivalent as stroke books, which seemed to me to be their highest use. Each story has merits on its own terms. I personally find aristocratic power fantasies considerably more offensive than brutish power fantasies, but that’s just a taste of my lesser weevil.
@Steve Wright
That’s pretty much the norm on these. I always score high because I spent a year chewing through all the books in a ‘100 Classics Everyone Should Read’ list from 2001. Since then, virtually every general best 100 books list/quiz usually has at least 40% of the same titles over and over.
Gaaah, I feel increasingly weird and squicky even looking at these various numbers. Other people’s sales are between their editor and their god. And would stay that way, if SOME people didn’t feel like getting into a dick-measuring contest with somebody who didn’t even do anything to them.
The only time I’ve ever seen anyone enthusiastic about Pilgrim’s Progress, it was the girls in Little Women. Which may go a long way towards explaining why LW was such a runaway hit, if that’s what had passed for “fun reading” before that.
I just read Moby Dick last year. It actually struck me as sort of science fiction-y, with its detailed discussion of exotic life forms and technologies.
StephenFromOttawa: To me, Pilgrim’s Progress is mostly notable as the model for “The Enchanted Duplicator,” which should be required reading.
Charon D: I’m so glad to have steered even one person toward the book. I think I have already said it’s my favorite of his, so I’ll stop laying it on already.
I would say that liking Kushiel’s Dart is a pretty good predictor that a reader wouldn’t enjoy Ringo’s Ghost. The attitude toward agency and consent is if not one-hundred-and-eighty degrees out is at least 179. Ghost is rape fantasy. Kushiel’s Dart is a book with lots of sex, narrated by a sexual masochist.
@GSLamb —
The only purely Ringo book I’ve tried was A Hymn Before Battle, which I dnfed halfway through. To me, it was reaaaaaaaally booooooooorrrring, with lots and lots of kvetching that boiled down to an attitude that only noncoms had any brains. Virtually no action in the first 50%, just interminable prepping for action and arguing about prepping and dealing with idiot officers and so on.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I did enjoy the first two Prince Roger books and intend to read the other two in the series. They are a Weber/Ringo collaboration, and there’s no telling which author was more responsible for them. Notably, I’ve also dnfed the only purely Weber book I’ve tried, so this isn’t just an issue of liking Weber’s writing.
So anyway — if you want to check out the sort of book that Ringo would be involved in, you could do worse than March Upcountry, the first in the series. It’s pretty fun and pretty fluffy, as long as you like to blow stuff up.
Kip, I’m aware of The Enchanted Duplicator and may even have read it, but I have to admit I never got deeply enough into fandom to really appreciate it.
John A Arkansawyer: book with a lot of sex does NOT necessarily equate to stroke book. That isn’t why or how I liked Kushiel’s Dart, and I am probably a lot closer to the target audience for that branch of erotica than you.
@Charon D. —@Kip — there’s a Patrick Dennis I haven’t read AND it’s available on Kindle??? THANK YOU! It sounds as good as Little Me, so maybe I’ll save it for my next airplane ride.
I now have somebody’s-going-to-read-one-of-my-favorites-for-the-first-time jealousy. He’s one of the authors I wouldn’t be able to pick ONE novel as a favorite. And I came across him not through “Auntie Mame” but by stumbling on “Guestward Ho!” in a thrift store.
You’ll love “Genius” and if you haven’t already read them, I’d add “Guestward HO” and “Tony”.
One dream is to find copies of his books under the pseudonym of Virginia Rowan that won’t bankrupt me.
LOVED the Prince Roger books. Another series Ringo has left hanging. I saw a snippet once of the fifth book, but there seemed to be a story that Ringo and Weber couldn’t agree on where to go with it, and so it languishes.
Of course, Weber has been really busy, so …
I would love another book in the Posleen series as well.
Kildar books are … ewwwwww.
Never read anything in the Black Tide Rising series because zombie stuff is just a non-starter for me.
Shoggoth or the time machine got to WP last night, I guess…
These days you can get single-volume editions of LotR. You can also get six-volume editions (each individual “book” bound separately) if you’re so inclined. But even though I have a single volume, it’ll always be the LotR trilogy to me.