Sunday Status Update: November 7, 2021

Kat: Still listening to Marissa Meyer’s LUNAR CHRONICLES with my daughter and will finish the second book, Scarlett, today. These are fun. For something completely different, I read The Psychedelic Reader: Selected from the Psychedelic Review which was published in 1965 and edited by Timothy Leary. Some of it was boring, some of it was crazy, and some was quite fascinating.

Bill: This week I read Jeanette Winterson’s collection of essays on AI, 12 Bytes, and Andrea Stewart’s debut fantasy novel, The Boneshard’s Daughter, both of which I recommend (full reviews to come).  In video, as usual, I enjoyed the Empire segment of Foundation the best of the three storylines, while the other two were more problematic than usual. The show remains worthy, and I’m glad it was renewed, but I’m hoping for some improvement in the non-Emperor threads. I’m also still working through Babylon 5, which has become more compelling in terms of long-term characterization (I’m midway through season 2) with the occasional weak episode in terms of plot

Marion: I finished The Language of Power (spoiler alert; it’s mathematics) by Rosemary Kirstein. The fourth book in THE STEERSWOMAN series follows the pattern of the other books, and ends with a great deal of tension. Sadly, it is the last complete book in the series although Kirstein says she is working on the next. Preemie Mohamad’s novella The Annual Migration of Clouds starts off with a–well, not a bang, but a glittering net of hints and ideas, a fully realized dystopian world. I’m just starting but I want to know what happens to our protagonist Reid.

Terry: I read several novellas this week:  The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho; A Year and a Day in Old Theradane by Scott Lynch; The Long Game by K.J. Parker; and Comfort Me with Apples by Catherynne M. Valente. The last of these was the stand-out, though I enjoyed all three. It’s been a while since I read anything by Valente, and she’s even better than I remembered. Now I’m patching a significant hole in my fantasy reading history: I’m reading Elric of Melnibone: The Elric Saga, Volume I by Michael Moorcock. Great stuff so far!