ann leckie

Speculative Chic Round Up: Week 3

~ Shara ~ Leave a comment

ancillary-mercy-by-ann-leckie-500x750Greetings, and welcome to week three of shameless self-promotion! Our third week at Speculative Chic  was SUPER BUSY, with three days in a row with two posts instead of one. Why all the craziness? Well, we wanted to get our Hugo Reading project wrapped up before the rockets were handed out on Saturday night (and to that affect, CONGRATS to N.K. Jemisin for her Best Novel win!), and I have to say, it’s been a joy to see all these different bloggers reviewing in one place! But we did MORE than just book reviews, so let’s break it down:

Monday, as usual, was another round of My Favorite Things. Nancy discussed Star Trek Collectibles, Bingeable Books, Animate Cat Rosebushes and Power Armor with Sherry, Lane, Keyes, and Whitney.

Then on Tuesday, Tez managed to nab all kinds of eyeballs with The Culling: Clearing the Clutter of Unwanted Books. We promise: no books were harmed in the making of this post!

Wednesday brought our very first day of duel posts. First, Betsy sat down to review the Nebula-winning and Hugo-nominated Uprooted by Naomi Novik. Then yours truly introduced the Orphan Black Rewatch, which starts in September. Whether you’re watching for the first time or the twentieth, we’d love to have you aboard!

jim-butcher-aeronauts-windlass-cover-530x800Thursday had Nu reminiscing about the past ten years of her writing career and the events that jump-started her path to publication. Then Sharon came by and explained how Jim Butcher finally helped her see the Steampunk light in her review of The Aeronaut’s Windlass.

Finally, on Friday, we learned from Coach Sherry that too much feedback CAN be a bad thing, and then Janicu wrapped up our Hugo reading project with her review of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy. Spoiler alert: it’s a very satisfying end to an awesome trilogy.

What’s on the agenda next week? My Favorite Things returns, of course, and then we’ll discuss portrayals of teens in the apocalypse, debate the pros and cons of Suicide Squad, talk about why Squirrel Girl should be your new favorite superhero, celebrate the return of Harry Potter, and then, if we’re LUCKY, we might gather around the campfire to whisper about Stranger Things.

Won’t you join us?

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Speculative Chic Round Up: Week 2

~ Shara ~ Leave a comment

Wonder-Woman-Teaser-posterHave you discovered Speculative Chic, yet? We just finished our SECOND full week of posts, and below is what you may have missed:

On Monday, Nancy sat down with Sharon, Casey, and Carey to discuss their Favorite Things: spoiler alert: Lindsey Stirling, Heavy Metal Comedies, and Female Superheroes are involved!

Then Tuesday brought us our second Sound Off! where Nancy, Keyes, J.L. Gribble, Betsy, Whitney, and Sherry all told yours truly what they REALLY thought of Star Trek Beyond. Spoiler alert: comments get controversial!

Wednesday brought us the second book in our Hugo Best Novel examinations with Snow Crash-loving Keyes thoroughly examining Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves. She tells us the good, the bad, and the perplexing. The amazing woman even read the book twice!

On Thursday, our convention-guru Venessa Giunta sat down to explain what conventions are, why you should go, and most importantly, HOW TO SURVIVE. I’m telling you, I wish I had this advice two years ago.

113Last but not least, our Creativity Coach Sherry Peters came back on Friday to talk about the value of having a creative outlet, and how there needs to be no other goal than creativity for creativity’s sake. For someone like me who has to make EVERYTHING competitive, it’s a damn good reminder.

What about next week? NEXT WEEK WILL BE EPIC! It’s the first week we’ll be doubling up: not EVERY day, but at least TWO days: you’ll get one post first thing in the morning, as usual, and then another will go live in the afternoon (assuming you’re on the East Coast, of course). We’re wrapping up our Hugo Best novel reviews with Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, Jim Butcher’s The Aeronaut’s Windlass, and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy. We’ll also have our weekly mash-up of favorite things, and a few other treats besides!

So don’t miss out! You can’t guarantee I’ll remember to put up these round-ups EVERY week, so the best way to get every post is follow the blog or subscribe to the feed,and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, where our moderators are doing more than mirroring Spec Chic posts: you’ll find a TON of fun, extra goodies!

And if you’re already there? Be sure to show the love: like what you like, share what you want others to see! And feel free to stay in touch: is there something you’re hoping to see on our ‘zine? Just let us know!

This concludes my weekly, shameless plug for attention. You may now continue about your regularly scheduled activities.

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Culture Consumption: May 2016

~ Shara ~ 2 Comments

Happy June! May was over in a flash, but that’s because I was working my two SEKRIT PROJECTS. One, you already know about: Calico in Conversation! The other, well, stay tuned…. in the meantime, my brain always needs a break from the day job and SEKRIT PROJECTS, so here’s all the culture I consumed in the month of May!

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A Few of My Favorite Things: Books 2015

~ Shara ~ 4 Comments

I think there’s always a part of me that will miss having a book blog. After putting together December’s Culture Consumption, I started wondering… what WERE my favorite books of 2015? To figure that out, I pulled up my Library Thing account and started sorting by date finished, and then I started looking at the ratings. Anything four stars or higher got written down on the appropriate list: a full five stars are listed as favorites, and four and four-and-a-half stars were honorable mentions.

Why Library Thing instead of Goodreads? Because LT allows for half stars, which means when I’m rating on Goodreads, I might round up or down depending on how I want the rating to look on that site. LT is a more accurate reflection of my thoughts.

I also did not include a few of the fun, children’s type books on the list. I’m a sucker for Jeffrey Brown’s Darth Vader series, and Simon Tofield’s Simon’s Cat books are adorable. So they didn’t get counted.

Before I review my favorites and honorable mentions, I did want to make a few points:

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Wolves Without Teeth: Thoughts on the 2015 Hugo Winners and the Nominees that Might Have Been

~ Shara ~ 2 Comments

So. The 2015 Hugo Awards were announced last night. I forgot all about it, because I was remembering why I never wanted to work in the food industry again while volunteering at a concession stand at a baseball game to raise money for charity. This morning, I woke up to a thunderstorm, a playful cat, a husband playing Bloodborne, and the Hugo Results.

I have a few links I want to share before I talk about the winners (or lack thereof):

1) Tor.com: Announcing the 2015 Hugo Award Winners: Winners, winners! Read all about it!

2) Tobias S. Buckell: What the alternate Hugo Ballot would likely have been: Toby uses the 2015 Hugo Award Statistics, crosses off all puppy nominees, in order to figure out what the fiction categories MIGHT have looked like without slates informing the ballot. He also has some great thoughts about those nominees, as well as the nominees who were on the puppy ballots and withdrew their nominations.

3) 2015 Hugo Award Statistics: I love looking at this every year, but this year is particularly fascinating. The “what-if” nature of the ballot is endlessly fascinating for me. I would’ve been SO MUCH MORE ENGAGED in this year’s awards if the ballot hadn’t been hijacked by the puppies.

4) Wired.com: Who Won Science Fiction’s Hugo Awards, and Why It Matters: A really great piece that talks about the controversy, the awards ceremony, and what happened after. Kudos to George R.R. Martin for his Hugo Loser’s party.

And now, for my thoughts on some of the winners:

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I Don’t Read as Quickly As I Used To

~ Shara ~ 3 Comments

Once upon a time, when I was but a humble book blogger, I could tear through books like a knife through butter. At the height of my blog, it was nothing to post anywhere from 2-4 book reviews per week, nothing to read 100+ books per year. I miss those days, sometimes, when my free time was spent absorbed in fictional worlds, admiring the craft that made those worlds and the people who populated them so vivid and real.

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To Vote Or Not To Vote: That Is The Question

~ Shara ~ 4 Comments

And I don’t have an answer, not yet. I always wait to buy my membership until I see the nominees, and this year, the question is do I really want to spend $40.00 just to step in a pile of dog shit?

However, as I contemplate that decision, I want to talk about voting “No Award” for the Hugos and how to do it. Last year, I talked about it extensively, and I also linked to a Live Journal post that taught me how to do it, and if you want to know how to vote “No Award” properly and make sure your voice count, then I recommend reading it.

That being said, if you’d like a quick and dirty example of how to vote “No Award,” then let me give you one. I’ll use the Best Novel category, and for the purpose of this example, I will use the assumption that you’re absolutely refusing to give any votes to the books that were on the slated ballots that campaigned their way onto the official one. I should note if you’re really determined to keep any and all dog shit off the ballot, then Deirdre Saoirse Moen has a great post explaining how.

Clear as mud? Here’s an example:

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Fiction Friday: “Night’s Slow Poison” by Ann Leckie

~ Shara ~ Leave a comment

This week, I’m done posting Hugo-nominated stories from the 2014 ballot. Instead, I come with a story that I really, really wish was eligible for next year’s Hugo’s, but alas, it is not.

“Night’s Slow Poison” by Ann Leckie is set in the same world as her debut, Nebula-winning and Hugo-nominated novel, Ancillary Justice, but trust me when I say you need NO KNOWLEDGE of that book to read and enjoy this short story, which was originally published in 2012 by Electric Velocipede and reprinted in 2014 on Tor.com. Below, should you be so inclined, is the Tor.com link.

Click here to read NIGHT’S SLOW POISON for free

Illustrated by John Harris
Illustrated by John Harris

“Night’s Slow Poison” is from the same setting as Ancillary Justice, and tells a rich, claustrophobic story of a galactic voyage that forces one guardsmen to confront his uneasy family history through the lens of a passenger with his lost lover’s eyes.

 

Like it? Love it? Hate it? Sound off below!

Culture Consumption: June 2014

~ Shara ~ 13 Comments

It’s that time again! Amazing how fast the time flies, but once more, it’s time for another Culture Consumption. As always, I’ll post a list of what I’ve read/watched over the past month, and in some cases, provide some commentary. If there’s anything you’re interested in or curious about, don’t hesitate to ask me in the comments, and I’ll be happy to talk further!

June was a strange reading month, thanks to the Hugos. Comics were neglected, and I only read one actual novel-length work. Crazy! But I ended up reading a lot of short fiction and finished a television show I’ve been wanting to complete for a long time. So let’s see what June held in store, shall we?

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