Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
I read…a lot. Here’s where I ramble about books and printed media.
8/2024
The fifth of this year’s Philip K. Dick Award nominees. No review, because I’m the award ceremony coordinator. I’m not remotely involved with selecting nominees or winners, just making sure the ceremony goes as it should, but it’s best to keep my reviews to myself.
7/2024
The fourth of this year’s Philip K. Dick Award nominees. No review, because I’m the award ceremony coordinator. I’m not remotely involved with selecting nominees or winners, just making sure the ceremony goes as it should, but it’s best to keep my reviews to myself.
Just a little clarification as to why I’m no longer posting my usual star ratings or mini-reviews for the Philip K. Dick Award nominated books I read.
While I’ve been attending the award ceremony at Norwescon for quite a while now, last year I took on the responsibility of being the award ceremony coordinator for the convention. This position gives me no insight or influence over the nominees, the judging, or the selection of the eventual winner. I just make sure the ceremony comes together.
However, as part of organizing the ceremony, I do have contact with the authors and publisher representatives. Once the nominees have been announced, I contact the publishers to get permission to make poster-size reprints of the book covers to display at the ceremony, and I invite the authors to attend the ceremony at Norwescon (and, if interested, to participate in paneling for the convention as well). For those authors who can attend, I’m one of the primary points of contact before and at the con; for those who can’t, I assist with finding a stand-in reader if they don’t have someone they know already planning on attending.
So, then, a theoretical possibility: One of the nominated works is one I just don’t get into and end up giving a poor review. At some point in the next few years, the same author is nominated for a new work. Cue awkwardness! I’d like to avoid that.
I’ve also noted a few times in the past that I have a history of never managing to pick the winner as my favorite. So if I say which was my favorite, even though that actually has nothing to do with the final choice, then I’m (historically, statistically) predicting that that book won’t win.
It just seems prudent to keep my thoughts to myself for these books.
6/2024
The third of this year’s Philip K. Dick nominees. No review, because I’m the award ceremony coordinator. I’m not remotely involved with selecting nominees or winners, just making sure the ceremony goes as it should, but it’s best to keep my reviews to myself.
5/2024
The second of this year’s Philip K. Dick Award nominees. No review, because I’m the award ceremony coordinator. I’m not remotely involved with selecting nominees or winners, just making sure the ceremony goes as it should, but it’s best to keep my reviews to myself.
4/2024
The first of this year’s Philip K. Dick Award nominees. No review, because I’m the award ceremony coordinator. I’m not remotely involved with selecting nominees or winners, just making sure the ceremony goes as it should, but it’s best to keep my reviews to myself.
3/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Good Pike-era (shortly post-“The Cage”) adventure that has Spock examining his approach to dealing with his mixed heritage while attempting to assist a teenager who as a child had been captured and then raised by Klingons. With a side-order B plot of flu-like virus on the Enterprise, of course. Good insight into Spock that meshes imperfectly, but surprisingly well with the current Strange New Worlds take on his journey.
Day 252: It’s Philip K. Dick Award nominee announcement day! I have five of the books in hand; the sixth was back ordered and should be here next week sometime. Plenty of time to get them all read before the award ceremony on March 29. Looking forward to another good batch of books!
2/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Favorites this month were Chi Hui’s “Stars Don’t Dream” and Marie Vibbert’s “Rail Meat”.
1/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
For a book involving drug addicts suffering paranoia and breakdowns and generally being kind of horrid to each other, it was actually quite a bit funnier than I expected it to be. (I’d never seen the film, so had no preconceived notions of what to expect.) It definitely has Dick’s touch (not least in how the women are treated, which tends not to be one of Dick’s strengths), but there were many of the rambling, somewhat stream-of-consciousness ridiculous conversations among the drug-addled roomies that were perhaps a little too relatable from my less-than-responsible 20s.
