I’m sure no one actually cares about this, so this post is mainly for myself to keep track of my progress, but here is how I’m doing on my 2020 reading challenges!
Overall, I have read 24 books so far this year. I know this is small potatoes to a lot of big readers (and years ago, it would have been small potatoes to me too), but considering just a couple years ago I wasn’t reading AT ALL, this is great progress for me! And considering that in 2019, I read 29 books in the whole year, I’d say 24 is really really good. I’m on track to read approximately 50 books by the end of the year. We’ll see if that trend continues.
For my “Storm the Castle” 2020 Reading Challenge, I have read 13 of the 21 books in the challenge, so I’m over halfway there! In fact, I’m also ⅔ of the way through! I have slowed down on that front the last month or so because I’ve been reading a lot of books that don’t count towards the challenge. But I’m ok with that. Particularly because some of the books I’ve been reading count toward the “Finishing the Series” 2020 Reading Challenge instead.
For the “Finishing the Series” challenge, I have completely FINISHED the Artemis Fowl series! Eight books down! In addition, I have read books 1-6 of The Dresden Files series. I suspect I will not actually finish THAT series by the end of the year as there are currently 15 books in the series, AND books #16 and #17 are being released in July and October! Still, I am making good headway on that series. In addition, I am currently re-reading Sabriel by Garth Nix, the first in the Old Kingdom series. I read the original 3 books of that series WAY back in high school and absolutely ADORED them, but never got around to reading the 2 sequel novels and the handful of short stories in the series, so I’m working on that for the challenge as well.
Right this minute, I am reading several books. Sabriel (as I said), Dresden Files book #7: Dead Beat, and I am now starting Hyperion by Dan Simmons, which is on my “Storm the Castle” challenge list. I also JUST received the ARC for Garth Nix’s new book The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, which will be released in September. Since I ADORE Garth Nix (see above!), I will probably go ahead and start that one as well.
So that’s my reading progress and plans for the month. How about you folks? What is everyone reading right now? And how are you progressing on any goals you set for yourself for the year? Please feel free to share in the comments!
Book: Unconquerable Sun Author: Kate Elliott Release Date: 7 July 2020 Source: ARC received through employer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
I had meant to have this review up like two weeks ago, but life being life, things got in the way. So, my review for Unconquerable Sun comes out just in time for the official release. This book is available as of today! Read the review, and then go and buy it!
Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott (perhaps best known for her YA series Court of Fives), is a massive space opera played out on an epic intergalactic scale. In this intricately-plotted narrative, ambitious Princess Sun of the Chaonian Republic, heir to the throne of a great galactic empire, must fight to survive the ire of her temperamental mother, the secrets of her foreign consort father, and the political machinations of forces within the empire who wish to remove her as heir to the throne, all while in the midst of a long-standing war with a rival galactic empire.Â
The Chaonian Republic has long been at war with the Phene Empire for control of vast swaths of the galaxy, where FTL intergalactic travel is made possible by an ancient system of “Beacons” built by a long-dead civilization. Now, as the efforts of Princess Sun have given Chaonia a great victory in the war, and the Phene Empire readies for a massive counter-assault, Sun must deal with an attack from within her own ranks. Her mother, Queen-Marshal Eirene, is temperamental, volatile, suspicious, and under constant critique for choosing Sun’s father (a Royal of an enemy government) as one of her consorts, and therefore does not trust her own daughter. On top of that, someone among the Noble families is attempting to either kill or discredit Sun and the retinue of Companions she keeps by her side. Along the way, Sun allies herself with a diverse array of characters – including her secret lover, an unstable prisoner of war, a woman who may or may not be a spy, and the winner of a pop media Idol contest. Each of these allies, and many more besides, have secrets and goals and ambitions of their own. It is anyone’s guess who can be trusted, and who will betray the princess.
Kate Elliott is, of course, a highly respected writer of both adult and YA sci-fi/fantasy, and this novel may be her best yet. The world (or galaxy) building is detailed and immense. Because of this, the first fifty pages or so are dense and a bit difficult to push through. Elliott does not shy away from throwing a vast amount of information, terminology, slang, and names at the reader, and leaves it up to you to keep track of it all and connect the necessary dots. I personally have no problem with this kind of “throw them into the deep end and see if they can swim” kind of writing, but some might have difficulty with it. I promise, however, that the effort is rewarded by a intricate plot full of political intrigue and fast-paced space battles, which pulls much of its inspiration from the stories of Alexander the Great (indeed, one of the taglines for the marketing of the book is that it is a “genderbent Alexander the Great on an interstellar scale”).
In addition, many of the cultural details of the worlds and peoples in this novel are pulled from a variety of cultures such as ancient Greek and Roman, a few different Asian religions, and even a bit of the Romani — all mixed, combined, and riffed-off-of in unexpected ways. Perhaps my favorite aspect, however, is that the characters feature a diverse range of ethnicities, sexualities, and complex beliefs/motives. I think perhaps a good â…” of the characters are queer of some variety or another, and there are black, brown, and “Asian” people all over the place.
This novel is an unapologetic space opera (I saw someone calling it Space Fantasy, which I object to. Space Opera is its own genre and it’s not “fantasy” at all, even if some of the “science” is soft and unexplained). It is a grand adventure, political intrigue, and military scifi, wrapped in a space opera on an immense scale that rivals the works of James S.A. Corey, Kameron Hurley, and Lois Bujold McMaster.
I might be my favorite read of the year so far, and I absolutely cannot wait for the next one!
As I said at the beginning, this book was released today, so it is available everywhere books are sold! You can find it at any of these links (or at your local bookstore, of course – SHOP INDIE!):
I was a junior in high school when the first Artemis Fowl book came out. Technically, I was not the target market – these are considered middle grade books, after all – but I still enjoy a good middle grade novel from time to time, and this book just looked FUN. So I didn’t “grow up” with Artemis Fowl the way some people did (I know some people who read the books starting in elementary school!), but I have loved them since they first came out.
I have read all eight books (but I haven’t read the new spin-off about Artemis’s twin brothers yet). And I just recently finished going through all eight books on audiobook. If you like audiobooks, I would highly recommend checking out the Artemis Fowl books on audio. The narrator, Nathaniel Parker, does an excellent job for the most part (my one complaint is that I really don’t like the way he voices Opal Koboi – he does a pretty offensive stereotyped “Chinese” accent for her and it really bugs the hell out of me. There’s absolutely nothing in the text to justify this decision, and I can only assume he was trying to do something different enough to separate her voice from the other characters, but it is NOT GOOD).
Anyway: I LOVE Artemis Fowl.
I think most people are familiar with at least the basic premise, but just in case, let’s cover the basics: Artemis Fowl the Second is an 11-year-old super-genius criminal mastermind. In the first book, his father (Artemis Fowl Senior, who was a career criminal just starting to go straight at the behest of his wife, Angeline) has been missing for over a year. In order to keep the family estate solvent and to fund both his criminal enterprises and his search for his father, Artemis Fowl decides to do one massive heist: steal gold from the fairies. He has come to learn that fairies are not only REAL, but highly advanced and living in secret in an underground society. So he hatches an elaborate plan to kidnap a fairy and steal their gold.
The hapless fairy he manages to kidnap is Holly Short, the first woman-fairy to join the LEPrecon (the fairy police force “Lower Elements Police” reconnaissance division – get it? LEPrecon = leprechaun? Expect many such puns…). Holly is smart, determined, and more than a little hot-headed. Her commander, Julius Root, is even more so. In the course of trying to rescue Holly, the LEP use time-freezing, release a troll, and recruit the help of a career criminal thief: a dwarf named Mulch Diggums. Meanwhile, Artemis and his faithful, long-suffering bodyguard Butler, discover they are slightly less in control than they first assume, nearly die a few times, and still somehow manage to win and keep the gold they stole.
And that’s just the first book. Each book brings Artemis and his entourage back into the affairs of the fairy peoples. Throughout the series, Artemis and Holly end up best friends pretty much despite themselves, and Artemis becomes an invaluable help and savior for the fairies on several occasions. By the end of it, the completely selfish, amoral Artemis has grown a heart and a conscience, and his character development is slow, complex, and well EARNED by the story.
On top of all that, the books are also exciting, action-packed, and utterly HILARIOUS. I think the funniest book is probably #7: The Atlantis Complex.
For the fun of it, here is the absolutely AMAZING art work for the Chinese edition of the books (which combine into one giant panorama, that I really want an enormous print of!):
by Shayudan on DeviantArt (click on image to go to high res version)
And for people who have already read the books, you should check out this tumblr which has a bunch of hilarious Artemis Fowl memes and other fun fanart: https://iesnoth.tumblr.com/
And if you really want, you can also check out my Artemis Fowl board on Pinterest, which is just a collection of any fanart and memes and silly shit that amuses me: https://pin.it/4QobV76
And now, this brings me to a painful subject. The movie.
When I first heard that Disney was doing an Artemis Fowl movie, I was cautiously optimistic. Almost two years ago they released an initial trailer, and I allowed myself to get more excited than I probably should have. The movie was originally supposed to be released in 2019. And then for unknown reasons, the release was pushed back and the movie was sent back to the drawing board for an extensive number of re-shoots and re-edits. Even the person who made the “Art and Making” of the movie book (which was apparently finished 18 months ago), says that the final product bears little resemblance to the movie HE saw while chronicling the process (that early version apparently was a bit closer to the book material, though it still had made many changes).
When the second newer trailer was released a few months ago, I was horrified. I could tell immediately that they had RUINED it. Ruined the character. Destroyed the story. It was obvious from just the one min trailer that they had removed everything that made Artemis Fowl a fun, interesting, and unique character and turned the story into the same repetitive cliche trite story about a helpless boy who discovers his father has some dangerous secret life, and how must be initiated into that secret to save his father when the father disappears. That story has been told a MILLION TIMES. And on very few occasions these days is it ever told with anything approaching originality or interest.
I had determined not to watch the movie when it came out, not to give my money to a theatre release. Then the quarantine happened and it was announced that the movie would go straight to Disney+ streaming. So, on friday my mother convinced me to just sit down and at least give it a chance.
I was annoyed in the first two minutes. I had to quit after about twenty minutes. I just couldn’t do it. The movie had absolutely NO resemblance to the books. The characters had been turned into practically their exact OPPOSITES. It wasn’t Artemis Fowl. Not even remotely. And what’s more: even if you watched the movie with no knowledge of the books holding you down, it was just a BAD movie, with stale lackluster acting, an awkward stilted script, cheap dumb-downed voice-over narration, and hack editing. It’s just NOT GOOD.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a BUNCH of articles decimating the movie:
If you don’t think that’s enough, just check out the #ArtemisFowl and #ArtemisFowlMovie hashtags on Twitter. Because WOW people are NOT HAPPY. (In other words, it’s not just me!)
I just don’t understand why anyone would bother to PAY ALL THAT MONEY for a pre-existing property, if they were going to then turn around and write yet another painfully-trite, excruciatingly-cliche story about a hapless boy who is initiated into his father’s secret life when the father goes missing. Do you have any idea HOW MANY OF THOSE STORIES have been told now? (And very few of them are told WELL). I am absolutely devastated and infuriated and frustrated (but not remotely surprised) by all of this. I know these books could make AMAZING movies or tv if they were adapted well. But I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen any time soon. Or ever, probably.
In the meantime, in an attempt to make myself feel better, I am now working on an Artemis Fowl playlist on Spotify. Because that’s just what I DO.
Hello all. Long time no see. It’s been nearly two months since I posted anything here, for which I apologize. There were a few reasons for this, some obvious, some not so much.
The last couple months have been difficult on a global scale, for pretty much everyone. On top of the continued stress and anxiety and weirdness of the COVID-19 situation and quarantine, those of us in the U.S. (and to a smaller degree, in other countries) have been dealing with the powerful resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, in response to continued and escalating police violence against the black community. This has obviously been a particularly difficult time for the black community, but it has also been difficult for those of us who consider ourselves allies. (I have been very vocal and active on this matter in other places – Facebook, Twitter, petitions, donation campaigns, etc. but I’m not planning on getting into here for the very simple reason that pretty much no one reads this blog anyway.)
On top of all of that, I have also been dealing with my own particular issues: financial instability, severe depression, and a family death.
I have been considering simply discontinuing this blog. Despite starting it in January, and posting very consistently in February, March, and April , it has seen almost no growth in views or reader interaction. And that’s fine. I knew when I started this that the big “moment” for blogs had mostly died down, and that I didn’t have any particular hook or unique angle to pull in a readership. It was an experiment, to see if I could get back into it the way I did with my old blog from 2011-2014 (Ironically, on my old blog which has not been updated since 2014, I still get an average of 100 views per day! Here, not so much). And I find it is an experiment that has mostly failed. No one seems particularly interested in what I have to say, and while I am content to mainly write for myself, there are other things I could/should be devoting my time to if I’m just going to end up talking to myself on here.
But that is a decision I am still on the fence about. And in the meantime, I have a few more book reviews and such that I am working on that I might as well share here, just in case a small handful of people are actually interested. To that end, some time over the next week or so you should expect to see:
1) not a review, exactly, but more of a rant about how much I love Artemis Fowl – possibly with my opinions on the movie which was released on Disney+ today (I’m still trying to decide if I’m masochistic enough to watch it)
2) A book review of Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott, an ARC I have from work, due for release in July
3) A book review of Queens of Animation by Nathalia Holt
Hello folks! I hope you are all doing well. How is the quarantine treating you? I’m on day 44 of “self-isolation” – well, sort of anyway. I did have to go into work a few days this week and will again next week, but other than that I haven’t gone anywhere else and most things are still shut down (so no bookstores or movie theatres or window-shopping in Midtown…)
Are you all handling things ok? Are you finding things to keep you occupied? Did you have some kind of income to keep you afloat, or did you lose your job because of the pandemic? It’s all very scary right now and we are all under a lot of stress. Some people are using this time to “better themselves” and others are taking care of their families and still others are just fighting to keep it together. Whatever you are doing, it is ALL GOOD. You are doing the best you can and that’s all anyone should expect of themselves or others in a time like this.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. This is something I have to remind myself as well as anyone else. I have had some really rough days, and some days that have been perfectly fine. That’s totally natural but sometimes we cannot help but feel like we’re not doing enough – even though we know logically that that’s totally silly.
I thought I would share a few things that I’ve been keeping busy with, and if you’d like to share what you’ve been up to, that would be great!
I am still participating in Camp Nanowrimo for the month of April, and doing surprisingly well. I mean, I’m not going to be writing 50k words like some people – I gave myself a SMALLER goal, just 20k words this time. But I have managed to keep up a daily writing streak ALL MONTH, which is the best I’ve done in YEARS, and I have written a little over 16k words so far, which is more than I have written (again) in YEARS. I am very happy about that. While I am in no way minimizing or trivializing the difficulties, tragedies, and death toll of this pandemic, I am trying to be grateful for the small things, and one of those things has been the luxury of free time I haven’t had in quite awhile.
I have also been reading a lot still. Not quite as much as I did the first couple weeks, but still. I finished Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex (book #7 of the series) last night (technically at 2:30am this morning). Unfortunately, because I am borrowing those audiobooks from the library, I now have to wait for the final book of the series to become available and the wait is KILLING ME. In the meantime, I have started the audiobook of The Wee Free Men (one of the Discworld books) by Terry Pratchett. This book will satisfy one of the categories in my “Storm the Castle” 2020 Reading Challenge (which much of my reading these days has not done). I am also slowly working through the nonfiction book The Queens of Animation by Nathalia Holt.
Speaking of my reading challenge, I have now completed 9 out of the 21 books on my challenge. When I finish the two books I’m currently reading, that will put me at 11 and I’ll be halfway through! In addition, when I finish the 8th Artemis Fowl book I will have officially finished the first series in the 2020 Finishing the Series Reading Challenge. And then I’ll move on to the next series (perhaps The Dresden Files, though that I might be TOO ambitious…)
I have also bought a computer game for the first time in, oh… 12 or 13 years… I bought the video game Gris when Steam was having a sale last week. I’ve never been a big gamer, but I did play a couple computer games back in the day and I thought it would be fun to pick it up again. I’m only 3 “chapters” into Gris so far, but I absolutely love it. It’s quiet and calming and the art (which was the main selling point for me, I admit) is absolutely GORGEOUS. I highly recommend it.
In addition, I am doing more cross-stitch work. I’m almost done with this robot design I got from the Etsy shop DianaWattersHandmade. She has great designs for reasonable prices, she ships quickly, and she’s really friendly as well!
Anyway, those are some of the things (besides work and house-cleaning) I’ve been doing to keep busy and calm. How about you guys? Found anything fun? Read anything good lately? Please do share! I’d love to hear about it!
Book: The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water Author: Zen Cho Release Date: 23 June 2020 Source: ARC borrowed from employer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
The novella The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho, published by Tor.com publishing, packs a surprisingly emotional punch in its little body. It has been marketed as wuxia-inspired, and it is definitely that (though there are far fewer martial arts fight scenes and flying about than one might expect if you are at all familiar with Chinese wuxia books or films). Instead this slim book is about inner battles and emotional landscapes.
In a vaguely Asian-inspired country under oppressive rule, Guet Imm, a former nun of the respected monastic order called The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, teams up with a group of bandits who are more than they appear. These bandits are not merely criminals, but political outcasts and rebels, trying to earn money for their cause. The bandits begrudgingly concede to their new companion (when Guet Imm gives them little choice), and accept her help in protecting a priceless religious relic.
Over the course of their journey through forests and mountains, the nun becomes a part of their found family, and inspires one bandit to reconsider the faith he had thought dead forever. And just to keep things interesting, they also have to fight for their lives.
This book is a wonderful meditation on what it means to choose your family and your path, deciding for yourself who and what is important no matter what society has to say on the subject. It is also a beautiful examination of the joys, pains, and contradictions of religious faith – what means to have faith, to lose it, and to regain it. As a lapsed Catholic with a very complicated and ambivalent relationship to religion, I really appreciated and resonated with this facet of the story.
It is full of fun martial arts film tropes, and also features a gay man and a trans man – and neither of these identities is in anyway questioned or rebuked by any of the characters in the book, which is refreshing.
I gave this novella a 4 out of 5 because I genuinely enjoyed it and I look forward to what this author does next, but it didn’t totally WOW me. It didn’t knock my socks off. (And honestly, I would have enjoyed a bit more of that great wuxia staple: impossible flying-about martial arts fights.) Still, I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a short fun novella, stories about found families, and/or people who like an Asian aesthetic in their fantasy.
Here is the link to the Goodreads page for this book. And if you would like to pre-order I would recommend either IndieBound or the new online store Bookshop.org (as amazon has been delaying new book releases lately in order to deal with increased shopping for the quarantine situation).
Well, my quarantine has officially come to an end. Not because it is particularly safe now, because it isn’t remotely, but because I must return to work. Needs must. And it is what it is. I take consolation in the fact that I come in contact with a very limited number of people at work, right now, so that’s something at least.
I had hoped/planned to have a few blog posts written ahead of time to post this week despite being at work… but between housework, and doing Camp NaNoWriMo writing, and plain ol’ depression-fueled laziness, that just didn’t happen. So there may not be any blog posts this week. I’ll try to put one or two together in the evenings, but I get pretty worn out after work, so no promises.
Not that I have much a readership at this point anyway, of course. I appreciate those of you who have decided to subscribe, but I guess I’m not appealing to a larger audience. Maybe I’ll work out the right formula, or tone of voice, or subject matter, or tagging system. Or maybe I’ll just remain not-interesting-enough. *shrug*
In the meantime, you all be safe! Stay inside if you can! If you cannot avoid work any longer (or were considered essential from the beginning), I wish you safety and luck. I you are anyone who has been integral to keeping this country from total collapse, be it nurse or doctor, grocery store worker or delivery driver, cleaning staff and tech support, etc etc etc…. thank you for all you do. Good luck to us all!
Today, April 17th, is the 50th Anniversary of the landing of Apollo 13, after over 5 days in space in a mostly-broken space capsule. It landed at 18:07 UTC (6pm), in the South Pacific Ocean, carrying astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise safely home after an intense and harrowing ordeal. It is one of the defining moments of the entire space program.
So I thought it was a fitting day to talk about my obsession with space and NASA and my dashed hopes of being an astronaut.
Let me state the obvious: I love space. I’m not sure if I love space because I read so much scifi, or if I read so much scifi because I love space – it’s kind of a chicken or the egg deal. But I love it. I read books, watch films and documentaries, buy NASA t-shirts and dream about it a lot. I had a plan back in high school: I was going to get a degree in physics, join the Navy – because they have a PHENOMENAL science program – and eventually work my way into NASA.
When I went to college I tried to double-major in Physics and English (because English and books have always been my first love and I really didn’t want to have to choose between the two). But by my third year of college, I was taking 18-20 credit hours per semester, working 30-35hrs per week at a part time job, I was editor of the university literary arts journal, and I was on three student organizations. Something had to give and my advisor told me I really just needed to choose one major, at least for now. I was attending Rockhurst University, a small Jesuit college in Kansas City, that I absolutely adored. They had a great liberal arts program, but their science department wasn’t the greatest (at least at the time), and I had been really inspired by a couple of my recent Literature professors, so I chose English. And eventually decided I might actually want to go to grad school for English and become a Lit professor myself someday.
I graduated with a BA in English and a minor in (of all things) Theology, and went straight into grad school for a MA in English and American Literature.
There are a lot of things I loved about my Master’s program, and things I STILL and will ALWAYS love about the Literature field. I took some absolutely amazing courses in grad school, I met some brilliant professors and grad student colleagues that I am now lucky enough to call friends. I wrote some interesting papers and went to some very cool conferences. But I quit. After six years stalled out in my PhD program, despite the fact that I was ABD (“all but dissertation”: ie, I had completed all coursework, comprehensive exams, and preliminary writing, and all I needed to do was write my dissertation), I quit.
And now I keep looking back on my choices with regret, wondering if I made the wrong decision, if I should have done the Physics degree instead.
I visit NASA’s Space Center Houston and walk through exhibits and watch documentaries and cry. Really truly cry for the lost opportunities. My mother likes to tell me it’s not too late. I could go back to school and get that physics degree and try. But it IS too late and no false hope is going to change that. I try to teach myself to accept it, to move on. I have plenty of other dreams: I still want to be a novelist, I still want to open a bookstore, I want to write a musical, I want all sorts of things. But this loss still breaks my heart, and I’m not sure I will ever be over it.
So instead, I absorb everything I can. I am working on a collection of every fictional film and documentary about space I can find (or, ok, at least the GOOD ones). And I have read so many nonfiction books on the subject – biographies, histories, science books – it’s kind of ridiculous. And on that note, allow me to offer some suggestions on books and movies/documentaries that I HIGHLY recommend for the space/NASA lover!
Of course, the most obvious movie to name is Apollo 13, which is particularly appropriate today of all days. And it is one of my favorite movies of all time. Obviously, as with anything, a few liberties are taken with historical accuracy in order to ramp up the drama and streamline the number of characters involved, but for the most part, it’s relatively accurate. The directing and cinematography and acting are all just GOD-TIER in this movie too, so there’s that. Yes, I will be watching this later today.
There is also, of course, The Right Stuff, both the book by Tom Wolfe, and the 1983 movie. They are both CLASSICS.
For fictionalized movies, I also highly recommend The Martian (another one of my favorites) which really captures the true SPIRIT of space exploration: the wonder and awe and excitement and danger and heart of it all. It’s also genuinely funny, and also beautifully shot. And if you haven’t read the novel, you should totally get on that too.
Similarly, I would recommend Interstellar. This movie gets so much hate. It seems to have become a fad, a popular past-time to hate on this movie, and I just DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY. Really, I don’t. When I saw this movie in theatres – in IMAX, because OF COURSE – I was blown away! I was entranced. I was emotionally invested and enormously distraught. Is the thematic conclusion a little heavy-handed? Yes. Could it have done without the constant repetition of the Dylan Thomas poem? Probably. But it is still an absolutely gorgeous movie – it is visually stunning and emotionally resonant and philosophically interesting and it really gets at the sense of scale and awe of space travel that few other movies ever have (save maybe 2001: A Space Odyssey – which I also highly recommend).Â
For documentaries, about NASA I would start with the newest one that just came out last year, called Apollo 11. It is very high quality, with a lot of newly released footage. It’s available on both Amazon Prime and Hulu. There’s also the CLASSIC documentary series: From the Earth to the Moon, which remains one of the best documentaries ever produced on the subject.
In addition, there is the biographical documentary called The Last Man on the Moon, which is about Gene Cernan, who was literally the last astronaut to walk on the moon, during the Apollo 17 mission. It is an absolutely fascinating look at Gene Cernan’s life, both his personal life and his experiences with the Apollo missions. I had the great privilege of attending one of the premiere showings of this documentary in 2016, with Gene Cernan and several other current astronauts in attendance for a Q&A at the end. It was one of the highlights of my life, quite frankly, and I was very sad when Gene Cernan died in 2017.
For books written on the subject, there are so many it is practically an embarrassment of riches. But if I HAD to choose just a few, they would be:
Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America’s Apollo Moon Landings written by Alan Shephard and Deke Slayton (so you know this is the REAL FUCKING DEAL)
Failure Is Not an Option, the memoir written by NASA Flight Controller Gene Kranz, (who was made immortal by Ed Harris’s portrayal of him in the Apollo 13 movie). This is one of my favorite biographies of all time (and I read A LOT of biographies), and I would sell a limb or two to meet Gene Kranz and get his autograph.
Beyond: Our Future in Space by Chris Impey, a nonfiction science book that goes beyond our present and projects into the future of what space exploration could be.
Again, this is just a very small sample of the content that exists about NASA in particular and space in general. I have watched and read quite a lot more than that, but these are some of my favorites. If you’re a space/NASA nut like me, please come chat! I would love to talk about anything space related!
Top 10 (or 20 or 5) lists…. Some people are really obsessed with and good at them. My brother is constantly asking me “list your top 5 favorite” this or that. Sometimes he wants me to make a distinction between the things I love most, versus the things I think are objectively the “best” which he posits are not always the same. I see his point here, but at some level or another, doesn’t labeling something your “favorite” mean that you think it IS objectively the “best” – even if no one else agrees with you?
I am a “lists” person. I LOVE making lists. Lists of my favorite things. Things that are the most important to me. But I am NOT AT ALL GOOD at putting those lists in any kind of ranking order. Deciding that this thing definitely outranks that one, etc. And, when someone asks me to name one single favorite thing I can NEVER pick just one. I love too many things too wholly and completely to pick just one. It would be like choosing a favorite limb and cutting off all the others. Just NOT possible!
I recently saw on Twitter a few people asking such questions just for the fun of it. Pick just one favorite book, or favorite movie, or favorite fight scene, etc. And multiple answers were considering “cheating, or too easy, or boring.” I sat for awhile and tried to narrow it down, but I just couldn’t. And then last night, when I couldn’t sleep, my best friend and I brainstormed our favorite books. We both agreed we could not narrow it down to just one, but we both managed to narrow it down to our top three. And then went on to do a full top 20 list.
It was not easy. And I kept overthinking it. The first three titles that came to mind, are the same three titles that ALWAYS come to mind first. But I thought, “surely it’s not that simple?” So I kept thinking and listing and eliminating. Until I told myself: “be honest. What books do you always think of first? When you consider the idea of getting a book quote tattoo, what comes to mind first? It really probably is THAT simple.”
And so, when I was honest with myself, it was.
So my TOP THREE FAVORITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME ARE:
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Dune by Frank Herbert
Friends who have known me a long time would not be surprised. In fact, my best friend guessed two out of the three with little effort. I think I may, sometime in the near future, write a book review (or maybe more of a tribute – they’re all such CLASSICS they hardly need “reviews”) for each.
And for the curious, and just because I put an embarrassing amount of thought into this, here is my full Top 20 list. A few notes on this list: The top three are clearly THE TOP THREE, but after that they are not in any particular order. There is no hierarchy here. Also, I fully admit I cheated a little because I put all of The Lord of the Rings as a single book, AND I put “Pride and Prejudice (or Persuasion?)” because I have been waffling between those two as my favorite Jane Austen book for YEARS now. And when I say Dragonbone Chair, let’s be real, I really just mean the ENTIRE Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy. Just as when I say Lord Foul’s Bane I really just mean the ENTIRE Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever series. And yes, I actually ended up with 21, because I simply could not eliminate one more. And my best friend very magnanimously said “I’ll allow it…”
So, without further ado, my Top 20 (+1) Favorite Books List:
Neverending Story – Michael Ende
Watership Down – Richard Adams
Dune – Frank Herbert
Dragon Prince – Melanie Rawn
Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
Pride and Prejudice (or Persuasion?) – Jane Austen
Sunshine – Robin McKinley
Mairelon the Magician – Patricia C. Wrede
Neuromancer – William Gibson
We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
Journal of Albion Moonlight – Kenneth Patchen
All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula K. LeGuin
Redwall – Brian Jacques
The Dragonbone Chair – Tad Williams
Taran Wanderer – Lloyd Alexander
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
Lord of Light – Roger Zelazny
Lord Foul’s Bane – Stephen R. Donaldson
I did notice that MOST of the books on this list are books I read before the age of like… fifteen, I think. It’s amazing how much those early books really stick with you and form who you are a person. There are a few exceptions: I read We in my senior of high school, and both Neuromancer and Journal of Albion Moonlight during my second year of college, and I can’t actually remember when I first read The Things They Carried… but other than that, yeah. All before the age of fifteen.
Another side note: none of the books I have read VERY recently are on this list (pretty much for the reasons mentioned above) BUT I suspect Paul Krueger’s Steel Crow Saga could very easily slide into that list over time, because holy shit I loved that book a LOT.
I had so much fun doing the list – it was like torture but FUN torture – that I have decided I want to do more of these lists. I’m already working on a favorite movies list, which has actually turned out to be even more difficult than the books so far. I have had to split live action movies and animated movies into two separate lists or I was going to end up with like…. a top 50 and no way to narrow it down more. I also think I want to do a favorite nonfiction books list (since the above list is fiction). After that we’ll see what else I can come up with.
If anyone has any recommendations (or requests) for other top 20 lists, hit me up! Also, please share some of your favorites in the comments! Can you name a single favorite book (can anyone actually DO THAT?), or maybe a top 3 or top 5? I’d love to hear from you!
Over the last few years, especially as apps like Spotify have become more common, making playlists for all sorts of things has become more and more popular. Fans make playlists based on their favorite books, fanfics, ships, etc. Some authors have taken to releasing an official book playlist for each of their new release publications. And so on and so on.
As my best friends are aware, I have been making playlists for DECADES. Since way back-when, when they were still called MIXTAPES. I remember with great fondness, the labor of love that was: listening to the radio waiting for bated breath for your favorite songs to play, ready to press record the second those first few notes hit, and doing this over and over again until the cassette tape was full. And then, years later, the joy of burnable cds and the first version of itunes, allowing you to make endless combinations of music to suite every mood.
I make playlists for everything: specific themes, stories I am writing, stories I am reading, characters I love, for road-trips and for test-taking, etc. I mostly keep mine on “private,” though I have started curating a few of the official playlists for the book subscription box Fox & Wit, for whom I work.
The playlists I make for Fox & Wit are usually around 10-14 songs long, however, I usually start with MANY more songs than that and then cut down to the best songs that most fit the feel/tone/themes of the book.
But I thought it might be fun to share just a few of the playlists I’ve done for myself as well. So here we go:
First, this started as the official book playlist for Just Watch Me by Jeff Lindsay, curated for Fox & Wit, but I discovered I didn’t actually like the book that much, so this rapidly became more generally what I call “The Greatest Heist Playlist Ever.”
Next we have a playlist called “You Go Too Fast For Me” which is, of course, a playlist I made for Good Omens, and one of my favorite ships: Crowley and Aziraphale.
Then we have one of my more idiosyncratic playlists. I have an obsession for songs about trains. I have been adding to this playlist slowly for YEARS. I don’t have every single song ever written that mentions trains – there are dozens, possibly hundreds, of blues songs ALONE that mention trains – I mainly just keep the ones I like best. I call it “Runaway Train” (because of course I did).
I also have this playlist, “Icarus and Daedalus,” the title of which is probably self-explanatory. I am likewise obsessed with songs (and poems and art) about the myth of Icarus and Daedelus. Like the train playlist, I have been adding to this one slowly for years as well. I’m still tinkering with it a lot lately.
Then I have this playlist called “Songs to Conquer By” which I made specifically to help power me through studying for my PhD Comprehensive Exams – I made it through mostly unscathed.
On top of all that, I have playlists I make for the stories I am writing personally. Currently, I am working on a fanfiction for Camp Nanowrimo, so I made a playlist for that one: It’s called “Holes In Your Coffin” (which is the name of the fic) and it is for The Dresden Files (more the short-lived tv show than the book series) and for my Harry/Bob ship.
In addition, I have a playlist for the only novel I have written a FULL draft of, called “Midnight’s Knife.”
So there are just a few of my playlists, all available on Spotify. I have others on Spotify that I will probably keep to myself. And I have even more in older formats, like on burned CDs.
If you like to make playlists and feel like sharing, I would love to see/hear them! I am also always looking for new music. I am a VORACIOUS music omnivore, so please send me any recommendations you have!
Amanda Haimoto Rudd 