Last September, I travelled to Europe with my Dad. I wrote a bit about the holiday at the time (read about my Ayreon Adventure here) but today I want to reminisce about one particular highlight from the trip: Jules Verne's house in Amiens, France. We only spent one day in Amiens and visiting Jules Verne's …
Tag: book review
Hugo Award Novelette Nominees 2024
Novelettes are such an awkward length. Just enough more of a time sink than short stories to make it easy to put them off, but still effectively just a short story without the space to go deep the way a novella can. However even just a couple of thousand words extra allows for so much …
Hugo Award Thoughts… both 2023 and 2024
I did say I would talk about the Hugo Nominations when the nomination statists page was released, and well... here we are. Worldcon23 dropped the data at the last possible second and damn, there is some controversy. Click here for a link to the PDF if you want to follow along. If you aren't interested …
Welcome to 2024
First week of 2024, and now that I'm all settled in it's time to talk about my plans for the year. Mostly reading and gaming plans, since writing plans are pretty much 'keep on doing what I'm doing'. Book Bingo Card First things first, I have a new Book Bingo Card for 2024. I've just …
2023 Wrap Up
Hello everyone. With 2023 coming to an end, now seems like a good time to wrap up my year in reading and writing. This is a bit of a hard thing to do, because I feel that the last three years have been one massive blur. It was surprise to me to starting writing about …
Book Bingo Challenge 2021 Results
I read a lot of great books in 2021. In total I read 71 books, with a total of about 14,634 pages. This year I was marking off books on a randomly generated book bingo card, and I got three bingos. I almost finished the card, but there were a few easy tiles I missed. …
Book Bingo Review #3
Look at my Book Bingo Card; I managed to sneak a bingo in right at the end. This was a diagonal line, that includes the free square, so I can talk about any book I want. I'm going to use that square to talk about a book I hated, although the four from actual challenges …
Terra Ignota Re-Read Part 2: The Will to Battle
Re-reading the Terra Ignota series was a good idea. A really good idea. This is such a richly detailed world, with new ideas on every page and politics that are so damn complicated. Which is good, as it makes this crazy world feel more plausible, and makes a book that consists mostly of people talking …
Continue reading Terra Ignota Re-Read Part 2: The Will to Battle
Book Bingo Review #2
In my last book bingo reviews, I was optimistic that my next bingo would be coming soon. That did not happen. We're halfway through September and I have just gotten my second bingo. I am quite proud of myself. This is going to be an interesting post, because this row contains two books that I …
Hugo Novella Nominees 2021
Novellas are a fun category; they're pretty much novels, but I can get through them quicker. Tor Books's online magazine Tor.com have put out great novellas and in recent years and dominated this category. This is especially noticeable this year, as all six finalists are Tor.com novellas. Tor.com authors are a diverse lot, and Tor.com …
Jayde Holmes 