Active Statistics: Stories, Games, Problems, and Hands-on Demonstrations [it’s out now!]

Hugo[red] Awards 2023

Here are the 2023 awards [connected to my read & to-read lists]. As the votes were made by participants to the 2023 Chengdu Worldcon, Chengdu, China, censorship later came to light, regarding authors critical of the Chinese government, like Kuang, Zhao, and Gaiman, who did not make it to the shortlist…

Best Novel

• Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Books) [to read]
  
• The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi (Tor Books) [to read]
• Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree (Tor Books)
• Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom) [not read yet, as the amazonly supported book sits at a friend’s place in the US!]
• The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books)

Best Novella

• Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom) [to read]
  
• Ogres, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris) [to read]
• What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Nightfire) [to read]

Best Series

• Children of Time Series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Pan Macmillan/Orbit) [1/3 read]
  
• The Locked Tomb, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com) [2/3 read]
• Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch (Orion) [read]
• The Scholomance, by Naomi Novik (Del Rey) [2/3 read]

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

• Everything Everywhere All at Once, screenplay by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Sheinert (IAC Films / Gozie AGBO) [watched]
  

oops there it goes again

the T-shirts I love [book/closet review]

When I first heard of Haruki Murakami’s book on tee-shirts, I found the concept sufficiently intriguing to start looking for the book and I eventually found on Amazon a cheap used sale that got delivered to a friend in the US (who was most perplexed by my choice!). Having gone through the book and its 110 photos of tee-shirts, I am feeling like I had a light late-evening conversation with the author and a window into the reasons why he keeps and seeks so many tees. This is a translation from Japanese, so I cannot say how colloquial Murakami was in the original, but this is most enjoyable (in a very light sense!). Having worn tee-shirts for all of my adult life (and none during my childhood), albeit not with any comparable collection, by far!, I can relate with some categories like

1. race tees (which have now almost completely vanished, being replaced with synthetic running tops), of which my favourite is the 1988 Skunk Cabbage Classic tee celebrating the 5k race organised every year by the Finger Lakes Runners Club
2. beer tees, like my favourites advertising Yellowstone’s Moose Drool brown ale [and supposedly dyed in the beer?!] and Salt Lake City Full Suspension [with the fantastically ironic motto Beers you can believe in!]
3. bars/pubs tees, like the one I bought at the Clachaig Inn, Glencoe
4. institution tees, with my favourite being the iconic U of T Austin ochre shirt with a longhorn skull
5. and, to diverge from Murakami’s surfing section, mountaineering places/brand tees, of which the homemade þe Norse Farce is the obvious selection!

And neither shared tee spotted within the published 110 selected ones, nor any one I would desperately seek.

Hugo 2021 nominations

I received an email from Tor about their books shortlisted for the Hugo Awards this year, which made me check the nominated novels (as there was little chance I had read novellas, novelettes, or short stories in the other lists, except those by P. Djèlí Clark who did win the Nebula last week!):

• The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit) [also Nebula nominee]
• Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse (Gallery / Saga Press / Solaris)
• Harrow The Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com) [also Nebula nominee]
• Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tor.com) [now Nebula winner!]
• Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury) [also Nebula nominee]
• The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books / Solaris)

Of which I have only read the [great] Network Effect from the Murderbot series, but with Muir’s, Clarke’s and Kowal’s opera on my reading list.