You’ve got a great series ahead of you there!
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Yeah. “Popularity contest.”
When I’m voting I have a nebulous idea of what a “Hugo grade” book is - it needs to be pretty darn good, of course, but it also ought to have something to say beyond “spaceship go boom” or “yay found family”, even if those are enjoyable and/or worthwhile things to say.
I’m gradually working my way through Kingfisher’s back catalogue and having a very good time indeed.
Yay! (And yes, she is still working on #5, but life happened.)
Oh yes. Memory was pretty darn good, but this…
[entirely non-murdery grin]
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Yeh, regarding the discussion elsewhere about jumping into a series, The Locked Tomb is definitely something you have to read in order. Reading anything other than GtN would just result in you being (even more) baffled.
I loved it, but it definitely feels a bit like nominating someone for a Michelin star because they made you a lovely cup of tea.
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This could almost go into the “What do you collect?” thread, but I have a shameful reading secret: I like the Hard Case Crime pulp crime books.
I mean, Stephen King just wrote a full new crime/boy-sees-ghosts book for them, and I bought that, so apparently I’m back buying these things.
(Yes, all the covers look like that. This is one of the more tasteful ones, hence the book shame).
But my favourite of the series is definitely “Fifty to One”, which is such a meta object it’s hilarious.
So the two people on the cover are a pulp book publisher and his assistant, and the books they’re looking down at are the real first 49 covers of the hardcase crime books, and each chapter name is the title of their books - in print order - and for fun, the owner of Hard Case Crime made up a story to fit all that for the 50th book.
Anyway, it’s stupid, and pulpy, but after reading a lot of them they’re frequently filled with determined, modern heroines and some surprisingly great writing (Donald Westlake, Joyce Carol Oates, there’s even one by Ray Bradbury). And usually some guns and heading for the border with a bag of money and the mob on your tail, which is the kind of escapism I’ll take anytime.
Looks like Stephen King suckered me back in… just when I thought I was out, etc, drinks heavily while wearing a hat indoors etc etc.
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So I liked Legends and Lattes a lot, it is just such a cozy read 
But I wouldn’t nominate it for any other award than the “Cozy Hugo”.
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I have a copy of their version of Somebody Owes Me Money, which is great fun.
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Well there’s a natural pose.
I just attempted to make my body contort like that, but it can’t be done. I think it’s only her deep meditative state which is protecting her from the pain.
(I also couldn’t find his right arm for a while, and now I’m trying to decide whether it’s actually embedded in his side, Videodrome style.)
Artistic hilarity aside, that 50th volume sounds brilliant.
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I’m choosing to believe it’s deliberate parody by the artist because… honestly, some of these covers.
Which is weird, because (for example) the other book that the Stephen King one prompted me to buy at the same time is “Call me a Cab!” by the legendary Donald Westlake in 1977. It never got published, so this is the first time in print, and it’s not a crime book - it’s a woman going across America in a cab to decide if she wants to marry her boyfriend or not. The suspense is that she’s against the clock, no crime.
(Even though Donald Westlake - who also wrote the “Parker” novels as Richard Stark, which were the inspiration for Lee Marvin’s “Point Blank” and the movies “Payback” and “Parker” - is world-famous for gritty crime books).
And in this one, when they sit down to dinner (in 1977) and the waiter repeatedly asks the male cabbie about choosing the wine and paying the bill even though it was the young woman who ordered it all, the cabbie repeatedly refers him back to the woman to answer, and apologises to her that she has to put up with the waiter’s behaviour etc. In 1977.
So these are not the kind of books that would automatically want “impossible pinup pose” on them (or not all, anyway) and I take them as mostly parodies… but yeah, that’s definitely where some of the book-shame comes in.
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My father was a radiologist, which in the 1970s meant lots of “X-ray paper” - the very opaque yellow paper that came wrapped round X-ray film to help prevent accidental exposure. Much of this ended up as improvised book covers on lurid SF paperbacks while he was commuting.
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Handy for stopping Superman from reading your books.
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when ebooks first came out, one of the romance novel publishers reported a substantial drop in physical sales, but a much bigger increase in electronic sales. Apparently, to people who didn’t want you to know what they read on the train.
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It’s the Marvel school of art. DC is probably the same.
As for his right arm, it looks like it is actually supporting the woman as she leans over.
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I used to call the genre “hand on the cover” books.
i don’t miss the days of paperbacks
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I finished the first book of Martha Well’s Murderbot Diaries and was surprised how short it was. But I liked it.
Now reading the second one.
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The first four came out as separate novellas.
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Well I am on book 4 now. It is a fun read.
So I liked Legends and Lattes a lot, it is just such a cozy read
I just saw Travis Baldree’s AMA on Reddit and I didn’t realize that he self-published Legends and Lattes before it got picked up by Tor. He has an interesting write-up about the whole process though I wonder how well-known he was before through his other work as narrator and game dev and how that may helped him. I only heard of him after the book came out, but I knew of his other work (video games, the book series Cradle he narrates), just not that he was involved.
Reminds me of the booktuber Philip Chase who wrote his own trilogy and self published it. I haven’t read it yet but it is very helpful to have a good platform to gather interest, like a YT channel with 22k subs and contacts to different authors who are willing to read your book. But that’s something not a lot of people can just imitate.
So it seems very difficult to me to “copy” (wrong word, you can’t do that anyways) the formula / success of Baldree because so many things have to come together and even then you need the reach to get people interested. But he said himself that lightning struck. I am very glad for him and I would have missed that book a lot
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I just picked up Legends and Lattes and found out he’s a local author. With all the praise I’ve been hearing here, how could I not pick it up?
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I finished „The Spare Man“ by Mary Robinette Kowal in 2 days. It is only 300 pages so not too much. Still loving this analog feature of my new ereader that is actually working consistently. It really motivates me to read more
In any case. The story is kind of Orient Express in space with delicious cocktail recipes as chapter titles. I definitely have to try some of those.
What I do not like overly much and I keep forgetting between reading her books that her style is somewhat stilted and constructed—at least at the start of each book or series. This seemingly goes away about 100 pages in.
Overall the mystery was keeping me reading half the night, the setting was fun and the characters interesting, so will recommend giving this a try.
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I just finished A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine.
Wow. Just… wow.
A tiny bit Deus Ex Machina, which is always a pet-peeve of mine, but gosh, what a book. Not a wasted passage, and three major storylines tied together perfectly.
Just amazing.
I’m worried about the next book I read having to measure up to that! I have a copy of This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, which I am cautiously optimistic about. I usually hate time travel stories, but I’m hopeful about this one.
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Funny story, I’m the reason she met her husband. I saw Cat Valente talk about Amal’s “The Honey Month” on Livejournal, I bought it and raved about it, my friend Stu saw my review and told his friend about this new Canadian author, his friend ended up marrying her. I have actually never met her
(The Honey Month is excellent and I’ve heard great things about Time War)
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