Books and That, #5 (January 2023)

  

Things I've Read Recently

• Uncanny Magazine, 49 50
• Apex Magazine, 133 135
  
• BBC History Magazine, November & December 2022 - some articles only

Books - any format

• Legends and Lattes - bookgroup book for Jan 2023
• North and South / Elizabeth Gaskell (Clare Wille, narrator)
• MUST FINISH!
• I admit to not listening to this in depth, but as a southerner living in the industrial North West (Gaskell herself lived in Manchester at one point) I have empathy with Margaret Hale and her mother on ending up in a part of the country quite unlike that which they were used to. I'm finding audiobooks are great for listening to when sewing and crafting as they reduce my need for self-distraction when both my brain and hands are occupied.
• Regent's Park: From Tudor Hunting Ground to the Present / Paul A. Rabbitts
• Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe / John H. Arnold
• Witches and Warriors: 5 Fantasy Novels
• A Kindle freebie multi-book selection which I'd read about 3 stories before getting very irritated by a poorly edited one and putting the thing down. One of the issues of ebooks, for me, is that they are very much out of sight, out of mind once you stop actively reading them...
• The Human Experience: Contemporary American and Soviet Fiction and Poetry / edited by Georgii Andzhaparidze
• The Resurrectionist of Caligo / Wendy Trimboli
• Got this as an ARC far too long ago, and got stuck at a certain point despite loving the world.
• No Longer a Gentleman (The Lost Lords #4) / Mary Jo Putney
• Was reading this series as a binge while in a low mood insomnia bout, and unintentionally stopped when I started feeling better.
• The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1) / N.K. Jemisin
• Into the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City (British Library Tales of the Weird Book 16) / edited by Elizabeth Dearnley
• Cold Comfort Farm / Stella Gibbons
• The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways / Wilbert Awdry
• Found on IA during lockdown and again, lost track of when put down.
• The Machine Breaker Convicts from the Proteus and the Eliza / Bruce W. Brown
• The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency, #1) / John Scalzi
• Old Peter's Russian Tales / Arthur Ransome
• The Silk Roads: The Extraordinary History that created your World – Children's Edition / Peter Frankopan
• The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut Universe #1) / Mary Robinette Kowal
• The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1) / R.F. Kuang
• Infinity Wars / edited by Jonathan Strahan

SCC on loan books

• Regent's Park : from Tudor hunting ground to the present / Rabbitts, Paul A.,
• Elsewhens / Rawn, Melanie,
• The way of all flesh / Parry, Ambrose,
• The hundred thousand kingdoms / Jemisin, N. K.,
• Thorn / Khanani, Intisar,
• The hunt / Neill, Chloe,
• Children of blood and bone / Adeyemi, Tomi,
• Blood of elves / Sapkowski, Andrzej,
• Redemption's blade : after the war / Tchaikovsky, Adrian, 1972-
• Cursor's fury / Butcher, Jim, 1971-
• Shadow and bone / Bardugo, Leigh,
• In ashes lie / Brennan, Marie,
• The ten thousand doors of January / Harrow, Alix E.,

Bonuses for reading time: A week away at the beginning of January, and a vague possibility of a trip to Leeds in the near future.

2023 Reading Plan

Just to see how much my plan changes over the next 12 months, here are my short and long lists for 2023, as of 1 January 2023. I'm writing this in advance, so I may need to go back in here and edit off any books that I've read over Christmas as I've added in my remaining 2022 shortlist here.

I am also vaguely working on a general "book challenge" for the last few years looking at reading "genre books" from around the world. About 10 years ago, I saw a challenge from someone who read a book from every nation, and thought that that would be a good way to read outside my personal perspective, however a lot of the books bored me - not because they were bad books, but because they weren't my style. So I wondered whether it would be even possible to do this myself BUT focussing on books from the genres I prefer - mostly speculative fiction (SF, Fantasy, PNR) and Historical romance. It's taking a while to discover and then find copies of books that fit, but I haven't set a deadline for completing this. Nevertheless, hopefully some items from that will be able to come into my reading this year. 

To define the two types of lists for 2023:

Shortlist - books I definitely plan to read this year. These fall into the following categories:

1. I just really want to read this - e.g. next in series, excitement, etc.
2. I've started so I'll finish - books that are partly complete. I'm making a special effort in 2023 to clear up my backlog of partially read books.
3. Already borrowed - books that I currently have out on loan. I want to only have new (to me) books on loan from the library after January, if at all possible.

Not on this list, but which will be later - Awards (Hugo 2023 probably) and Bookgoup. Because I can't predict these ahead of time, I will obviously have to wait to add them until they are decided. So the name of 2023 for me is "Backlog and Fun" - books stop being fun if you have to read them, so I will deal with those I have to as a priority and then the rest should be mostly fun!

Longlist - these are books which I want to read, but which don't have deadlines on them in the same way as those on the Shortlist.

1. Reviews owed. I have a backlog here too, which needs dealing with.
2. Awards backlog - I have some outstanding books from the 2020 and 2021 Hugos that I never got around to. I want to tidy this off too.
3. Books I own already - mostly gifts
4. Things I'd like to read, but don't own
5. Next books in series - some of these are being bumped up to Shortlist if I've been wanting to read for a while but haven't got around to continuing the series.

NB - Neither list is in a specific order, beyond the order in which I added them to the list.

Shortlist

Title	Author	Reason
A Peace Divided (Peacekeeper, #2)	Tanya Huff	Library borrowed
A Red-Rose Chain (October Daye, #9)	Seanan McGuire
Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe	John H. Anold
Blood of Elves (The Witcher, #1)	Andrzej Sapkowski
False Value (Rivers of London #8)	Ben Aaronovitch
Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha, #1)	Tomi Adeyemi
Cold Comfort Farm	Stella Gibbons
Cursor's Fury (The Codex Alera, #3)	Jim Butcher
Elsewhens (Glass Thorns, #2)	Melanie Rawn
Fantasy from Asia and the Asian Diaspora	Zen Cho
From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review (The Memoirs of Lady Trent #3.5)	Marie Brennan
In Ashes Lie (Onyx Court, #2)	Marie Brennan
Infinity Wars	Jonathan Strahan
Lost Gods	Micah Yongo
Loyalty in Death (In Death, #9)	J.D. Robb
Lud-in-the-Mist	Hope Mirrlees
Mindtouch (The Dreamhealers, #1)	M.C.A. Hogarth
No Longer a Gentleman (The Lost Lords #4)	Mary Jo Putney
Old Peter's Russian Tales	Arthur Ransome
Redemption's Blade (After the War, #1)	Adrian Tchaikovsky
Regent's Park: From Tudor Hunting Ground to the Present	Paul A. Rabbitts
She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor #1)	Shelley Parker-Chan
Stars Above: A Lunar Chronicles Collection	Marissa Meyer
Strange Brew	P.N. Elrod
The All Souls Complete Trilogy	Deborah Harkness
The Book Eaters	Sunyi Dean
The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut Universe #1)	Mary Robinette Kowal
The Dark Days Club (Lady Helen, #1)	Alison Goodman
The Fifth Season	N.K. Jemisin
The Gatekeeper's Staff: An Old Gods Story (TJ Young & The Orishas #1)	Antoine Bandele
The Girl in The Tower (Winternight Trilogy, #2)	Katherine Arden
The House in the Cerulean Sea	T.J. Klune
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms	N.K. Jemisin
The Human Experience: Andzhaparidze, Contemporary American and Soviet Fiction and Poetry	Georgii Andzhaparidze
The Hunt	Chloe Neill
The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways	Wilbert Awdry
The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy, #2)	S.A. Chakraborty
The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science	Seb Falk
The Machine Breaker Convicts from the Proteus and the Eliza	Bruce W. Brown
The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)	R.F. Kuang
The Resurrectionist of Caligo	Wendy Trimboli
The Silk Roads: The Extraordinary History that created your World – Children's Edition	Peter Frankopan
The Ten Thousand Doors of January	Alix E. Harrow
The Thousand Names (The Shadow Campaigns, #1)	Django Wexler
The True Queen (Sorcerer Royal #2)	Zen Cho
The Way of All Flesh (Raven, Fisher, and Simpson, #1)	Ambrose Parry
Thorn	Intisar Khanani
Voyage of the Basilisk (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #3)	Marie Brennan
Witches and Warriors collection (Kindle bundle)	Lindsay Buroker
Witness in Death (In Death, #10)	J.D. Robb
-	-	-
Uncanny Magazine 2023 issues
Apex Magazine 2023 issues
BBC History Magazine 2023 issues

Longlist

Title	Author	Reason
The Light Brigade	Kameron Hurley
October Daye, #10-14	Seanan McGuire

2023 Plans - Part 1: Overview

 Welcome to 2023!

"Business plans for 2023" by Marco Verch is licensed under CC-BY-2.0.

I don't really "do" resolutions, especially not New Year Resolutions. Why? 

1. I forget the things I planned if I'm not actively doing them
2. If I want to do / start / stop a thing, then postponing it to an arbitrary date doesn't help me - I start it right away (or don't!) - building in procrastination just sets me up to continue procrastinating!
3. If put on the spot, I find I just think of things to propose, which aren't necessarily things that would help me or which I actively want to do the most, just what came to the top of my head right then

So, what I am doing instead is using today as an opportunity to write down the things I was already hoping to do this year. There is no "today is the new start" aspect to this, just an acknowledgement of y plans for the forthcoming year. These are split into sections to try to group my plans. Unlike a traditional list of resolutions, the aim of this is to try to keep my ever burgeoning list of Things I Want to Do in a somewhat manageable state, and hopefully to limit my goals to things which I can reasonably accomplish within the limits of my brain and body's capacities.

Personal and Professional Development

1. Complete at least 50% of my chartership submission
• This has been rumbling on now for almost 5 years, so this year I want to get some concrete progress on it.
2. EITHER Get my hours increased at my current post OR Seek a new post
• I am stagnating at work, which could be fixed with either more hours (more time to develop the role) or finding something altogether new.
3. Continue my Russian classes and consider taking the C1 exam either this year or register again at C1 to take it in 2024.
4. Complete another year on Duolingo. 2023 focus languages
• Russian
• Primary focus
• French
• Secondary focus
• Ukrainian
• B1/2
• Italian
• A2/B1 - revive my old Beginner's level
• Arabic
• A1/2 - Recognise the alphabet, Get basic greetings, numbers and please/thank you
• Chinese
• A1 - Recognise characters

Leisure

1. Read between 2 and 4 books a month. My Goodreads target is currently set at 24 books, or 2 per calendar month.
• Lacking commuting time, I am reading less fiction books than I want to, and my TBR is insane. 
• 2-4 books a month is one every week or so.
• No limits on length - just published separately (e.g. a Tor.com short book is the same as Lord of the Rings in this count)
2. Play PC games at least once per week

Craft

1. Sewing - no more than 1 project per month.
• Complete three basic 19th Century outfits
1. Early - 1800s-1820s
2. Mid-century - 1850s-1860s 
3. Late - 1890s-1900s
• Complete some practical outfits for general wearing
2. Do the fox painting my parents bought me for Christmas 2021
3. Practice crochet

Health

1. Weight control
• This is probably the closest thing I have to a traditional New Year's Resolution, but in this case it has a specific target and end date. 
• Target: 95kg
• Purpose: Anaesthesia for transfer
• Date: April 2023
2. Exercise
• I need to force myself to exercise more or I won't achieve my target weight.
• Ever since breaking my ankle mid-summer 2022 I've been struggling with walking, so I will be getting a month's membership to the local swimming pool for January and trying to go at least once per week. Depending on how successful that is, I will decide whether to continue to fight the work insurance people and get "proper" gym membership sorted or continue using the local pool. Swimming as my main "big exercise" should reduce the pressures on both my ankle and my existing arthritis. 
• Minimum target: 
• Walk at least 3x a week
• Static cycle at least 2x per week
• Swim 1x per week
3. Teeth
• Arrange for 3 teeth to be pulled - I have two wisdom teeth coming in a 90° angle off from the angle they SHOULD be at, and one has also crushed into the tooth alongside and is sitting half inside that tooth, and is slowly killing it.
• Dentist wants this completed before my other treatment starts again, and we don't want to delay that more than a month ideally.
• Date: Jan/Feb 2023
4. ASD & ADHD
• Consider the value of pursuing a formal ADHD diagnosis
• Evaluate whether can afford to continue counselling sessions from 2022 now that they are no longer included in my NHS coverage (12 sessions covered)