Happy (Belated) Juneteenth 2024!
Chatting the Euros, Lori Brand's debut novel and the Hugo nominees for Best Novelette!
Hope everyone in the United States had a lovely Juneteenth holiday yesterday! It was genuinely a pleasure to have a day off mid-week to spend time with my family, especially so recently after reading and reflecting on Ibram X Kendi and Joel Christian Gill’s Stamped From The Beginning: A Graphic History Of Racist Ideas In America. It was also honestly helpful to have one less day I had to work while trying to keep up with my kids, who are all home from school. I genuinely expected a little bit of a work slowdown while the Euro 2024 football tournament rages, but I’m still able to multitask with my professional responsibilities while the games play in the background. My kids, otoh, demand my full attention, which often means RIP to my work day. It probably doesn’t help that their dad has taken away the eldest’s computer privileges for the next several weeks due to incomplete schoolwork assignments from the prior semester.
Said eldest has thus been pestering me for things to entertain him while he’s home. My many book suggestions have been met with gusty sighs and withering glances, but he did perk up some when I handed him an as yet unopened deck of Regicide that does double duty as a regular deck of playing cards. Mostly, he wanted the deck to play solitaire with, tho I don’t think he’s yet won a hand. We’re planning to eventually play a proper game of Regicide itself, tho I still haven’t found the time to sit down with him and figure out the rules. Hopefully soonTM.
Aside: I still don’t know who sent me that copy of Regicide. It came in a package a few years ago with a copy of Draconic Dice and Dice Conquest, with no message enclosed. The other two games are still in their packaging, tho perhaps I should start exploring them as well with my kids over the summer.
That said, the only game I had time to play myself this past week is a round of QueenDomino, which was as much fun as always. Otherwise, I’ve mostly kept to watching football matches, talking smack on Twitter, and trying not to tear my hair out at my kids’ shenanigans. I did have time to make this book video for work tho, featuring the gorgeous cover of Seema Yasmin’s upcoming novel Unbecoming:
Of the books I read this week, I adored Lori Brand’s Bodies To Die For. This clever murder mystery is also an incisive satire of the fitness industry and the contemporary culture wars over diet and appearance. Most of all, tho, it’s a warm-hearted plea for sisterhood and solidarity, promoting strength over shrinking and actual health over aesthetics.
The 2024 Hugo nominees for Best Novelette were also a ride, tho my favorite entry by far was C. L. Polk’s Ivy, Angelica, Bay. It made me cry in less than fifty pages, which is quite the achievement! A close runner-up was Naomi Kritzer’s wonderfully low-key The Year Without Sunshine, which gives a realistically optimistic look at what life might actually look like post-apocalypse. I’ve included links to almost all the nominees in my post linked above.
Alright, I gotta run catch up with some more work, while my kids engage me in the very gross and tedious process of irrigating each of their ears. Motherhood is the most glamorous job. See you in seven, friends!
Currently Playing (Music): Vivaldi’s Concerto #7; Mozart’s String Quartet #1; Corelli’s Christmas Concerto; Vitamin String Quartet’s Bad Guy; Duomo’s Wildest Dreams; my Declan Rice playlist; Miranda Lambert’s Wildcard; Chappell Roan’s The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess; Charli XCX’s Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not.
Currently Playing (Games): The Light In The Mist puzzletale, Enigmas by David Kwong & Co, The Wild Beyond The Witchlight, Metazooa by Trainwreck Labs, Learned League trivia, NYT Connections, The Cartographer, QueenDomino.
Currently Reading/Writing (Games): Camp Elementa by me! Ghosts Of Saltmarsh.
Currently Reading or Just Read (Books): Bodies To Die For by Lori Brand; One Of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon; Camp Prodigy by Caroline Palmer; The Bedlam Cadaver by Robert J Lloyd; Hugo 2024 Awards Nominees for Best Novelette.