Books 22 and not 22 of 2022

I’ve just finished Christy Anne Jones’s ebook A Year In Tokyo, which is a memoir of the 13 months she and her boyfriend lived in the city, during their (long distance) postgraduate studies and also with her working as an English teacher. Christy is a books/reading YouTuber in Australia who I enjoy watching. And she adored her time in Tokyo. The book is a combined tourist guide and memoir, well written, and beautifully illustrated. The PDF ebook is available direct from her website.

The other book I should have finished but have totally given up on is the Doctor Who I Am A Master anthology. After battling through the first 3 of 6 stories - 2 of which I found virtually unreadable - I found myself unable to tackle story 4, thinking life’s too short, and shelved the book in Goodreads as unread. I’m not the only reader to have found it very unsatisfying.

Hugo Awards finalists

I was pleased to see the announcement of the Hugo Awards finalists for this year. Here is the Locus magazine version of the list - I find this one really handy for linking through to Amazon listings, including Kindle, if I change the URL to .co.uk

I have a paid supporting membership of the relevant Worldcon, so will get a Hugo voter packet, which will get me ebooks of lots of the finalists. Though not necessarily all. So I may buy some extra, or sooner.

In recent years I haven’t done well at reading the entries, just too ill, especially in 2020 (on an experimentally reduced immunosuppression level, which didn’t control my disease) and 2021 (neurologically flaring all year long after 4 Covid vaccines). But I may have a bit of respite in the next few months, so am going to try.

I’m especially keen to get some of the novel entries under my belt, but more so the fantasy themed ones than the scifi, especially hard scifi. I am not a fan of hard scifi at all, and only read it very rarely. I already have a bargain bought Kindle ebook copy of A Master of Djinn, bought previously. I also have my eye on She Who Became the Sun. Of the more scifi ones I’m very tempted by Light From Uncommon Stars, but it’s almost £10 for the Kindle ebook, so I hope it’s in the voter packet I’ll get and/or reduced in price soon.

Of the novellas, novelettes etc I hope to read some from the voter packet. I’d like to also read some of the Best Related Work entries, though again that may be voter packet dependent, and also relying on how well I am by the time the voter packet is released.

Among other categories I’m very pleased to see interactive fiction author Bitter Karella in the Best Fan Writer list. Whose text adventure games I’ve enjoyed a lot.