Sidetracks - December 14, 2023

[helloladies]

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.

Renay

1. The grassroots boycott of St. Martin's Press continues on with no action from the publisher. The boycott includes St. Martin's Press, St. Martin's Griffin, Castle Point Books, Minotaur Books, St. Martin's Essentials, and Wednesday Books. There's additional context and resources on the website. I won't be mentioning titles from these publishers while the boycott is active.

2. S.L. Huang's The Water Outlaws is on the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. I've been following Huang's writing since she self-published Zero Sum Game (which later got picked up for tradpub). The book was so readable and bananas in the best way that I knew she was going to go on to do great things and write even more incredible stories. Love to be proven correct by the inevitable passage of time.

3. The best sci-fi and fantasy books of 2023 by Nicole Clark, Sadie Gennis, + Polygon Staff had a few books I haven't heard of, including Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park, Land Of Milk And Honey by C Pam Zhang, and Mister Magic by Kiersten White.

4. I finished Keeper's Six and wanted more SFF with union organizing and was recced this well-documented list of books that have it and the level of importance in the story. Although it did make me less excited about the latest from Scalzi, Starter Villain, because I also happened to find this review during my union organizing books search and...well...

5. The columnists at Tordotcom shared their 2023 favorites.

6. Murderbot will be played by a generic attractive white dude in the adaptation, because Hollywood is as boring as hell.

7. Autostraddle lists out the Best Queer Books of 2023. The SFF sections are robust!

8. 2023 Hugo final ballot – quick take and details is an interesting read if you like Hugo Award stats.

9. The Best Games of 2023 from columnists over at Paste Magazine. I had a few on my list already, but of course found more to add.

10. Last year, my public library had its budget slashed in half by people angry about LGBTQ inclusion in both the children's and teen library collections. It was a full moral panic; they managed to fear-monger a ballot initiative together with confusing language and we lost. It's been really hard watching my library suffer, staff who've made my experience so much better lose their jobs, and services that made our library a standout in our region be slashed. Although this isn't aimed at public libraries and focuses on school libraries, I'm happy to see action being taken on a federal level to help school districts fight back against these awful bans. I highly recommend staying up to date on the national-wide attack on libraries via Kelly Jensen's work, too. If you have a public library and they have a Friends of the Library group, consider joining/volunteering. If you don't have your own, consider starting one! Or: adopt a local library in another town; pay to get digital access to other libraries elsewhere in the country; or even support mine (I'm shameless because I'm desperate). We're going to be crowdsourcing lots of essential library services over the next few years. All libraries, whether we use them or not, need our support now more than ever.

11. Begging people to stop voting for Republican candidates for everything, anywhere, because they're not going to stop coming after trans people until we make them pay for it with their power.

12. Finally watched the trailer for the second part of Dune, even though I haven't finished the first part of Dune. The visuals are good, but I'm unsure. Should I finish the first part of Dune or let the 2000 miniseries stay as my Dune touchstone?

13. I was recently introduced to the podcast Ologies, which is perfect for my fickle attention span but endless desire for more and more random knowledge.

14. This video made me want to see the Barbie movie more than anything else besides that clip of America Ferrera's big speech.

15. Some other reviews I've read:
A review of the anthology Out There Screaming. A review of All the Hidden Paths by Foz Meadows. A collection of six books from Sherwood Smith. This review of The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins, which helped me realize I need to take it off my TBR post-haste. Thank you for your service, reviewers, and saving my mental health! A review of Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, as well as this review, both of which have me considering forgoing my library hold and buying the book ouright. A review of The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon. This isn't the first one where reviewers whose taste I trust have gone, "HMMMMMM" and made me question my TBR choices. Maybe I don't know how to choose books I'll like, actually?

16. We were in the local candy shop the other day and one of the owners had this song playing and it was so good. I've been obsessed ever since.

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