Sidetracks - January 10, 2025

[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. Every year, Largehearted Boy collects best of lists for books for all types across the Internet. I look forward to it every year and always find something interesting.

2. One of the nonfiction book critics I follow, Nathan, is also an incredible writer:

We are the afterthought of how capital can be accumulated. We are the system through which dollars can be harvested. The cats, the music, the books, the photoshoot out in the beautifully snow-covered forest – we are the testing ground for what AI systems we will tolerate enough for executives to shove down our throats.

3. Kelsey over at the Fancy Hat Lady Reads shares her anticipated 2025 books. Kelsey says more on top of fun graphic novels than I do.

4. I wrote an essay about reviewing and critique and my pal Jenny had some thoughts of her own which are great. The entire essay is incredibly quotable.

5. In a timely development, around the same time I posted by essay, Ancillary Review of Books dropped ARB’s 2024 Notable Criticism from all over the place.

6. Kristin shared her 2024 favorites. The book she highlights that I want to get to is The Mountain Crown by Karin Lowachee.

7. Another list of favorites from Dina at SFF Book Review.

8. National treasure Alex Brown collects the anticipated YA books in SFF and Horror for January and February.

9. Some books coming out in January 2025 and a few anticipated 2025 releases via Transfer Orbit.

10. I loved The Endless Appetite for Fanfiction by Elizabeth Minkel, who I've already appreciated for her analytical eye re: fanfiction and the outside world. This essay talks about some of the gross trends in 2024, and what that means for fic writers going forward.

11. I'm only sort of interested in the ongoing drama about Meta announcing that they were suspending professional fact checking on their platforms, but the title of this article, A Lot of People Are Searching for How to Delete Facebook and Instagram, and We Would Like Their Clicks, made me chuckle. I'm on Bluesky most of the time now. I do still have my Twitter account (although it's locked and no longer updated) and my IG account (also locked, soon to be retired after I resolve someone managing to get into my Meta account and do malicious things). I also can't leave Facebook because I use it for organizing, but I do plan to stop using it personally. With TikTok probably going away very shortly, it may be that Bluesky becomes my only mass social media besides Dreamwidth/Youtube. For the first time, I'm not really having FOMO about not being on other platforms. Maybe I'm growing as a person?

12. I don't know where I heard this song to get it stuck in my head, but it's been there's for weeks.

Watch on YouTube