(Nov 4th email, darnit) Vote in the USA, LCRUU, The Naming Song
Nov 05, 2024 5:23 pm
Edited to add: something went kaput yesterday and this email didn't go out to most people so here I try again. I voted by mail and today we went to our polling place to hit up the election day bake sale and support the school PTO. I hope you will vote if you can and that the day goes well for all of us.
Hi all,
If you are eligible to vote in the USA, I hope you have already voted for Harris/Walz or have a plan to do so tomorrow. If you are voting, please vote the whole ballot. Sister District reported that Republican voters are more likely to vote the whole ballot than voters choosing the Democratic candidate. If all the voters who chose Biden in 2020 had voted the whole ballot, the House and the Senate results would have been different(!).
This month, we may get LCRW 49 out. It's near complete, just a few (nonchalant, jaunty — look at that beastie) steps until it can go to the printer. Mailing it may will take a lllittle time but fingers crossed. Otherwise it will be December. May/November issues? Maybe next year. Subscriptions available — and those new international LCRW subs are available from Weightless, Michael's 1-stop, no-oligarch ebookstore.
Each issue — when I remember — I add one of Nicole Kimberling's previous cooking columns to the website. Her columns are one of the things I truly love about putting out the zine.
We continue to take tiny steps forward on the limited edition of The Book of Love. In other BoL news, it was one of ten books selected by Publishers Weekly's as the Books of the Year. The books are about finished and the slipcases are due soon. I'm going to have to emphasize when this goes live that fulfillment/mailing may (damn it) will be slow.
If you are on Bluesky, Kelly is happy to do book recommendations. Give her two books you like, she'll point you to something.
More good reading
I loved Jedediah Berry's novel The Naming Song and strongly recommend it to any LCRW/Small Beer reader. I read an ARC and at some point I'm going to re-read it. I did not even realize there is a map. It was such a joy and relief to dive into the book and be able to take my time and find that even though I was reading slowly I was still deeply enjoying it.
Coincidentally I was just recommending Jed & his partner Emily's Ninepin Press to someone this past week.
I've been listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates's new book The Message while washing dishes and sometimes just sitting and listening because he is such a good writer and because his observations of life in the US and Palestine in the 2020s are . . . trenchant? Humane? Horrifying? It's a short book and is a bestseller and is very much worth your time.
I recently read an English novel to see if it would be a good fit for Book Moon. First published nearly a hundred years ago, it took me a few pages to get the rhythm and voice but once I did I shot through very quickly. It was light, covered many issues I am interested in, gave great insight into two or three different parts of London at the time, was slyly triumphant, and was racist and anti-Semitic in only a couple of spots. Not at all bad for a novel of the age but definitely not one for the shop. I have been (not seriously) thinking of making a shelf of books behind glass of 20th Century Racist and/or Anti-Semitic English Novels. I cannot count how many times I have gotten part way through one of these novels and begun to think, Aha! We should stock this backlist treasure! We'll be able to delight so many readers! and then— oh. A lightly dropped slur, a don't-we-all-think-this-way attack. It's enough to make me slightly sick and, no, we're not going to start carrying it. (No doubt we have such books on the shelf, I have not, ha, read them all.)
News-ish
Anya Johanna DeNiro's short novel OKPsyche received the Blurred Boundaries Award at this year’s Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards.
Kelly (Magic for Beginners), Sofia Samatar (Tender; also mentioned: A Stranger in Olondria), and Sarah Rees Brennan* (In Other Lands) all had titles included in Reactor's The Most Iconic Speculative Fiction Books of the 21st Century. You can submit your own Iconic Top 10 here.
* Sarah's new series starter/heart breaker Long Live Evil gets two thumbs up from our teen.
I think there were a few other things I meant to add to this but since it's Monday today and tomorrow's Election Day (not yet a Federal holiday, bah) and maybe someone missed that and may yet go vote, out it goes. Thanks for reading — and voting (the whole ballot) if you can.
Cheers!
Gavin