Tag: Tobias S. Buckell

October 2024 Books and Reading Notes

John Winkelman

October was quite busy so I didn’t read as much as I would have liked. But what I did read was most excellent!

Acquisitions

Books acquired in the month of October 2024.

  1. Morgan Talty, Fire Exit (And Other Stories) [2024.10.02]
  2. Michael J. DeLuca, The Jaguar Mask (Stelliform Press) [2024.10.06]
  3. Dave Klecha and Tobias J. Buckell, The Runes of Engagement (Tachyon Publications) [2024.10.06]

Reading List

Books

Books I read in October 2024.

  1. Jorge Luis Borges – Conversations [2024.10.10]
  2. Dave Klecha and Tobias J. Buckell, The Runes of Engagement [2024.10.14]
  3. Jack Ridl, All At Once [2024.10.17]
  4. Norah Lange, Notes from Childhood [2024.10.25]

Weekly Round-up, October 19, 2024

John Winkelman

Painted stones fond beside the Dragon Trail at Hardy Dam.

[Painted stones found beside the Dragon Trail at Hardy Dam.]

This past week was hectic. Far more hectic than I would have expected on a week off. But my week off coincided with the kickoff of a new project, which I am leading, so I had to pop in to a couple of meetings when I would much rather have been walking in the woods or otherwise not staring at a computer screen or listening to other people talk.

But I did manage to accomplish some of the things I set out to work on for the week. My house is slightly improved. Our cats are verified healthy. I am too, as of my first physical in over a decade.

Reading

I finished the Borges interviews, and for a change of pace picked up Runes of Engagement by Dave Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell. I know Klecha from the ConFusion science fiction convention, where we are both volunteers and occasional members of the ConCom, and he has been most helpful as I learn the ins and outs of helping to manage a science fiction convention. I met Buckell at ConFusion several years ago. He is a Righteous Dude.

Runes of Engagement was a fun read, and light, and I finished it in a couple of days. Next I read Jack Ridl’s new poetry collection All At Once, which was absolutely beautiful. Some of the poems moved me to tears, which almost never happens. Ridl is a treasure.

Now I am reading Norah Lange‘s Notes from Childhood, which I acquired several years ago from my subscription to And Other Stories. I might have missed this one, except that Lange is mentioned more than once in the Borges interview collection, and so was floating near the surface of my subconscious.

Writing

With my little extra free time I began organizing my notes for the upcoming Month of Writing. Since I am no longer participating in National Novel Writing Month, I am instead participating in “That November Thing”, an event coordinated by the West Michigan Author Alliance, that which used to be the Ottawa County/Grand Rapids region for NaNoWriMo.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Apocalypse, Precursors
Setting: Battlefield
Genre: Lovecraftian

Listening

Interesting Links

Acquisitions and Losses

John Winkelman

It’s been another quiet week for literature here at the library of Winkelman Abbey. The only book to make its way into my collection is the above, It’s All Just a Draft by Tobias S. Buckell. This book is a Kickstarter reward.

I met Buckell a few years back at the ConFusion science fiction convention. He is a semi-regular guest and panelist, and a fun person to talk to at the bar in between sessions. He writes some excellent books, of which my favorites are his Xenowealth series, Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose.

In reading news, I am most of the way through Postcards from the Interior by Wyn Cooper, who I almost met a couple of years ago at the Lost Lake Writer’s Retreat. Almost, because though Cooper couldn’t make it to the retreat, his books did, and I bought some of them. I didn’t have much time or brain-space for reading, so my poetry intake is languishing. I should be done with it today, and then on to the next one! I am also almost finished with Laurus, and should be on to the next evening read by the end of the week.

The “loss” referred to in the title of this post is, of course, the legendary Gene Wolfe, who passed away last weekend at the age of 87. I have been an on-again, off-again fan since the mid-1990s, when I first read his superb Shadow of the Torturer. I met Wolfe briefly at a science fiction convention (probably ConFusion but also possibly a different one) back in the early 2000s. I still regret not having got a book signed.

Here is a brief list of remembrances and appreciations of Mr. Wolfe.

Remembering Gene Wolfe, Valya Dudycz Lupescu
Gene Wolfe Was the Proust of Science Fiction, The New Republic
There Are Doors Everywhere, CSE Cooney
Valar Morghulis, George R. R. Martin
The Bureaucrat has Left the Planet, Michael Swanwick