Journal

Saturday, March 09, 2002
Over on the SFsite (a lovely site to go and potter around in, if you're English, or putter around in if you're American) the Reader's Poll results are in: Last Month we were at #2 on the Year's Critics list -- are we up or down from the readers? Go to http://www.sfsite.com/columns/best02b.htm and find out. (The SFSite Readers get a big thumbs up from me for listing Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen as one of their books of the year. Quick, buy a copy if you do not have one!)


There's also an audio review column at http://www.sfsite.com/columns/vox123.htm where the audio book is reviewed. ("To the excellent writing, add George Guidall's brilliant performance. The production quality is excellent, and Guidall is one of the finest performers in the business. The combination made this the best audio I've heard this year.") Other highlights include a wonderful interview with Ursula K LeGuin, and an exchange of letters between Gwyneth Jones and an SF Site reviewer which makes for entertaining reading, although it confirms me in my belief that if you don't like a review, or if the reviewer missed the point of the book, or something, the wisest course of action is to bite your tongue and hope the reviewer likes the next book -- or doesn't get it to review. You'll never convince someone they liked a book they didn't. The best you can hope for is that one day a reader will go back to it and find that she or he is no longer the same person who read the book and didn't like it. (God knows, it's happened enough to me over the years that I'm much more hesitant to pronounce a book Good or Bad than once I was.)


Let's see... http://www.sfsite.com/columns/geeks108.htm contains a review of the cover of American Gods...


http://www.sfsite.com/05a/lm103.htm is the SFsite review of Lud In the Mist, which I commend to any of you who are sighing for something to read.


...


I'm falling off the world at present to try and get a few things finished. We'll see whether I have a good internet connection or not where I am. (Currently typing this in Minneapolis airport, as the time of my plane gets later and later, and I sit here repeating to myself that airport food court sushi is NOT a good thing to eat and is in fact a very bad idea. Sometimes my natural optimism makes me forget this, and pay real money for sad, fishy, rubbery things that make me sad when I sit in the food court and eat them. I shall remember. I will be strong.)