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Today, to complete the trifecta, Barney is graciously sharing a Wednesday Writing Workout with us. Take it away, Barney!
This is Barney (with friends). He's the cutest one.
Barney: I thought I'd share something I teach at UCLA Extension which seems to help unleash power and in many cases, people’s dark side. It's terrific.
I call it, Utter Expression Without Consequence. Here's the prompt:
Write to someone and really let them know how you feel. It’s a chance to get anything and everything off your chest. It could be that you secretly are in love with someone. You could despise someone. Maybe a boss is constantly picking on you and you haven’t opened you mouth to complain. Now's your chance!
It can be in the form of a letter, or even a list.
Choose your blackest crayon. from morguefile.com
This exercise gives you the opportunity to tap into feelings which you've sat on. Topics which you've avoided. Now's your chance to pour everything out...to a boyfriend, a wife, a friend. Or someone you ‘thought’ was a friend. A boss. Anyone you address. Just let it go and flow. This is a very freeing moment.
What I find is that this prompt helps shape a character. Ultimately, I hope this exercise lets the writer get into the head of a character who has a lot weighing on them. It's a step towards shaping a character. Our job is to know who we are writing about, even if some of the background research we write never makes it into our story. It just makes it so our characters appear to be writing the story for us when situations arise, because we know them so well.
Have fun with this--dive in!
I wish I had something brilliant to tell you as far as how this writing prompt helped make a story. I can say that time and time again, I saw how it empowered people. Students who were struggling to find their voice finally had a sense of what that looked and felt like.
C C'mon...tell them how you feel! From morguefile.com
A woman told off her husband in a letter. A teacher got everything she ever wanted to yell at an administrator on paper. If you are looking for a way to tap into feelings, this is a great way to dive in.
Thank you, Barney! And readers ~ tell us how you really feel!
posted loudly and proudly by April Halprin Wayland
0 Comments on Utter Expression Without Consequence: a Wednesday Writing Workout by Barney Saltzberg as of 1/1/1900
Some train journeys I don't remember. Thankfully not for the same reasons as the protagonist of The Girl on the Train — in my case, I was simply too young to recall the first time I ever got onto a train (a trip from Durban to Umhlali in South Africa, I'm told). I don't remember [...]
0 Comments on Five Memorable Train Journeys as of 1/23/2015 7:57:00 PM
A brief look at 'grams of interest to engage teens and librarians navigating this social media platform.
Happy New Year! For many, the changing year brings with it a list of resolutions. What can we do for those who have made it a goal to read more books? For starters, we can share reading challenges with our teen patrons or create our own for our communities. The 2015 Goodreads Reading Challenge has users set a goal of a specific number of titles to read, but other sources like Popsugar, Book Riot, and the TBR (To Be Read) Jar Challenge give category guidelines in which readers select a title of their choice. Others, like Epic Reads' 365 Days of YA reading calendar and YALSA's 2015 Morris/Nonfiction Reading Challenge (which counts toward the upcoming 2015 Hub Reading Challenge), ask participants to read a number of books from a provided list. Either way, these reading challenge avenues provide inspiration for creating your own reading challenge for your teens. Check out Random House of Canada's year-long Reading Bingo Challenge (one general card and one specific to YA) -- fun and motivating!
Another way to engage teens in a discussion of their reading is through book photo challenges. Offered monthly, these challenges ask users to take a book-related photo a day and post it on social media with the corresponding hashtags. The sky is the limit when it comes to daily photo tasks! Engaging library users in this type of discussion can provide clues to collection development and potential programming.
Has your library hosted a reading or book photo challenge before? Is there a "go to" reading challenge that you recommend to your teens? If so, share with us the comments section below.
Have a topic you'd like to see in the next installment of Instagram of the Week? Share it in the comments section of this post.
Below, we’ve collected links to download free digital editions for all eight titles which include a mix of both fiction and nonfiction choices. Will you be tackling Tyons’s suggestions in the year 2015? (more…)
I’m frustrated that we require ‘women who did well in their respective fields’ articles and blogs, occasionally even allowing myself to wonder how much we still need them or how useful they are any more. But then our ‘prime minister’ and, worse, ‘minister for women’ (and yes, I’m using those rabbit ears extremely deliberately—I called […]
Top-ten lists and year in review articles abound—it must be December! Reflecting on the past year in the world of libraries, here are five themes that have impacted our work.
ReportsWhile YALSA members are digesting and implementing The Future of Library Services for and with Teens: a Call to Action, several other reports came out in 2014 that encourage library workers to embrace new paradigms and adapt service standards that can best serve our customers. There’s the Pew Research Center’s Younger Americans and Public Libraries report, which breaks down library behavior in the Millenial generation. From the report: “...younger Americans are also more likely than older adults to have read at least one book in [the past year] (88% vs 79%).” Hooray! Another big splash came with the IMLS’s report titled Learning Labs in Libraries and Museums: Transformative Spaces for Teens. I recently wrote about the new Aspen Report here. These reports each focus on the importance of community engagement and transforming our institutions into new models of library service excellence. Lots of great food for thought!
The Common Core With the Common Core State Standards now in place in the majority of US states, how can library workers serving youth and teens support our partners and contacts in local schools, as well as help out students and their parents? This question was a highlight of 2014, eliciting a wide variety of articles (1, 2), toolkits and trainings (1, 2.) Have you prepared for and encountered ways to support the CC? Let us know in the comments.
STEM/STEAM/Make After gathering steam (hah!) in 2013, 2014 felt like the year that maker and STEM culture were part of mainstream discussions for library staff. Beyond the library literature, Pinterest is a fun way to track and share different STEM/STEAM/make programming, reading, and space ideas to your workplace. Check out this results page for “makerspace library.”
#WeNeedDiverseBooks How did this campaign, a highly visible social media trend, get its start? Check out this FAQ to learn about the origin and purpose behind the movement. An Indiegogo fundraising effort had great success; the funds raised allow WNDB team members to create outreach programs, partner with other literacy organizations, and support diverse authors.
Crisis Situations and Libraries In the midst of the Ferguson protests, the story of the town’s library as a community support center and safe haven in time of crisis went viral. Ferguson Library Director Scott Bonner said: “During difficult times, the library is a quiet oasis where we can catch our breath, learn, and think about what to do next.” On an international scale, stories are coming from Ukraine about the role of their libraries during a time of violence and instability. If we can be there for our communities in distress, those communities can then be there for us; for example, destroyed and damaged libraries coming back stronger in the wake of tremendous storms.
What themes and trends impacted your work in 2014? Do you have predictions for what’s to come in 2015? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!
A brief look at 'grams of interest to engage teens and librarians navigating this social media platform. A new month with a new season approaching can only mean one thing -- new book displays! From fireplaces Catching Fire to snowmen and book trees, these displays were snow cool that we just had to share. What types of displays are you putting together this month? Do your teens have a role is putting everything together?
It's also the time of year for "Best of" book lists. The 2014 Goodreads Choice Awards were recently announced as were Epic Reads' 2014 Shimmy Award Winners. YALSA announced the finalists of both the William C. Morris and Excellence in Nonfiction Awards and School Library Journal presented their list of the 70 best books of 2014. Are you using social media to promote these titles and educate teens about these awards? If so, tell us how in the comments section below.
Have you come across a Instagram post this week, or has your library posted something similar? Have a topic you'd like to see in the next installment of Instagram of the Week? Share it in the comments section of this post.
November is going to be a busy month, with a new book plus appearances in Amherst, MA, Northampton, MA, & Brooklyn, NY. So let's get to it.
NEW BOOK!
November 4th, 2014 will see the release of Elephant and Piggie's newest adventure, WAITING IS NOT EASY!
Gerald is careful. Piggie is not.Piggie cannot help smiling. Gerald can.Gerald worries so that Piggie does not have
0 Comments on NOVEMBER UPDATE! as of 10/28/2014 11:47:00 AM
Need a boyfriend this fall? You can forget Cragislist. If you can’t find the man of your dreams, he might just be out there somewhere—in the pages of a book. Or in this case, between your ear buds. Courtesy of Audible.com, we bring you five bachelors to choose from:
1. Will Blakelee in The Last Song, by Nicholas Sparks
Will’s loyalty to Ronnie Miller remains strong in the end of this novel from classic chick lit author Nicholas Sparks. Connecting over family tragedy, Will is there for Ronnie in the end when she most needs him to be by sacrificing his own opportunities. (more…)
Happy Summer! Hope you are all surviving and thriving as your summer reading programs come to an end this year. Don’t forget to look toward autumn, as YALSA’s Fall Appointments season approaches!
As President-Elect, I’ll be making appointments to the following YALSA committees and taskforces:
*Please note that the PPYA Committee is an all-virtual committee for the coming year. YALSA members with book selection and evaluation experience and who are comfortable working in an online environment with tools like ALA Connect, Google Docs, Skype, etc. should put their names forward for consideration.
The Fine Print
Eligibility: To be considered for an appointment, you must be a current personal member of YALSA and submit a volunteer form by Oct. 1st. If you are appointed, service will begin on February 1, 2015.
For those who want to serve another year: If you are currently serving on a selection or award committee and you are eligible to and interested in serving for another term, you must fill out a volunteer form for this round (this is so I know you’re still interested and want to do serve another term).
Qualifications: Serving on a committee or taskforce is a significant commitment. Please review the resources on this web page before you submit a form to make sure that committee work is a good fit for you at this point in time: www.ala.org/yalsa/getinvolved/participate
Questions: Please free to contact me with any questions or issues at candice (dot) yalsa at gmail (dot) com
Thanks for all the time and talent you share with YALSA!
Journalists are heroes to some and scumbags to others but the truth is that most are somewhere in the middle, trying to do as good a job as they can, often in difficult circumstances. That, at least, is the view of Tony Harcup, author of A Dictionary of Journalism. We asked him to tell us about some of the good – and not so good – things that journalists do. Do you agree with the below?
The nine best things about journalists:
We tell you things that you didn’t even know you didn’t know.
Our default position is healthy scepticism.
We know that there’s no such thing as a stupid question.
Our way with words translates jargon into language that actual people use.
We juggle complex intellectual, legal, commercial and ethical issues every day, simultaneously and at high speed, all while giving the impression of being little deeper than a puddle.
Our lateral thinking spots the significance of the dog that didn’t bark (noting in the process that Sherlock Holmes was created by a journalist).
We speak truth to power (or, at least, we say boo to a goose).
Our gallows humour keeps us going despite the grim stories we cover and the even grimmer people we work with (perhaps the most literal exponent of the art was journalist Ben Hecht who wrote the movies His Girl Friday and The Front Page about hacks covering a hanging).
We identify with other journalists as fellow members of society’s awkward squad (which is why even those of us who have left the frontline of reporting and become “hackademics” still can’t stop saying “we”).
The nine worst things about journalists:
We have a tendency to tell young hopefuls that all the quality has vanished from journalism compared to when we started out (journalists have been harking back to a mythical golden age for well over a century).
Our scepticism can sometimes become cynicism.
We routinely demand public apologies or resignations from anyone accused of misbehaviour (except ourselves).
Our way with words is too often used to reduce individuals or communities to stereotypes.
We have been known to conflate a popular touch with boorish anti-intellectualism.
Our collective memory lets us down surprisingly often. (We won’t get fooled again? Don’t bet on it.)
We are in danger of viewing the world through the eyes of whoever employs us, forgetting that, while they might hire us, they don’t own us.
Our insistence that we are something of a special breed is a bit rich given that most journalistic jobs have more in common with The Office than with All The President’s Men.
We eviscerate politicians for fiddling their expenses while celebrating hacks from the golden age (see no. 1) for doing exactly the same.
Tony Harcup is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield. A Dictionary of Journalism, first edition, will be published 15 May 2014. It covers over 1,400 wide-ranging entries on the terms that are likely to be encountered by students of the subject, and aims to offer a broad, accessible point of reference on an ever-topical and constantly-changing field that affects everyone’s knowledge and perception of the world.
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Image credit: Meet the press. By stocksnapper, via iStockphoto.
There is all kinds of great and exciting stuff happening with diverse children's literature these days! By the time you're reading this, the #weneeddiversebooks campaign should be live on social media, May 1-3 -- follow it on Twitter and Tumblr and please share your own thoughts there. Kudos to the awesome team who put that together!
Closer to home, The Great Greene Heistby Varian Johnson -- a modern, middle-school, multicultural Ocean's 11; a book I edited and am immensely proud of -- is getting a ton of awesome attention from indie booksellers and Varian's fellow authors, who are asking everyone to take the #greatgreenechallenge and help us get a diverse book on the bestseller lists. Kate Messner threw down the initial challenge; Shannon Hale raised the bar; and some guy named John Green sweetened the pot further for bookstores. You can check out all the action at Varian's blog post here. The book has received wide praise from many authors and a starred review from Kirkus, and it was named a Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book of 2014! If you still need more convincing, you can check out this wonderful little prequel as a taster, or just join the challenge and preorder it now. (I advise the latter.) Out officially on May 27, 2014.
Finally, I'm going to post this list here for anyone who might still need diverse book recommendations -- a list of books I've edited featuring diverse protagonists. Diversity has been a priority at Arthur A. Levine Books since the imprint was founded, and it's been a particular passion of mine for years, so I'm very proud of both this list and the many great books on our publishing lists to come.
Books I've Edited Featuring Diverse Protagonists
Millicent Min, Girl Genius and Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time by Lisa Yee (MG; Asian-American)
Bobby vs. Girls (Accidentally) and Bobby the Brave (Sometimes) by Lisa Yee (chapter book; biracial, Asian-American)
Eighth-Grade Superzero by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (MG: American of Black Jamaican descent)
If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth (YA; Tuscarora Native American)
The Path of Names by Ari Goelman (MG fantasy; Jewish)
Marcelo in the Real World, The Last Summer of the Death Warriors, and Irises by Francisco X. Stork (YA; Latin@)
The Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World's Most Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb (YA nonfiction; Jewish)
The Fire Horse Girl by Kay Honeyman (YA; Chinese)
Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg (YA; Gay)
Gold Medal Winter by Donna Freitas (MG; Latina)
The Savage Fortress and The City of Death by Sarwat Chadda (MG fantasy; British of Indian descent, Hindu(ish))
Words in the Dust by Trent Reedy (MG; Afghan, Muslim)
The Encyclopedia of Me by Karen Rivers (MG; biracial, of British-Caribbean descent)
Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit and Moribito II: Guardian of the Darkness by Nahoko Uehashi, translated by Cathy Hirano (YA fantasy; Asian-inspired)
Above by Leah Bobet (YA fantasy; differently abled cast -- which is putting it mildly -- and biracial protagonist of French and Indian descent)
Yay diverse books!
0 Comments on We Need Diverse Books. as of 5/1/2014 1:21:00 AM
What warms your heart on a cold day? What warms your heart when the tides of change come crashing in? What warms your heart when the” no’s” become overwhelming? What warms your heart when the crowd scatters and you are “Home Alone”?
I have a whole list of favorite things I like to look at periodically. These are things that Warm My Heart. I found myself smiling and even laughing. They are things I feel that God has blessed me with. When I look at them I see stories! I see people, I see events… and more. Life is so much more than what we see during our day. Life is a tapestry of stories that intertwine and make memories for us. Some are so real we can almost re-live them just recalling them to our memories.
Favorite Things
God my Father, Jesus my elder brother, the Holy Spirit my helper.
All my Family
Friends / art friends
People
Rosie and Violet
Coffee with cream
Purses
Odd things for the house
Floor Pillows
Blankies
Coffee Shops
Art galleries
Hankies
Sketch books
Lists
Personal chef
Trip to Maine and beyond
Jeep
Toys
Children’s books
Goat yogurt and blueberries
Zinnias
Colors : purply blue, raspberry, Yaya green
Good movies with popcorn
Breakfast in bed with a good magazine.
grandsons!
my SONS.
a zillion best friends!
colors
the valley between Kenosha and BaileY
the mountains
a crackling fire in the stove
falling snow
deep snow and 4wheel drive
My cozy studio
a good book
a comfy chair
writing a story
a bike ride . . …… and today…. Matthew!
Today’s Warm Fuzzy came from a friend. She took this wonderful picture of her son sleeping with my Peepsqueak plush. He is so cute! Matthew is on my list!
What are your favorite things? I am sure mine will grow!!
Jennifer McVeigh's debut novel The Fever Tree, the
epic tale of a British woman embarking on a new life in
nineteenth-century southern Africa, has been critically acclaimed and selected for Richard and Judy's Book Club in March. Here, she reveals her 10 Tips on How to Stay Sane as a Debut Novelist.
Don’t quit your job before you have a book deal. Very sensible advice that I spectacularly failed to follow. I left my job as a literary agent and stepped into the terrifying world of no salary, no professional support and no real hope of achieving what I was setting out to achieve. It was a very rocky ride.
Do join a writing group – they will keep you sane, help you to stay on track, and remind you that there are other people in the world crazy enough to be battling all day with words on paper.
Don’t divulge your plot, or writing problems for that matter, to friends at dinner – they’ll say very unhelpful things like: Isn’t that a bit predictable? How can you not know what’s going to happen at the end? And – most gruelling of all - hasn’t Wilbur Smith written a novel just like that?
When you’re writing sex scenes, don’t imagine your parents looking over your shoulder – a passionate kiss will quickly disintegrate into a prudish peck on the cheek.
Don’t obsess over the perfection of other novels. Read them, learn from them, but don’t let them cast your own into shadow. I always wanted my protagonist to be as dynamic and real as Cathy or Emma, but it wasn’t until I had reached the end of her story that I felt I really knew her.
Don’t let yourself imagine all the unpublished authors in the world being turned down by agents, like the millions of lost souls waiting at the gates of heaven. If you have written something good, then someone will spot it – you just need to have faith and determination.
Don’t be your own judge. After I had written my novel I shelved it in despair, convinced that it was worthless. It was only by some stroke of luck – a chance meeting with a literary agent – that I was convinced to send it out into the world. Thank goodness I did.
Don’t demonise the agents who reject you. More than likely your manuscript fell into the hands of some poor, unpaid 17 year old intern with a hangover, desperately trying to reduce the size of the slush pile. Wait a few months, and send it in again. I was offered representation by an agent who must have afterwards let my manuscript fall into the slush pile. A month later I received an earnest typed letter from the agency: “Dear Miss McVeigh, many thanks for sending in your manuscript. I’m very sorry to inform you that…”
Once you are published - in the interests of sanity – try not to check your Amazon sales rank more than twice (OK – that’s not realistic – perhaps 5 times) a day. If sales are good your publisher will tell you, and a shift from 3050 to 2095 is almost certainly meaningless.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because you’ve got one novel behind you, the second will be easier. It won’t. Sweating over a novel is part of what makes it brilliant. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. I do have a very frustrating writer friend who keeps telling me that her second novel is a breeze…
Not in Seattle but wishing you could hear what local teens have to say about this year’s Best Fiction for Young Adults nominations? In Seattle but stuck in another meeting or session on Sunday? Have no fear–you can join the BFYA Teen Feedback Session live blog here or on The Hub!
We’ll be streaming live video from the session, pulling tweets with the #bfya hashtag, polling readers about nominated titles and publishing your comments LIVE. The live blog will start shortly before the session opens at 1:30 PM Pacific, and you can join at any time. You can even log in with your Facebook or Twitter account to include your gravatar with your comments.
If you can’t make the live session, have no fear; the complete session, including video, will be available to replay at your leisure as soon as the live blog closes.
Locus this month has been conducting a poll to find out the "best" science fiction and fantasy novels and short fiction of the 20th and 21st centuries. Though I first suggested on Twitter that I would be filling it all in with Raymond Carver stories, I gave in today at the last minute and instead filled in the poll with some choices other than Carver stories (though I was tempted to put "Why Don't You Dance?" on there, since it has a certain fantasy feel to it, at least to me).
I'll post my choices after the jump here.
Because I did the poll at the last minute, the choices were as much impulsive as rational. I'm not much interested in differentiating science fiction and fantasy, so I paid only the barest attention to categorization. For lengths, I used the lists Locus posted or what I could find on ISFDB, and for the few items not on either, I just relied on my own memory and guessing.
Were I to write the lists now, or tomorrow, or next week, they would be different, both in content and order. Such is the nature of these things. Only a few items are absolute for me (e.g., Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is the best science fiction novel ever written). Many of the choices are there not because I think they are Eternally & Canonically Important (though many are) but because they remain vivid and powerful reading experiences for me. Also, some things didn't make it on because I would need to reread them to decide — for instance, I couldn't pick one of the novellas from Le Guin's Four Ways to Forgiveness, because though I'm fairly sure one of them belongs on the list, I haven't read the book recently enough to decide between them. M. John Harrison's Viriconium probably belongs on there, too, but I couldn't decide on one of the books in particular, wasn't sure if the big collection would count as a single novel, and in any case had The Course of the Heart on there already (it's another absolute for me — no list of best 20th century fantasy novels is complete without it). And then there are things that probably belong on such a list, but I've never read them, such as Gormenghast. And then there are the obvious items I forgot and will be chastising myself for tomorrow.
I know of lists from a few other folks: Niall Harrison, Cheryl Morgan, Ian Sales. Once Locus publishes the results from the poll, I'll put a link here.
Finally, I am perfectly aware that I will be the only person voting for quite a few of these.
(Note: Because I cut-and-pasted these into the Locus poll form, I deliberately removed diacritical marks and any other punctuation that might mess up the tally. And I'm being lazy here and just pasting my master list in.)
20th century science fiction novel 1.Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany 2.Ubik by Philip K. Dick 3. 1984 by George Orwell 4. China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh 5. 334 by Thomas M. Disch 6. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville 7. Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler 8. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin 9. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood 10. Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
20th Century Fantasy Novel 1. The Castle by Franz Kafka 2. The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett 3. Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany 4. Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee 5. The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison 6. The Affirmation by Christopher Priest 7. Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier 8. Neveryona by Samuel R. Delany 9. Mickelsson’s Ghosts by John Gardner 10. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
20th Century SF/F Novella 1. The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka 2. Empire Star, by Samuel R. Delany 3. The Stains, by Robert Aickman 4. Great Work of Time, by John Crowley 5. Souls, by Joanna Russ 6. Pastoralia, by George Saunders 7. Pork Pie Hat, by Peter Straub 8. R&R, by Lucius Shepard 9. The King’s Indian: A Tale, by John Gardner 10. Mr. Boy, by James Patrick Kelly
20th Century SF/F Novelette 1. Invaders, by John Kessel 2. The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule, by Lucius Shepard 3. The Asian Shore, by Thomas M. Disch 4. The Hell Screen, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa 5. The Hospice, by Robert Aickman 6. A Little Something for Us Tempunauts, by Philip K. Dick 7. The Juniper Tree, by Peter Straub 8. Solitude, by Ursula K. Le Guin 9. Bloodchild, by Octavia E. Butler 10. Sea Oak, by George Saunders
20th Century SF/F Short Story 1. A Country Doctor, by Franz Kafka 2. Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, by Jorge Luis Borges 3. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, by Ursula K. Le Guin 4. Day Million, by Frederik Pohl 5. The School, by Donald Barthelme 6. Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!, by Raccoona Sheldon 7. Or All the Seas with Oysters, by Avram Davidson 8. The Terminal Beach, by J.G. Ballard 9. Abominable, by Carol Emshwiller 10. One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts, by Shirley Jackson
21st Century SF Novel 1. Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon 2. Light by M. John Harrison 3. Liberation by Brian Francis Slattery 4. Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders by Samuel R. Delany 5. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
21st Century Fantasy Novel 1. Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer 2. The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia 3. The City & The City by China Mieville 4. Oh Pure & Radiant Heart by Lydia Millet 5. One for Sorrow by Christopher Barzak
21st Century SF/F Novella 1. Tainaron, by Leena Krohn 2. A Crowd of Bone, by Greer Gilman 3. Magic for Beginners, by Kelly Link 4. Near Zennor, by Elizabeth Hand 5. Memorare, by Gene Wolfe
21st Century SF/F Novelette 1. Stone Animals, by Kelly Link 2. Only Partly Here, by Lucius Shepard 3. Yellow Card Man, by Paolo Bacigalupi 4. The Empire of Ice Cream, by Jeffrey Ford 5. Revenge of the Calico Cat, by Stepan Chapman
21st Century SF/F Short Story 1. There’s a Hole in the City, by Richard Bowes 2. Cold Fires, by M. Rickert 3. Abraham Lincoln Has Been Shot, by Daniel Alarcon 4. Delhi, by Vandana Singh 5. Safe Passage, by Ramona Ausubel
7 Comments on Locus 20th & 21st Centuries Poll, last added: 12/4/2012
In spite of it being ridiculously early in the century to pick a 'best of' list you have an interesting reading list here. Title's I know and enjoy and titles I've not heard of before now. I assume those will be the ones only your are voting for. I'll have to take a look at the master list at Locus. Thanks for posting this.
Any list with Avram Davidson and Donald Barthelme on it is all right by me.
The whole 20th century is too much for me to handle, but I was thinking of taking a crack at the 21st century list. You might have already nailed it, though.
A fascinating collection of lists. I'm sad or happy to say I've not read the large majority of the items on them. I missed the deadline, but if I hadn't my lists would all have had fewer items than called for, if any at all. I love you more than a little for having so many Delany titles on your lists. Stars in My Pocket wouldn't make it onto any of my lists, nor Delany's for that matter; though his opinion of it has warmed considerably in recent years, for a decade-long stretch there he considered it hands down the worst novel he'd ever written. I could see the Prologue to Stars in My Pocket being a good candidate for greatest SF novella ever written, but the novel as a whole? Never. Besides, the greatest SF novel ever written is without a doubt Engine Summer, I'm in complete agreement with Connie Willis on that score. Dhalgren a great fanstasy novel? Bless you! I had it second on the SF list. You are a rebel, sir. A damn smart one too. I haven't read Against the Day but I could readily see Mason & Dixon on the Fantasy list. I concur with you on Neveryona and "Great Work of Time". I would include Swanwick's "Trojan Horse" among the SF novellas or novelettes. And so on. Not much else from me -- so little qualifies, or the things I hope might qualify I feel unqualified to determine, even for myself. Or I can't remember what I've read, it's mostly that really. From KSR, it would be "A History of the 20th Century, with Illustrations". I'd put Tours of the Black Clock on some list or other, so too Kate Horsley's The Changeling of Finnistuath.
Thanks, Ron! (And that reminds that I've been meaning to reread Engine Summer for far too long, because I think I was about 18 when I last read it. But I've just decided to go through the whole Aegypt cycle, which I've been putting off for a while now, so that's the Crowley I'm working on at the moment.)
I debated Mason & Dixon actually, wondering if it fit as fantasy -- certainly, it's as much fantasy as Against the Day is SF, and is my favorite Pynchon novel (must admit I've not yet been able to finish Gravity's Rainbow), so I probably should have included it. Ahh well, all lists contain their own self-destruct mechanisms.
I decided a year or two ago that I was just going to buckle down and decide once and for all that Stars in My Pocket is The Best Science Fiction Novel, because that way when people ask, I have an answer ready at hand. (So many other people say Dune. Pah!) My criteria are idiosyncratic and mostly go back to my feeling that it sums up a certain tendency in the history of SF from roughly July 1939 to its publication, and so it stands as a kind of end point of that classical SFness -- taking it about as far as it can go, exploding a lot of its assumptions, and leaving us with a complete incompleteness. Since then, SF seems to have been working its way back toward 1939, so I expect the next iteration of the Greatest Science Fiction Novel to be published in 2029 (as Stars in My Pocket was published 45 years after 1939). I recognize that mine is perhaps a minority opinion... (Although Carl Freedman, at least, also sees it as among the great SF novels, and in his introduction to the Wesleyan edition says it is the book "that, more decisively than any other, has defined for me just what science fiction is capable of and why it is worth bothering about." So there are two of us in the world!)
I had never until this moment even heard of The Changeling of Finnistuath, so I am thrilled to have a new book to seek out! (Tours of the Black Clock I actually have a copy of but, as with so many other volumes littering the house, have not yet gotten to read it.)
I also did the poll at the very last minute: I discovered it only a couple of hours before its conclusion. I have mainly limited myself to works from the mainstream of English f/sf/h as I see it - broadening it to other traditions or approaches to the fantastic would have enlarged the field of possible choices too much. So no Bruno Schulz or Coetzee, no Donoso or Tournier, no Cortázar or Manganelli or Monterroso, no Janet Frame or Muriel Spark, to name but a few favorite authors who could have fit in. Some less orthodox choices managed to sneak in while I wasn't looking, however. On rereading I would probably rearrange many positions; apart from the first 2-3 places the order is generally fluid. I should have found some place for Sheckley and Cordwainer Smith.
1: Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker 2: Joanna Russ, We Who Are About To... 3: Thomas Disch, 334 4: Jack Womack, Random Acts of Senseless Violence 5: Karen Joy Fowler, Sarah Canary 6: John Crowley, Engine Summer 7: Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall 8: Stanislaw Lem, His Master's Voice 9: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, The Final Circle of Paradise 10: D. G. Compton, The Unsleeping Eye
20th Century Fantasy Novel
1: M John Harrison, The Course of the Heart 2: Alan Garner, The Owl Service 3: John Crowley, Little, Big 4: Anna Maria Ortese, L'iguana (The Iguana) 5: Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter 6: Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle 7: Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast 8: Stella Benson, Living Alone 9: Flann O' Brien, The Third Policeman 10: Russell Hoban, Kleinzeit
20th Century SF/F Novella
1: James Tiptree Jr, Houston, Houston, Do You Read? 2: John Crowley, Great Work of Time 3: Gene Wolfe, The Fifth Head of Cerberus 4: Joanna Russ, Souls 5: Arthur Machen, The White People 6: Tommaso Landolfi, Cancroregina (Cancerqueen) 7: Michael Bishop, Death and Designation Among the Asadi 8: C L Moore, Vintage Season 9: Samuel Delany, The Tale of Gorgik 10: Gardner Dozois, Chains of the Sea
20th Century SF/F Novelette
1: Joanna Russ, The Second Inquisition 2: James Tiptree Jr, The Girl Who Was Plugged In 3: Thomas M. Disch, The Asian Shore 4: Avram Davidson, The Sources of the Nile 5: Henry James, The Friends of the Friends 6: M John Harrison, Gifco 7: M John Harrison, Egnaro 8: Robert Aickman, The Hospice 9: Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood 10: Steven Millhauser, The Barnum Museum
20th Century SF/F Short Story
1: Thomas M. Disch, Angouleme 2: James Tiptree Jr, The Man Who Wouldn't Do Bad Things To Rats 3: Pamela Zoline, The Heath Death of the Universe 4: Elizabeth Bowen, The Demon Lover 5: Shirley Jackson, One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts 6: John Sladek, A Report on the Migration of Educational Materials 7: Karen Joy Fowler, The Elizabeth Complex 8: Richard McKenna, Casey Agonistes 9: R. A. Lafferty, Old Foot Forgot 10: Carol Emshwiller, Abominable
21st Century SF Novel
1: M John Harrison, Light 2: Gwyneth Jones, Spirit 3: Jan Morris, Hav 4: Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Pashazade 5: Christopher Priest, The Separation
21st Century Fantasy Novel
1: Alan Garner, Boneland 2: Nicola Barker, Darkmans 3: Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black 4: Russell Hoban, Angelica Lost and Found 5: Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
21st Century SF/F Novella
1: Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners 2: Elizabeth Hand, Illyria 3: Greer Gilman, A Crowd of Bone 4: Leena Krohn, Tainaron 5: Paul Di Filippo, A Year in the Linear City
21st Century SF/F Novelette
1: Kelly Link, Stone Animals 2: Cristopher Rowe, The Voluntary State 3: Rachel Swirsky, Eros Philia Agape 4: Glen Hirshberg, Struwwelpeter 5: Laird Barron, Strappado
21st Century SF/F Short Story
1: Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn't See 2: Maureen McHugh, Useless Things 3: Karen Joy Fowler, The Pelican Bar 4: Ian R. Macleod, Isabel of the Fall 5: Eleanor Arnason, The Grammarian's Five Daughters
What does astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson recommend for reading? According to 
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In spite of it being ridiculously early in the century to pick a 'best of' list you have an interesting reading list here. Title's I know and enjoy and titles I've not heard of before now. I assume those will be the ones only your are voting for. I'll have to take a look at the master list at Locus. Thanks for posting this.
Any list with Avram Davidson and Donald Barthelme on it is all right by me.
The whole 20th century is too much for me to handle, but I was thinking of taking a crack at the 21st century list. You might have already nailed it, though.
I put my Locus poll on my blog and I'm pleased to say we have some overlap. I'll be mining your list for reading.
A fascinating collection of lists. I'm sad or happy to say I've not read the large majority of the items on them. I missed the deadline, but if I hadn't my lists would all have had fewer items than called for, if any at all. I love you more than a little for having so many Delany titles on your lists. Stars in My Pocket wouldn't make it onto any of my lists, nor Delany's for that matter; though his opinion of it has warmed considerably in recent years, for a decade-long stretch there he considered it hands down the worst novel he'd ever written. I could see the Prologue to Stars in My Pocket being a good candidate for greatest SF novella ever written, but the novel as a whole? Never. Besides, the greatest SF novel ever written is without a doubt Engine Summer, I'm in complete agreement with Connie Willis on that score. Dhalgren a great fanstasy novel? Bless you! I had it second on the SF list. You are a rebel, sir. A damn smart one too. I haven't read Against the Day but I could readily see Mason & Dixon on the Fantasy list. I concur with you on Neveryona and "Great Work of Time". I would include Swanwick's "Trojan Horse" among the SF novellas or novelettes. And so on. Not much else from me -- so little qualifies, or the things I hope might qualify I feel unqualified to determine, even for myself. Or I can't remember what I've read, it's mostly that really. From KSR, it would be "A History of the 20th Century, with Illustrations". I'd put Tours of the Black Clock on some list or other, so too Kate Horsley's The Changeling of Finnistuath.
Thanks, Ron! (And that reminds that I've been meaning to reread Engine Summer for far too long, because I think I was about 18 when I last read it. But I've just decided to go through the whole Aegypt cycle, which I've been putting off for a while now, so that's the Crowley I'm working on at the moment.)
I debated Mason & Dixon actually, wondering if it fit as fantasy -- certainly, it's as much fantasy as Against the Day is SF, and is my favorite Pynchon novel (must admit I've not yet been able to finish Gravity's Rainbow), so I probably should have included it. Ahh well, all lists contain their own self-destruct mechanisms.
I decided a year or two ago that I was just going to buckle down and decide once and for all that Stars in My Pocket is The Best Science Fiction Novel, because that way when people ask, I have an answer ready at hand. (So many other people say Dune. Pah!) My criteria are idiosyncratic and mostly go back to my feeling that it sums up a certain tendency in the history of SF from roughly July 1939 to its publication, and so it stands as a kind of end point of that classical SFness -- taking it about as far as it can go, exploding a lot of its assumptions, and leaving us with a complete incompleteness. Since then, SF seems to have been working its way back toward 1939, so I expect the next iteration of the Greatest Science Fiction Novel to be published in 2029 (as Stars in My Pocket was published 45 years after 1939). I recognize that mine is perhaps a minority opinion... (Although Carl Freedman, at least, also sees it as among the great SF novels, and in his introduction to the Wesleyan edition says it is the book "that, more decisively than any other, has defined for me just what science fiction is capable of and why it is worth bothering about." So there are two of us in the world!)
I had never until this moment even heard of The Changeling of Finnistuath, so I am thrilled to have a new book to seek out! (Tours of the Black Clock I actually have a copy of but, as with so many other volumes littering the house, have not yet gotten to read it.)
I also did the poll at the very last minute: I discovered it only a couple of hours before its conclusion. I have mainly limited myself to works from the mainstream of English f/sf/h as I see it - broadening it to other traditions or approaches to the fantastic would have enlarged the field of possible choices too much.
So no Bruno Schulz or Coetzee, no Donoso or Tournier, no Cortázar or Manganelli or Monterroso, no Janet Frame or Muriel Spark, to name but a few favorite authors who could have fit in. Some less orthodox choices managed to sneak in while I wasn't looking, however.
On rereading I would probably rearrange many positions; apart from the first 2-3 places the order is generally fluid. I should have found some place for Sheckley and Cordwainer Smith.
My Lists:
20th century science fiction novel:
1: Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker
2: Joanna Russ, We Who Are About To...
3: Thomas Disch, 334
4: Jack Womack, Random Acts of Senseless Violence
5: Karen Joy Fowler, Sarah Canary
6: John Crowley, Engine Summer
7: Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall
8: Stanislaw Lem, His Master's Voice
9: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, The Final Circle of Paradise
10: D. G. Compton, The Unsleeping Eye
20th Century Fantasy Novel
1: M John Harrison, The Course of the Heart
2: Alan Garner, The Owl Service
3: John Crowley, Little, Big
4: Anna Maria Ortese, L'iguana (The Iguana)
5: Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter
6: Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
7: Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast
8: Stella Benson, Living Alone
9: Flann O' Brien, The Third Policeman
10: Russell Hoban, Kleinzeit
20th Century SF/F Novella
1: James Tiptree Jr, Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
2: John Crowley, Great Work of Time
3: Gene Wolfe, The Fifth Head of Cerberus
4: Joanna Russ, Souls
5: Arthur Machen, The White People
6: Tommaso Landolfi, Cancroregina (Cancerqueen)
7: Michael Bishop, Death and Designation Among the Asadi
8: C L Moore, Vintage Season
9: Samuel Delany, The Tale of Gorgik
10: Gardner Dozois, Chains of the Sea
20th Century SF/F Novelette
1: Joanna Russ, The Second Inquisition
2: James Tiptree Jr, The Girl Who Was Plugged In
3: Thomas M. Disch, The Asian Shore
4: Avram Davidson, The Sources of the Nile
5: Henry James, The Friends of the Friends
6: M John Harrison, Gifco
7: M John Harrison, Egnaro
8: Robert Aickman, The Hospice
9: Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood
10: Steven Millhauser, The Barnum Museum
20th Century SF/F Short Story
1: Thomas M. Disch, Angouleme
2: James Tiptree Jr, The Man Who Wouldn't Do Bad Things To Rats
3: Pamela Zoline, The Heath Death of the Universe
4: Elizabeth Bowen, The Demon Lover
5: Shirley Jackson, One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts
6: John Sladek, A Report on the Migration of Educational Materials
7: Karen Joy Fowler, The Elizabeth Complex
8: Richard McKenna, Casey Agonistes
9: R. A. Lafferty, Old Foot Forgot
10: Carol Emshwiller, Abominable
21st Century SF Novel
1: M John Harrison, Light
2: Gwyneth Jones, Spirit
3: Jan Morris, Hav
4: Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Pashazade
5: Christopher Priest, The Separation
21st Century Fantasy Novel
1: Alan Garner, Boneland
2: Nicola Barker, Darkmans
3: Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black
4: Russell Hoban, Angelica Lost and Found
5: Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
21st Century SF/F Novella
1: Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners
2: Elizabeth Hand, Illyria
3: Greer Gilman, A Crowd of Bone
4: Leena Krohn, Tainaron
5: Paul Di Filippo, A Year in the Linear City
21st Century SF/F Novelette
1: Kelly Link, Stone Animals
2: Cristopher Rowe, The Voluntary State
3: Rachel Swirsky, Eros Philia Agape
4: Glen Hirshberg, Struwwelpeter
5: Laird Barron, Strappado
21st Century SF/F Short Story
1: Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn't See
2: Maureen McHugh, Useless Things
3: Karen Joy Fowler, The Pelican Bar
4: Ian R. Macleod, Isabel of the Fall
5: Eleanor Arnason, The Grammarian's Five Daughters