phoenixfalls

So, when last I posted, I was gung-ho about writing a ficlet a day for the month of June, and was asking for any and all prompts in my own personal kinkmeme of sorts to aid me in that pursuit. June felt like a good month for the exercise -- my work schedule looked to be relatively stable, and between attending some out-of-town training and being scheduled on a later shift (which shortened my commute significantly) I was expecting substantial evening free time compared to the rest of the past few years.

And then several opportunities for promotion became available all at once, and I got caught up in a whirlwind of prepping applications, scheduling interviews, prepping for interviews, travelling to interviews, doing follow-up after the interviews. . . and then being offered a new position! In my state capital! Which was 400 miles away from my (then) current city!

It's a complicated situation -- even though it's a promotion, the ins-and-outs of the way the position is designed meant that I did not receive relocation assistance. SO. I took a night to celebrate, then immediately got caught up in a new whirlwind: scouring rental sites for possible new homes, scheduling appointments to see the likeliest prospects, driving 400 miles up the state to make those appointments, driving 400 miles back down the state to get back to work, working my regular 45-50 hour week, packing up my whole life, submitting an application for the best place I saw, following up with the rental company, following up with my employers for my employment verification, following up with my prior landlords for my rental history, contacting moving companies, discovering moving companies are OBSCENELY OVERPRICED and instead planning the move using U-Haul, bribing friends to help load the truck, getting thrown for a loop when a start date of August 12th turned into a start date of August 30th. . .

TL;DR: I spent the summer getting a new job and moving my whole life 400 miles!

So in all that, my kinkmeme kind of fell off my radar? And I kind of mostly fell off the internet altogether? Oops?

But I'm now in my new place, and my new job, and I will no longer be working 10 hours a day 6 days a week! More like 8 hours a day, plus frequent (employer-financed) travel after regular work hours. Which will hopefully mean more free time. . . when I finally finish getting unpacked, of course!

And just because it amuses me, here, have a picture of the boxes left to unpack: my library. Keep in mind, this is my library after TWO significant downsizing operations in the past two years. That left-hand stack is three boxes deep, the other stacks are only two boxes deep.

Fine I'll do the thing. There's only so many times I can see people talk (even briefly!) about all these SFF books without throwing my own two cents into the ring.

So:
Bold means I've read it
Underlined means I've read something else by the author
*Asterisked means I own it but have not yet read it

( It's 100 books, be warned! )

So it took someone snarking in the comments on the post for me to realize the list is 96% female authors -- I knew that women were well-represented, but hadn't quite clicked that there were only three men (all non-white). (Someone in the comments claimed to count only 92 female authors, but I think they're confused by a few of the distinctly male pseudonyms.) Also, I got all the way to the "W"s before I realized it was alphabetical by author! Clearly I am not at my most observant today.

I've only read fourteen, which seems very low for me. I can only add ten more counting the entries where I've read other books by that author, just not the specific one on the list. Another fifteen are waiting patiently to be read on my bookshelves, but that still doesn't bring me to even half. If I included books I have access to via my parents' library, which is chock full of SFF paperbacks from the 60s and 70s, I think I'd finally break the halfway point.

But looking through the entries where I have nothing marked. . . there's a lot of subgenres I'm just not into. Apocalypses, dystopias, cyberpunk. . . they just really aren't my thing, and I'm not going to be adding these books to my to-be-read pile when there are so many more books that *are* more my thing already on it.

Which is to say, while I very much admire the intent behind the list to highlight non-white, non-male authors (in contrast to all the other year-end lists that are invariably overwhelmingly white and male), it still is not the list *I* would make, if I were to make a list of a hundred SFF titles people should consider reading in the coming year. :)