S&L Podcast - #482 - Let's Talk About Seax, Baby
/We've opened nominations for Mad Marchness!, our March tournament of book picks. Plus, the failure of the Hugos and the rise of Romantasy. And we begin our first impressions of Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne.
WHAT ARE WE NOMMING?
Tom: Spanikopita Quesadilla
Veronica: Protein shakes
QUICK BURNS
Tamahome: A link for Peter F. Hamilton's next book in September.
Jan: The Guardian has an article about the rise of the Romantasy genre
Chris K: Locus has posted their 2023 Recommended Reading List
Oaken: Scalzi notes that Glasgow Worldcon has, in light of the Chengdu incident, committed to transparency in the 2024 Hugo Awards.
Seth: Fourth Wing helped curb Big Five publisher domination of the 2023 bestseller lists (as reported by Publisher's Weekly).
BARE YOUR SWORD
Ruth: Unusual for both the hosts to admit that they didn’t really like the book. It’s definitely an unusual choice for S&L. It’s in that zone of not quite science fiction where it has unrealistic aspects but, as Tom says, the world isn’t fully built.
Stephen: Star Trek Season 2 Episode 14 "Wolf in The Fold" written by Robert Bloch had a murderous immortal entity. The crime was first placed on Scotty, who was last seen with the victim and couldn't remember what happened because Scotty got drunk on shore leave. So, I am giving the The Shining Girls a full hearted "it is a SF book." I remember Dan as being a former Crime Beat reporter who moved over to the Sports Beat
Paul: Hardcover should definitely hire Veronica.
I'm going to join, download the app, and give it 4 stars. My review: The only thing that would make the app better is if Veronica Belmont worked there. Then the app would be unstoppably awesome!"
"Dear Veronica,
Losing your job is never fun but believe it or not when it happened to me I found it not as bad as people say.
I was unemployed between July 2022 and February 2023.
It was a time to catch up on sleep, see/visit with people I haven't for a long time for whatever reason.
Volunteering helped a lot; it got me out of the house and was a fun way to network. I helped out at the local zoo, non-profit movie theater and Friends of the Library.
Friends of the library are non-profits that get donations of used books and sell them to the community for low costs. It's great for discovering books and authors that you never knew about or been meaning to try. It's how I found some old Fantasy novels from 1980s and 90s by Dennis L. McKiernan.
Best,
David"
BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION
Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne
What's going on in your thought-cage?
ADDENDUMS
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You can also support the show by buying books through our links! Find links to the books we talk about and some of our favorites at swordandlaser.com/picks
