Here comes the rain again

[dolorosa_12]

The weather broke with a violent thunderstorm and torrential rain on Thursday night, which was such a welcome relief from the relentless heat that I ran outside into the courtyard and stood in the rain, letting it pour all over me. Although my office has air conditioning, not every part of my library does, and in any case it is a forty-five-minute walk from my house. It's been exhausting working these past few days as a result. But after the thunderstorm, things cooled down — it rained all day yesterday (trapping me in the house with an excellent book — what a hardship!), and for much of today, so other than unavoidable errands I've stayed at home as much as possible.

Given I'm about to go away on holiday, I tried to read all the remaining library, and otherwise borrowed books in my collection, finishing two lent to me by notasapleasure, and one that Matthias had borrowed from his own workplace. The former were Helen Oyeyemi's collection of short stories, What is Not Yours is Not Yours, all of which are strange, unsettling magical realism tales, linked by the presence of keys which unlock various physical and metaphorical things, and a short, lyrical story by Mathias Énard called Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants (translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell), which is about Michelangelo in Istanbul, designing a bridge for the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II, but is also about creation, immortality, and memory. The final book was a collection of essays by Alice Bolin entitled Dead Girls, and I found it mixed in quality. The title essay — about that genre of American story that begins with a dead, murdered white girl, and exposes the dark heart of a town and community (think Twin Peaks, Veronica Mars, Pretty Little Liars, True Detective, etc) — is excellent, as is the one on survivalists, fundamentalists, serial killers, and vast, unsettling American landscapes. The other essays, mainly concerned with Bolin's aimless years living through a series of dead-end jobs in LA, wondering what to do with her life, are less interesting.

We also managed to make it out to one of the outdoor Cambridge Shakespeare Festival performances, of Henry IV, Part 1. These happen every year, and are a nice way to spend a warm evening, although I do find myself wishing they'd be a bit more adventurous with their choice of plays. They normally do the usual suspects: Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and a handful of the most well known comedies and tragedies. That was partly why we opted to go with a history play. In any case, the production was fine, the evening was warm, and we ate a very nice picnic in the garden of the college where the show took place. They're doing Part 2 in August, and we'll probably go to that too. Given I saw Henry V at the Globe earlier in the summer, it seems to have been a year for Shakespeare's history plays.

Other than that, and watching (finally) the Fyre Festival documentary on Netflix (which had me raising my eyebrows and clapping my hand over my mouth in horror from the very first minutes), I've voted in the Hugo Awards (I have very strong opinions in some categories, and in others I really don't mind which finalist wins), cooked a bit, and tried to venture back onto Twitter without having a panic attack about the ongoing catastrophe which is British politics. So far my mental health is holding firm, but we'll see...

I know some other people here are Hugos voters. Have you made your decisions yet? Which categories are proving the hardest for you?

Comments

[trascendenza]

it rained all day yesterday (trapping me in the house with an excellent book — what a hardship!)
One of my favorite kind of days!

And good luck with the mental health+Twitter combo, that can be quite tricky.

[dolorosa_12]

It really was great to be indoors in the rain with a book, and the book in question (Aliette de Bodard's The House of Sundering Flames) was a great choice.

I'm mostly able to keep my mental health under control at the moment, but I've decided that my return to Twitter will just be a temporary thing in the lead up to, and duration of, Worldcon. It's too tricky to manage long-term.

[forestofglory]

I feel a little bit bad saying this but having been a hugo voter for a while actually voting is my least favorite part. I love nominating. Voting is just really hard. If I like everything in category its hard to rank it. Same if I don't like things. And some things are just really hard to compare within a category.

Anyways I went over my ballot for a final time, but I'm allowing myself to not spend too much energy on it, and just rank one or two things in some categories.

I'm looking forward to watching the ceremony though. The last several years have featured some great speeches and I'm generally very excited for the winners even if I didn't vote for them.

[dolorosa_12]

I thought it might be harder to vote this year, but actually in most categories I had one very clear thing I wanted to win, and was less impressed with everything else. The only difficult category for me was the Campbells, where I wanted almost everyone to win!

I'm really looking forward to the ceremony because for the first time I will be there myself!

[forestofglory]

Well I'm glad you didn't find it difficult. I always have trouble ranking things lower on my list.

I went to the ceremony last year and it was great. I was especially happy to see the then unnamed YA award given out for the 1st time since I worked on creating it. This year I'll just be watching the livestream -- if it even works.

[cloudsinvenice]

It's been pouring here too, though luckily it behaved fairly well while we were in transit.

With much guilt, I have given up in even getting the Hugo packet read, much less voted on...

[dolorosa_12]

Glad to hear you missed the worst of the rain while in transit.

After a while, I gave myself permission not to read stuff in the packet I knew would feel like a chore and was unlikely to change my opinion in it category. I was still able to vote in pretty much every category, although some of my rankings are based on what I know of the authors' work, rather than the actual books/series in question.

[cloudsinvenice]

I do like that the FAQ states that you don't have to have read everything in a category, you just have to be confident that the thing you are voting for deserves a Hugo.

[auroracloud]

I'm having so much problems with the Best Novel category. I still don't know which order to put them into. Also I still need to read Revenant Gun (I really want to read it), and I have three days left. *flails*

I'm also pretty flaily and unsure on the short story category. I know which three go first, but I'm not sure in which order, and I also don't know about the order of the rest. And I have trouble ordering my first four favorites of the novella category, but I'll probably manage. If nothing else, I can put the less well known ones first, on the grounds that the bigger hits will get votes anyway.

[dolorosa_12]

I hope you were able to make a decision in the end! For me it was no question — I put Spinning Silver first, and then the rest of the order didn't bother me.

I only felt four of the Short Story nominees deserved to be there (and the last of those four only just), so I actually used No Award in that category. Again, with Novella I only really liked three nominees, although in that category I didn't use No Award. I'm pretty sure I know what will win in both categories, and I think I'll be disappointed in both instances...

[merit]

Winter is the 'dry' season here (and after a pretty dry summer) so it has been ages since a proper thunderstorm. I look forward to a nice day housebound during the rain!! one day.

Pretty sure my workplace would riot w/o aircon, but this is Queensland so the necessity is somewhat higher (usually) than England. Though yikes, I've been reading about the heatwave in Europe and that is well above the usual high temps here.

[dolorosa_12]

I grew up in Canberra and then moved to Sydney for six years, and I can't remember anywhere other than cinemas and shopping centres having aircon. It might be different now — I certainly wouldn't want to live in inland Sydney without airconditioning these days! Australian houses tend to be built to let air in and heat out — big windows, wind tunnels, high ceilings etc — whereas British ones are designed to keep heat in, meaning they really cannot cope with temperatures over the mid-twenties. It's been really unpleastant!