it went up two days ago and i never got a fuckin notification!!!

ohhhh neither did i wtf

you know what i miss, i miss when they didn't condense this shit into less than a month, and i miss when you could do write-ins

i'm still obsessed with this contest for reasons beyond my understanding, but it used to be so much better

remember the days when it started in october and had three rounds!!!!

YES

I do

I do love adding everything in these sections to my to-read even though I will probably never have the chance to read them

but it is a great suggestion list

yeah, same

wait why is audiobook its own category lmao...

That's new

current reads i've discovered on these lists so far: i'm already in the middle of Martyr! and Colored Television

i'm liking them both, but the latter much more than the former

oh good i've read at least a few of the YA fic picks, lol

i read I Was a Teenage Slasher recently and wished i'd liked it more than i did, because stephen graham jones is such a fantastic writer; it was very much a "objectively a good book but not really my thing" situation

ah I have Teenage Slasher on my list and haven't gotten to it yet

i just don't really care about slasher tropes... like i loved My Heart Is a Chainsaw but would have liked it even more if the slasher parallels had been a magical-thinking thing on the part of the protag rather than literally real

wow, stories about the fae are REALLY popular in romantasy right now huh

i love paranormal stuff and usually have no problems with books taking paranormal twists, but "traumatized girl turns to horror movies to cope and believes that the killer operating in her town is exactly like a horror movie slasher and she can stop him and save everybody using her encyclopedic knowledge of slasher films" is a fascinating premise to

me, but it's automatically a little less fascinating when she's actually right

but also her being vindicated is a big part of the story, so taking that away would make it a completely different book

yeah I read Chainsaw but haven't read the second and third yet, also on the list

and I Was a Teenage Slasher takes that and dials it up to 11, in a very "what i want this book to be is extremely not what this book is, but that's not a failure on the book's part" way; i can't actually be disappointed because what it's doing is done very well

reviewing these nominations just reinforces to me how off the beaten path my reading tastes are lmao

ltmutiny: Maas started a mass move into the Fae

chirality i haven't read either of the sequels either, mostly because i suspect i loved My Heart Is a Chainsaw by accident and i won't like the sequels nearly as much, lmao

but man, he really is such a good writer. i'm sure i'll get to them eventually

he really is a great writer and the story worked better for me since I love slashers, hahaha

yeah!! and if i remove my own preferences from the situation i love that she was proven right in the face of all the people who treated her like shit, even if it ended sadly

I get what you mean though, sometimes a book is just not what I was looking for lmao. that happened to me this year with the Mesmerist

well written, good book, just not for me

i just really really love magical thinking used as a plot device. i am never the person going "ugh, X book/movie/show was ruined when the magical stuff turned out to be all in the character's head"

LOL I love magical realism too

i think what it comes down to for me is that i love supernatural stuff, but i'm very picky about how it's incorporated

sometimes i'm "omg what a cool twist, i love it" (usually when the thing has to do with ghosts, lmao), sometimes i'm "ugh, what do you mean the magic is literal"

you should read Lone Women if you haven't yet

Victor Lavelle

Chlorine by Jade Song was VERY cool, that's the one I was thinking of that I was trying to remember

adding both of these, ty

oh one more -- the Centre was fantastic

the Centre doesn't have a real focus on supernatural or magical thinking elements, it was just very good and has WOC lesbians LOL

my weakness [eyes]

oops

?

there we go

you'd def like it, the whole book is purposeful commentary on colonialist appropriation of foreign cultures LOL

listen i saw "language school that makes unrealistic promises about fluency" and went YES

Chlorine has a ton of magical thinking in it and also a WOC lesbian now that I'm thinking about it, the romance just isn't the point in either of these

man there was a book you rec'd me ages ago too, i'm trying to remember what it was

oh man uhhhhh what do you remember about it

idk, i don't know if i've read it yet!

was it Sundial by Catriona Ward

OH my plurk ping history says The First Bright Thing

no but i ADORED sundial

because that's all deeply fucked up mother/daughter surrealist stuff, you'd like it

LMAO OH WELL THEN

the First Bright Thing was indeed good, very heartwarming compared to these other recs I'm giving you LOL

sundial was another one where i wished the supernatural element hadn't been so literal and i loved the first half more than the second, but still. amazing read

if you liked Sundial you might add Monstrilio to this list, though it's a very literary take on that kind of topic

catriona ward's mind is amazing

YEAH I have more stuff from her sitting around I need to read.... so many books not enough time

monstrilio is also on my list i think!

The Last House on Needless Street wasn't nearly as good as Sundial imo, but it still has that mindfucky element to it

i thoroughly enjoy any book that makes me go "what the fuck. what the fuck is happening. i have no idea where the author is going with ANY of this" throughout the reading process

oh yeah there's that one and then there's her new one I haven't tried yet either

oh did you read the Echo Wife yet because that was my full on "what the fuck is happening" book

yes that one was great, too; i need to reread it at some point

OH MY GOD FINALLY I know someone who's read it, that one blew my mind

I need more main character ends up being an abuser as well as a victim twists

a lot of these are great for reading twice: once for going in blind, then the second time for picking up on all the little hints

yes so true

"I need more main character ends up being an abuser as well as a victim twists" HARD SAME, it's a tough needle to thread, but when it's done well i adore it

yeah Echo Wife just really took me fully for that ride in a beautiful slow reveal 👌

Very happy to see The Bog Wife and A Sweet Sting of Salt get nominated

Also Absolution but that one wasn't a surprise to me

as someone who enjoyed The Ministry of Time, oof is that book in the wrong category

oh i just checked that one out! what category would you have put it in?

just general fiction. the book has some sci-fi elements, but it's one where if you're a sci-fi fan, you're not going to read it for the science fiction of it all

I really enjoyed it! but it's a bit out of place compared to some of the other works in that category (Vandermeer, Corey, 'Orbital', etc.)

fair! and i'm not surprised that you read it; i absolutely thought of you terror folks when i read the summary

victim by andrew boryga is another i've read and recommend

already reading Nuclear War, which is harrowing ofc

Sociopath by Patric Gagne was fascinating

man, no humor category this year?

I also recommend 'The Wide Wide Sea' but it is very nonfiction and very dad book, so you gotta have patience with it if that's something you don't read that often.

oh i literally just added that to my list as i'm going through

and then i read a bunch and promptly forgot to come back to this

colored televison - finished and really liked. the sort of book that gives you no easy answers or neat endings

annie bot - also the same as above, kind of, despite the very different premise/subject matter! on the face of it it's a standard "robot gains sentience, comes to realize that they deserve to be treated better than they are" story, but one with a bit more depth and messiness than a lot of these. not my favorite robot book by any means, but i appreciated it

darling girls - pretty standard psychological thriller/mystery. nothing stand-out, but it's a genre i always love to binge

the family experiment (still reading) - i love the premise of john marrs' near-future dystopia books, but the writing has always struck me as meh. i read an unrelated psychological thriller of his over the summer and was honestly really surprised to discover it was the same author, because while i didn't think that one was stand-out amazing either, i did

think it was much better written. it was first-person POV and his dystopian books are always third-person POV, so maybe i just like his first-person writing better? it was so much more subtle and punchy; it's like he doesn't know how to show instead of tell unless he's literally doing it in the character's voice

anyway i like-but-don't-love this one

the kingdom, the power, and the glory: american evangelicals in an age of extremism (still reading) - 🙃 fascinating, horrifying

yours for the taking - really liking this one a lot, but i don't have much to say about it specifically, idk

i'm starting to worry about this black box of doom - every bit as fun as the title/premise sounds, and then some; this is my favorite of the bunch so far

oh and for anybody who wants to be book buddies: my goodreads, my storygraph

The Ministry of Time is also delightful; i'm obsessed with the premise and the execution is great

disappointed by several that didn't make it to the final round, but especially I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, with which i am obsessed

i'm still a couple hours from the end and so my opinion might change, but right now i feel strongly that it was miscategorized; it's 0% scifi. not even "it doesn't ~feel~ scifi", i'm 90% of the way through and there are absolutely no scifi elements whatsoever

Right???,

A few of the goodreads sci-fi choices are "well there's time travel or something weird happening, ergo it is sci-fi"

I'm fine with the Ministry of Time being sci-fi even though it's ~literary or not hard sci-fi, but like. this one isn't even futuristic. it takes place in the modern day