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The Tea Master and the Detective (Aliette de Bodard): Consulting detective solicits the skills of a maker of blends that have psychotropic properties, allowing people to survive "deep space" (FTL?) unscathed. Deep space and bad experiences there shape the narrative.

Unlike Peach (see below), I figured out how to read this: close enough to Sherlock Holmes and John Watson to start there. Notably, most of the characters are women; it's as if Bodard has taken to heart "why make Third Spear-Carrier on the Left a man when they could be a woman?" and carried that through to, "why not make everyone a woman?"

As a nominee... it's rock solid writing, would not be sad if this took a rocket home.

The Black God's Drums (P. Djèlí Clark) (2018): Steampunk (?) historical AU in the free city of New Orleans. The orisha-touched protagonist overhears a deal involving the Confederate States and a Haitian scientist who aided in the construction of a doomsday weapon, and enmeshes herself in a counter-plan.

Drums is perfectly acceptable writing. It doesn't do anything new, but it does a competent take on existing memes. Would be a safe choice compared to the wildly variable creativity and skill in the novellas this year.

Beneath the Sugar Sky (Seanan McGuire) (2018):Third of the Wayward Children novellas.

( So close, yet so far. ) The more I think about the moral underpinnings and worldbuilding assumptions of the Wayward Children series, the less I like the implications.

Binti: The Night Masquerade (Nnedi Okorafor) (2018): Binti confronts personal tragedy and a crisis in Meduse-Khoush relationships as she asserts her Hausa identity, even while she continues to change.

( More ambitious than successful. ) Not my favorite of Okorafor's work, and for me, not a strong contender in this year's field.

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach (Kelly Robson) (2018): ( I do not understand what just happened. )

Anyone who understood what this novella was trying to do, please explain it in comments. Anyone as baffled as me, let's be mutually puzzled in comments!

Artificial Condition (Martha Wells) (2018): Previously read. Interstitial, which is a minus, but includes ART, who is currently my favorite minor character in the Murderbot series.

Prelim rankings: Artificial Condition, Tea Master, Drums, Night Masquerade, Peach, Sugar Sky, No Award. I have no idea what Peach was trying to do, but it was failed in interesting ways. I may shuffle rankings before voting closes, but mostly in the middle and bottom of the range.

Me, early 2017: I will be better about reading and writing about what I've read!
Me, November 2017: So that's going to be a 2018 goal, as well as a 2017 effort.

God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine (Victoria Sweet) (2012): A memoir of practicing medicine at Laguna Honda Hospital, one of San Francisco's last-ditch facilities for long term care. The memoir is infused with Sweet's research into the medical practice of Hildegard of Bingen.

I opened this with a vague idea I'd get a look into one facet of San Francisco's health care history. That's not what God's Hotel is most interested in. Its focus is on the human face of doctoring, as experienced by Dr. Sweet during her tenure at Laguna Honda, and how her approach to medicine was influenced by her doctoral research on Hildegard. It's a topic that needs periodic reinforcement: the myriad tools available for medical intervention are secondary to healing the sick. Sweet emphasizes cutting back on dramatic intervention and letting time and the human body do their work. It's the same lesson Shem wrote down forty years ago: the delivery of good medical care is to do as much nothing as possible. Sweet emphasizes the more positive interpretation: the delivery of good medical care is to figure out what's blocking the path to health, and get rid of the blocks, including the egos of the doctors, nurses, and other people involved with caring for the patient.

Provenance (Ann Leckie) (2017): standalone in the same universe as the Imperial Radch trilogy, set shortly after the trilogy, but essentially unrelated. Ingrey Aughskold, daughter of ambitious and politically connected Netano Aughskold, takes a daring course to challenge her brother for inheritance of Netano's name and position. This gets complicated by Hwae politics, an upset Geck ambassador on her way to the Conclave, and the provenance, or lack of provenance, of Hwae's most revered cultural artifacts. If you've read the Foreigner series, the the complicated political dynamics muddied by personal concerns, and the personal relationships muddled up by the political situation, are going to feel pretty familiar. Provenance takes that muddling in directions that feel pretty homey if you've read the Imperial Radch trilogy.

I was lucky enough to attend a reading when Leckie was on book tour for Provenance's release, and got to hear her say - I'm paraphrasing - that she'd learned some things about gender and gender presentation during or after writing the Ancillary trilogy which got put into Provenance. Hwae society has three genders, thrown in as part of the worldbuilding along with the family and inheritance structures. Those social constructs that have profound implications for Ingrey and her family, and tie into the thematic questions about where things come from and how are they - ha! - made significant.

All this, and aliens too. The Geck ambassador's involvement brings with it a pervasive fear of breaking the Treaty. The Geck angle brings with it questions of humanity and identity that thematically ties back to the previous three novels in the universe. Provenance is a lighter and faster read than the Imperial Radch trilogy, but very preoccupying for the characters and enjoyable as a lighter thing.

All Systems Red (Martha Wells) (2017): first novella in the Murderbot series.

Murderbot is the chosen identification of the protagonist, a self-proclaimed cheap security droid whose defining traits are being responsible for a mass casualty event and later hacking the governor module that made it kill 55 people. Secretly free of its override protocols, Muderbot's most significant change in habit is its unrestricted space!TV addiction. All Systems Red covers a contract job gone sideways, which forces Murderbot to reveal its self-actualization to a group of softhearted humans.

Murderbot is... not necessarily the most reliable narrator? Wells has a fondness for a certain type of isolated, distrustful protagonist who is convinced revealing their true nature will end with rejection, more isolation, and maybe death. Murderbot follows the trend, with bonus self-deprecation and psuedo-indifference to the governor module incident that is totally over, cough, which has nothing to do with why it calls itself Murderbot. Ahem.

I suspect this will come up again in the future novellas, which I look forward to reading.

After many years and several tries I finally got through Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics (1993). When I first tried to read it I had a vague assumption it would focus on the mechanics of comics, and it does that, but it goes much deeper into how comics function as art and also into the hows and whys of symbolism in comics. A tougher read than expected but very rewarding.

Raven Stratagem (Yoon Ha Lee) (2017): does one of my favorite things in fiction, the late-story plot twist that is a wonderful surprise and also totally fits with everything that came before. There's limits to that strategy, but Lee hasn't reached them yet.

Thrawn (Timothy Zahn) (2017): Months after reading this I can say it was reasonably clever, it was as good as I expect from Zahn, and the Pryce backstory was nice, but it made me terrifically nostalgic for The Last Command.

Binti (2015) and Binti:Home (2016) (Nnedi Okorafor): young woman defies tradition to attend space university, has adventures. If you've read Okorafor, these novellas will feel very much in her style.

Three Parts Dead (Max Gladstone) (2012): Craftswoman Tara Abernathy, cast out of the Hidden Schools of the Craft, is recruited by Elayne Kevarian, of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to deal with a tricky case of Craft whose roots trace back to the God Wars that changed the world, and cut through a tangle of Craft and personal relationships.

If that summary is a mess, well, the novel is ambitious to a fault. The PoV is tight-ish third noir-ish in a D&D-ish fantasy world. But it most reminds me of old school science fiction, the sort where the clever plot turns on the writer explaining the way everything works except for the pivot-element that swings the final twist into action. In the epilogue, Elayne remarks, engineers: they spend so much time solving physical problems and obeying physical rules, they forget that nonphysical phenomena obey rules every bit as strict.

A couple of years ago the Legion of Honor hosted an exhibit of Breguet watches, fancypants high-end timepieces of the last three or four centuries. The plot of Three Parts Dead reminded me of the tiny interlocked gears powering the conventional hour, minute, and second hands, as well as all the complications that could be imagined and packed into a handheld device. Like some of the honological complications on display, I didn't quite see the appeal of the threads of history and action connecting the deaths of Judge Cabot and Kos Everburning to Tara, Elayne, Novice Technician Abelard of the Church of Kos Everburning, addict and agent of Justice Catherine Elle, Shale of the Guardians (gargoyles), Craftsman Alexander Denovo, and the vampire Raz Pelham. There is a point where piling on history, secondary worldbuilding, personal backstory, and red herrings turns a cats-cradle plot from a tense interconnected story to a mess.

The book does a number of things "right" - women as protagonists, Bechdel test pass, people of color as characters with agency - but the execution it felt bloodless, clockwork, to me.

On a really petty, petty note, every time someone talked about the city of Alt Coulumb I had college physics flashbacks. It was really, really distracting.

A Closed and Common Orbit (Becky Chambers) (2016): Hugo nominee. Double timeline story about AI fish-out-of-water Sidra's first steps into personhood played against young Jane 24 (aka Jane, aka Pepper) and shuttle-AI-slash-parent-ish Owl teaming up to fix a junked spacecraft.

Orbit is a character book. If you're interested in the characters and their personal journeys, you're going to enjoy this book. The plot acts in service of time with the characters, winding through there's Sidra's challenges as an AI stuck in an un-AI body, with attendant dysphoria; an exploration of Port Coriol's people and cultures; and Pepper's history, topped off with a Leverage-esque shuttle heist / family reunion at the end of the novel, because this is a novel about identity, found family, and not leaving people behind.

There's a sense of a lot of influences, not that far under the surface. That doesn't always work to Orbit's benefit. The Dispossessed has a memorable, tightly structured, thematically resonant double timeline narrative. The other double timeline narrative that has rocked my world is Ancillary Justice. There are interleaved usenet-slash-irc-slash-reddit-ish excerpts with people being people, with AIs on the table, accidentally evoking A Fire Upon the Deep. Orbit includes a glancing interest in how to make a person, which is right up my thematic alley, but that's secondary to its focus on self-actualization, see "focus on characters". Orbit is a competent but not brilliant or definitive take on the tropes and ideas in play.

This year I finally finished The House of God (Samuel Shen) (1978), a semiautobiographical novel of a first year medical intern's trial by fire, gomer, and administrivia. It's dated, raunchy in the least erotic way possible - there is an awful lot of kind of objectification and doctor/nurse sex - and yet the issues of patient care raised are still painfully relevant to American health care almost forty years later.

Thick As Thieves (Megan Whalen Turner) (2017): Slave Kamet escapes the calamitous death of his owner in the Mede Empire. Since this is a King's Thief novel, there is a big, plot-changing twist, perhaps even several. If one builds a reputation on surprising readers, there's a point where the readers know the story isn't being told straight and start to question closely the statements the characters take for fact, which works against that element of surprise. There's a limit to the strategy of plot twists for the sake of plot twists, which Turner might be starting to bump up against.

Feminism is Queer: the Intimate Connection Between Queer and Feminist Theory (Mimi Marinucci) (2010): Gender theory and I do best in small doses, so I like to check in every few years to see if my strong feelings on the importance of activism and the incestuous tedium of theory have abated. (Short answer: no.) I'd hoped for a survey of the current state of the field, but most of this slim volume is focused on getting readers up to speed on feminism and queer theory, devoting only the final chapter to Marinucci's analysis of their contemporary intersection. I liked that chapter, and I found the "Feminism Expanded and Explored" chapter useful as well, again as a reminder of the current state of the field from the author's perspective. For example, the reminder that feminism and LGBT are not intrinsically the same movement (see especially p90, on second-wave feminism "the personal is political" vs LGBT "in the privacy of my own house", and '70s arguments on constructed vs essentialist homosexuality in radical feminism vs gay circles). The book also does the "all answers are wrong" theory thing I dislike, finding reasons both gender-neutral and gender inclusive language are wrong (see especially p74). Good primer for a 101 or 201 level, but not what I was looking for.

Tales of the City (Armistead Maupin) (1978): A novel about a woman who comes to San Francisco on vacation and calls her parents to say she's not coming home. Note this was published in 1978, or I might have to change my username to Mary_Ann_Singleton.

The story follows Mary Ann's vacation, job search, and forays into the City social scene, expanding through her social circle, doubling back and rebounding. Part of the entertainment is tracking the inter-relationships: Mary Ann's boss's wife sees gynecologist Jon Fielding on the sly, after an extramarital affair; Jon has an affair with the boss, and used to date one of Mary Ann's housemates; the ex-boyfriend moves in and recognizes Mary Ann as the girl who hit on Jon in a previous chapter. And the entire novel is like that, a sense that within the city, there's some very small circles. Compared to that rich web of interrelationships, the characters themselves are sometimes thinly fleshed out, and there's a distinct element of "plot? What plot?" for much of the book. It made Tales very easy to pick up and put down, as I struggled with my own San Francisco, 2011, sometimes marvelling at the differences of 30 years, sometimes mapping locations against my own experience.

The Shadow Speaker (Nnedi Okorafor) (2007): YA fiction. Teenage Ejii has already seen one small revolution, when Jaa the Red Queen beheaded Ejii's father before his wives, children, and the rest of the village of Kwàmfa. When the shadows tell psychically-gifted Ejii she must leave Kwàmfa with Jaa to prevent a greater war, she packs her veil and goes on an adventure.

This is expanded from an earlier short story, or the short story was excerpted from The Shadow Speaker Either way, it inspired me to pick up one of Okorafor's other novels, Zarah the Windseeker. I liked it, and expected a similar colorful and semi-serious YA novel. The Shadow Speaker delivered, raising questions about the ambiguous powers of violence while keeping me entertained with the story of life after a world-altering event. It develops Ejii's character plausibly, as well as the character of her travel companion Dikeogu. Ejii begins the novel working through the uncertainties of life after a nominally Muslim patriarchy has been violently removed by a woman with a sword, and struggling with her Shadow Speaker gift, as well as her father's death. Jaa removed a tyrant by killing Ejii's father, while Ejii's mother, the chief's ex-wife, urges nonviolence as a key to lasting peace. As Ejii travels she learns more about her gifts, who she is, and the world around her. And what a world! Ginen's plant-tech makes another appearance, as does the future world history shaping Ejii's Africa. Slightly less lighthearted than Zarah the Windseeker, and perhaps more engaging for the older crowd because of that.

Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam (Zainab Salbi and Laurie Becklund) (2005): Nonfiction account of - well, read the (painfully unwieldly) title and subtitles. Salbi's parents were upper middle class socialities drawn into Saddam Hussein's social circle in the '70s, and compelled to stay there as Hussein drew more power, violence and corruption to him. Salbi narrates her experiences of living in physical comfort and emotional abuse in the wake of the Iraqi dictator's social circus, who she made herself into on international soil, and how she reconciled her childhood and experiences as an adult working with women survivors of war.

This is compelling like watching a snake, waiting for the moments when the terrors whispered at the edge of on-demand parties uncoil on center stage. Salbi's experiences are narrated through the double lens of a teenager's immediate and self-centered understanding of the world, refocused by answers elicited as an adult. It's a form of introspection I can empathize with. If anything, that's my significant criticism of the book. I expected I would have to reach more to understand where Salbi was coming from, but the narration is pitched for an American audience, and didn't stretch me the way I was expecting. Maybe not the best book to read on a gray San Francisco weekend, but compelling: a demand to bear witness to human suffering caused by the selfishness and greed of a few. This was published in 2005, when there was greater hope the US invasion of Iraq would have a quick, positive outcome; the thought of the last six years' events on the women and men of Baghdad mentioned in this book weigh on my heart.

Komarr (Lois McMaster Bujold) (1998): Fiction, reread. I didn't intend to burn through the entire novel, but compulsive readability and old habits sucked me in. This time around, I paid more attention to Ekaterin and Tien's relationship than Miles' antics. Trivia: Komarr was the first Bujold I bought new in hardcover.

Cryoburn (Lois McMaster Bujold) (2010): Fiction, reread. Usually, when I read a new novel by a favorite writer, I finish it, and dip back in over the next days or weeks to reread my favorite parts. Cryoburn is the only Bujold novel which I have finished and shelved with no "favorite bits" flip-through. It's not bad - at least, I liked it no less than Diplomatic Immunity, and more than the Sharing Knife novels - but I think the series had several very, very strong novels in short sequence - Mirror Dance, Memory, A Civil Campaign - and after expecting the giant spoiler since, oh, 1998, I was and am in shock at my lack of catharsis.

( Spoiler time! )

This isn't the book I wanted, so Cryoburn suffers a great deal from misplaced expectations. On a second reading, I can sort of hear the thematic chord of frozen para-death, versus living to the max, but I still don't hear it clearly. On the one hand, I can see why the story is constructed that way: life happens, not when you expected it. On the other hand, I still feel the book's lighthearted, right until the shocking moment it's not, and the difference throws me badly.

Weather of the San Francisco Bay Region, Second Edition (Harold Gillam) (2002): Nonfiction. An overview of why SF weather does the wacky things it does. After passing this up more than once at the bookstores, I came to my senses and put it on hold at the library.

The short answer to the weather question still isn't that short, invoking global weather patterns, trends, and oscillations, Pacific ocean currents, and a heavy dose of local geography. Pitched at a teens-and-up lay audience, this gives a neat overview of a complex system, which I found an enticing appetizer. I'm hoping the "further reading" suggested at the end of the book is just as interesting.

My Fight for Birth Control (Margaret Sanger) (1931): Nonfiction memoir covering Sanger's crusade up to 1931. Technically finished on June 1, but I spent most of May slogging through this, I'm counting it. Single-minded, and not always good writing, sometimes listing a paragraph of supporters whose significance readers might guess from their inclusion. It's also tinged with a very pre-WW2 pro-eugenics agenda calling for "unfit" couples to avoid having children, as well as casual talk of "the races" fit to raise the hackles of modern activists. A pervasive reminder of the differences between eras. The memoir is as relentlessly focused as the title suggests; Sanger's personal experiences with marriage, motherhood, divorce (in 1913!) and remarriage are touched on only in the context of her drive for contraception. WW1 is primarily a barrier to easy travel on Sanger's trans-Atlantic American and European tours. The 1929 stock market crash and creeping Great Depression don't make the cut, even to impact fundraising.

Today I believe there are three great tests to character: sudden wealth, sudden power, and sudden publicity. (p197, 1967 Pergamon Press edition)

My Fight for Birth Control illuminates Sanger's professional agenda up to 1931, but any more personal insights must be imputed between the lines. For example, Sanger's divorce gets a page or two, and then there's no mention of romance until she remarries nine years later; at least one website claims she had intimate relations with several men, including H.G. Wells. In her memoir, Sanger goes out of her way to suggest otherwise, at least in Wells' case. It's a splendid reminder that memoirs usually have a purpose other than the perfect truth.

Biology trivia: Margaret Sanger isn't (directly) related to Frederick Sanger, the biochemisty who got a Nobel for dideoxy sequencing, the workhorse DNA sequencing method for a quarter of a century or so.

Numbers game: 8 total finished. 6 new, 2 reread; 5 fiction, 3 nonfiction.