My New Obsession-MNO!

I have decided to feature a new meme: My New Obsession (MNO). The idea is that we can share what we are into right NOW. This changes all of the time with me, and I suspect you too, so let's let our freak flags fly and show me what you are all excited about!

Music: I can't get enough of "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People. The library has not bought the cd, so I am pondering the expense of ordering the MP3 download from Amazon. Every time I do this, the library buys the cd a week later. Perhaps they are spying on my account....

Books: Release Your Inner Geek

I have read and loved two books this year so far that are just love songs to the inner geek.

Among Others by Jo Walton is about a young girl whose reality is just terrible, and she gets through it by reading science fiction novels and by practicing magic. This is one of the most original books I have read in years. My review is here.

My other (new) fave is Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I saw it at BEA, and grabbed a copy from Netgalley. I could not put it down. This will not appeal to everyone, but as someone who grew up in the 80's and who loves video games (not to the extreme the characters in this story do, but hey). Think The Empty Pot meets Goonies meets Tron meets Brazil (one of my top ten movies of all time!) Yeah, it is something like that. Read my review here.

Movie: I know I am a little late here, but we just watched True Grit and it was great. I didn't understand a third of what Bridges said, so I plan to watch it again with subtitles, but Mattie Ross stole the entire movie for me. Excellent.

TV: Still going strong with Game of Thrones (although, I am not sure I LOVE Game of Thrones). I really like some of the characters in the story, but the huge amount of sex bothers me. Also, when characters I don't like are on screen, the story really drags for me. I kind of see it as a stop gap until True Blood comes back.

Summer shows I can't wait for:

True Blood

Haven

Torchwood: Miracle Day (too bad it is set in the US)

(I really don't watch too much TV)

Movies I can't wait for:

HP 7.2 (have tickets for opening night already)

Super 8

So, if you have some current obsessions, leave a comment!

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Nebula Award Nominees 2017- Short Stories

This post is my progress report on my self-challenge to read all of the 2017 Nebula nominees! So far, I have completed the short story category and most of the the novelettes. I have 3 novellas and 3 novels to go.

Nebula Award Nominees 2017- Short Stories

What fun! I would never have read any of these stories on my own, although I expect some of these will show up in some future anthologies.
I have one personal gripe, and this will come up again in another category, and that is the death of the horror genre. Because they have just killed "horror" and lumped scary stories in with science fiction and fantasy, we get stories like SabbathWine trying to compete with Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies and it's not fair. It really is apples and oranges. Don't believe me about horror? Go find the horror section in the Barnes and Noble. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Griping over, this selection of stories was AWESOME and heavy on the fantasy stories. Seasons and Wardrobe are fan…

Reading Challenge: Read all of the Nebula Nominees

I am on a mission to read all of the Nebula Award Nominees before the awards are presented on May 20th. This was prompted by the fact that I see these awards all of the time and I have only recently gotten hooked on science fiction so I think it is important to understand what the community thinks is the best of the best. I plan to do the exact same thing for the Hugos, but I have time.
Unlike childrens' book awards, in which awards do not in any way equal popularity, readers seem to like to award favorites.

It's no secret I am just crazy about N.K. Jemisin and her writing. Honestly it is because of she and Kameron Hurley and Becky Chambers and Jacqueline Koyanagi and Charlie Jane Anders and John Scalzi and James S.A. Corey (both of them) that I find myself absolutely loving this genre. I have NO desire to go back and read early science fiction with dorky cartoon covers featuring sexy aliens and white dudes holding Jetson-esque blasters. I want to read forward. I like where …

Seize The City

I'm about to hit you with a group game that 1. costs very little money to make 2. sounds a lot harder than it actually is. Ready? Okay!

This summer we will be playing Seize the City. It's modeled after my game Seize the Castle. The only thing changing here are the trivia questions will now be super hero themed and instead of a castle in the center, there will be a "city". Something akin to this:
Image borrowed from Etsy for visual aid purpose only. My teen volunteers will actually be making the city from scratch and it will look however they want it to :)

Because this game already exists in castle form, you will just have to use your imagination.
And because NO Thing is really original here is what started me on the path to Seize the Castle greatness: http://www.ellenjmchenry.com/homeschool-freedownloads/math-games/stormthecastle.php

The Game:

You will need:

Up to 20 players
2 mats with grids taped out on them
1 cardboard/foam core castle (or city, for summer)
Thre…

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