Well OK, yes I did this one. And they were all brilliant (see my reviews of<\/span>\u00a0Perfections<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0Blood and Dust<\/em><\/a> and<\/span>\u00a0Quiver<\/em><\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n OK, I did that one too.<\/span> Finishing The Wheel of Time series<\/a> has removed a weight I didn’t know I was carrying around. I’ve also determined that I won’t need to read the series again until I retire and am scratching around looking for ways to fill the empty void that my life will probably become. Or something.<\/span><\/p>\n She didn’t publish anything! Well, not anything in the long form. She did announce the publication of a novella, but not until 2015. That’s a long time to wait, Ms Biancotti. A long, long time. So, not done but not my fault.<\/span><\/p>\n Yeah, I didn’t read a single one of those novels. They look very nice on my bookshelf though. I know Gary is a huge reader of this blog (*) so my apologies. 2014 is the year of improving my SF reading credibility – promise!<\/span><\/p>\n Well, I bought Jonathan Strahan’s Best of the Year for 2012. Does that count? Short fiction reading went the way of the dodo for me this year. I kept up with Aurealis (barely) and that was about it. My Kindle mocks me with oodles of back issues of Analog, Asimovs, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed etc, which I’ve only dipped into sporadically and randomly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I did actually manage this, in the dying gasps of the year. And pretty much only<\/strong> 2312<\/em> by KSR. I can’t even remember what the other “must read” books of 2012 were.<\/span><\/p>\n Yeah, I didn’t do that. And frankly, I was a bit silly for even suggesting I would. There are a LOT of works published in Australia each year.<\/span><\/p>\n Nailed it! As promised, I completely failed to read the Hugo short list in 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n So, given all that failure, what did I read?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While I was happy to be focusing on the greater Australiasian region, in going back over my admittedly small sample of books read, I didn’t read anything outside of the North America\/UK\/Australia\/NZ block in 2013. And that is really disappointing.<\/p>\n Looking back over my Goodreads reviews, my 5 star reviews included two books by Kirstyn McDermott (Perfections<\/em><\/a> and Caution: contains small parts<\/em><\/a>), The Corpse-Rat King<\/em><\/a> by Lee Battersby, Black Glass<\/em><\/a> by Meg Mundell and\u00a0Blood and Dust<\/em><\/a> by Jason Nahrung.\u00a0<\/span>So, I guess that constitutes my reading recommendations for the year that was (and early 2014 5-star review went to\u00a0Bloody Waters<\/em><\/a> by Jason Franks, but I shouldn’t spoil next year’s reading post too much!).<\/span><\/p>\n The 2013 Australian Women Writers Challenge was another source of inspiration for reading this year, and I’m pleased to say that I made it to my goal<\/a>. I’ve signed up again for 2014 – if you haven’t already, then check it out<\/a>.<\/p>\n What else for 2014? Well, if 2013 has taught me anything it is that making rash predictions is a mugs game. But I’d like to get to that “history of the field” reading I mentioned in last year’s blog. And I’d like to read more fiction from non-North American\/UK\/Australia\/New Zealand sources. And I really do need to keep up with those Best of the Year books. THESE ARE NOT PREDICTIONS. Just statements of desire.<\/p>\n What did you read that tickled your fancy in 2013? What’s coming up in 2014 that you absolutely cannot wait for? Tell all in the comments below.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n (*) This is what we call in the industry “a lie”. Gary K Wolfe wouldn’t be seen within 5 kms of this blog! Well unless he is very lost. Or has a Google alert on his name. In which case: hi!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" <\/p>\n <\/p>Hi,\n Welcome to Mark Webb’s author website. At this point the site is rather sparse – I’ve only recently started writing and there isn’t a lot to show for it right now. You can check out\u00a0my biography<\/a>, see …<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[201,14],"class_list":["post-2354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","tag-musings","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2354"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2357,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2354\/revisions\/2357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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