I’ve bought UK versions of American books before, and usually the only thing different is the punctuation. This one though, the actual content of the book is different. It’s Good Girl, Bad Blood which is the sequel to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. I first noticed “mum” instead of “mom”, but then also “999”, “solicitor”, “A-levels”, etc. So finally I caved and bought an American copy from Target and it’s even more different than I thought. Whole paragraphs replaced! The name of the town changed!

Has anyone else seen this before? I thought this was so bizarre.

Edit: I have since learned that the UK version takes place in the UK whereas the US version literally takes place in the US. Which makes all the “translations” make sense. I read the US version of the first book (which takes place in Fairview, Connecticut) and then bought the UK version of the sequel (which takes place in Little Kilton, England). Hence, confusion. I’m loving all these anecdotes about weird translations/localizations though!

This year I noticed that a lot of the books I wanted to read were already Hard Mode so I decided to do the entire card that way. Anyway I've finished the card and so as usual I'm going to do mini-reviews for everything! These might not be very exciting but I do some numerical analysis at the end.

Note on ratings: Internet rating systems are broken and so if I was rating these books on Amazon/Goodreads I'd rate them more highly. I've just listed quick numbers to give my overall feeling about a book and not taken them particularly seriously.

SQUARES/REVIEWS

All 2021 Hugo Nominees for Short Stories

Bingo Square: Five SFF Short Stories

Mini-review: I didn't have the experience I expected. I didn't have a BAD experience with these stories but I think the main word I'd use to characterize them is "safe." Their overall impact on me was similar to how I feel after looking up cute cat pictures: positive but I don't know if any of them will really stick with me.

That said I liked Metal Like Blood in the Dark the best. The idea of machines learning to parse the concept of lying was fun.

Rating: 3 / 5

All 2020 Hugo Nominees for Short Stories

Bingo Square: Five SFF Short Stories (AGAIN!)

Mini-review: Because short stories are always going to vary a lot I decided to try a different set. The subject matter of these was much darker but they still weren't for me. I felt like the stories by and large weren't fundamentally about exploring subjects so much as providing the proper resolutions.

What do the words "depth" and "complexity" actually mean, both when we verbalize them and when we use them for ourselves? The longer I spend on the internet the more I feel like the semiotics of this are deeply self-referential and self-serving.

Rating: I think in the end I have to acknowledge that I can only be myself and if the well-known awards aren't a good signpost for me to find the stories I'm looking for then I need to accept that the human experience is unimaginably wide / 5 (rounded up)

A Hero Born (Jin Yong)

Bingo Square: Set in Asia

Mini-review: This is one of those where I had to stretch to be able to appreciate the book but did in the end. It's mostly uninterested in character interiority and that's something I strongly prefer in action books. That said I'm glad to have read another book not written even slightly for the English market and it helped me understand how/why Sarah Lin changed her style for her wuxia work.

Rating: 4 / 5

I always see people say that American versions of cuisines like Chinese or Italian, are bastardized versions created by white Anglo Americans which usually isn’t the case. Italian American food was created when poor southern Italians came to America and adapted their cuisine to what they had available to them in America, after gaining some wealth many even added meat to dishes that didn’t have it before. In the case of Chinese American food, it was originally created by Chinese immigrants who came to America in the 19th century and adapted to both what they had available as well as American palettes. Many Chinese immigrants owned restaurants back then and despite most people who work in Chinese restaurants today being recent immigrants from Asia, not the descendants of the original immigrants, Chinese American food is what Americans expect when they get Chinese food. But with the growing number of wealthy Chinese immigrants, more traditional Chinese restaurants are popping up. In the case of Mexican food some of the larger chains fall under the category of bastardization but what we think of as Tex Mex is not Mexican food made by white Texans, it’s the cuisine of tejanos, the descendants of Mexicans who lived in Texas before it was part of the United States. There’s a lot more cases of this but this story repeats over and over again. That’s why it’s annoying when I see people, particularly people from countries many Americans trace their ancestry from, call the cuisine of their Americanized cousins a fake or bastardized version of their cuisine. It seems kinda classist too since the reason those people left in the first place is usually poverty

Not taking a dig like, but what's the reason? I know they're shite, but why? Not understanding British humour? British humour not translating well to American audiences?

I could literally make a giant list of failed American shows that are based on British ones. Taskmaster, Inbetweeners, IT Crowd, Coupling. Those are the most offensively bad

The only one that could be considered better really is The Office and that stopped being like the British version after season 1. Most people don't seem to like that season either

May was another good reading month, and I found time to finish five more books from my Bingo card. Four of the books were good to very good, and the fifth was a collection of short non-fiction articles of variable quality.

……………………….

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse (A to Z Genre Guide) takes a fairly standard fantasy plot then kicks it up a level with good characters and a refreshingly novel setting. Briefly, the basic plot has a warrior and a priest reluctantly joining forces to combat monsters attacking local settlements. It’s the characters and the setting that bring this book to life. An environmental collapse has led to extensive flooding, drowning much of North America (and presumably the rest of the world). Surviving communities at higher elevations have maintained a fragile civilization, but the situation is complicated by the return of Native American gods and associated magic. In an ironic twist, the Navajo (Dinétah) community in what was formerly Arizona and New Mexico is now relatively privileged, being magically protected from the surrounding world. The story is carried by an interesting and engaging lead character, a young Diné women who is dealing with the traumatic loss of her family, first during the aftermath of the flooding and then at the hands of monsters summoned by a wizard. These events have led her to train as a monster killer, who naturally becomes involved when a monster kidnaps a local child. It soon becomes apparent that she’s going to need to find help to get to the root of the problem, which kicks of the main events of the story. Overall, this is an excellent debut novel, well written and enjoyable to read. The original setting is what lets the book stand out from more generic competitors. Recommended for anyone looking for a strong BIPOC female lead or for a non-standard fantasy world.

BINGO SQUARES: A to Z Genre Guide, First Person POV, Book Club OR Readalong Book, Revenge-Seeking Character, X of X title, Debut Author, Witches

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Rocket Fuel: Some of the Best From Tor.com Non-Fiction by Bridget McGovern & Chris Lough (SFF-related Nonfiction). The title is self-explanatory – this is a collection of non-fiction articles published on Tor.com from about 2008 to 2017. Like all collections this is a mixed bag; some articles were engaging and informative, others didn’t work for me, but I suspect that most readers will find something of interest here. The subjects that stood

I feel like this square was made for me.

Some backstory: I'm an early-career academic teaching in media and communications, got my PhD with a thesis on Batman and 9/11. Some of my published book chapters and journal articles involve Doctor Who, Star Trek, The Matrix, Westworld, Altered Carbon and Blade Runner (and, yes, more Batman). I'm currently writing a book for Routledge (due out late-2022/early-2023) on cinematic television, using a ton of SFF examples like Twin Peaks, Game of Thrones, the Watchmen TV series, Russian Doll, and a bunch of others.

What this means is I've read a shitload of SFF non-fiction for my job.

Since I'm a big believer in open academia, I'll recommend this bunch of books that range from casual to hardcore analysis, from biographical to densely deconstructive. I'll also be recommending books that don't cost $1billion each, since academia is usually prohibitively expensive, and most of these are also available in e-book form.

This is not an exhaustive list, and if there's interest I'm happy to post more later!

LIGHTER READING (accessible to everyone)

• The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries and Marvels of Christopher Nolan (Tom Shone - Knopf Publishing Group)

This is actually my pick for the square this year, and I'm currently halfway through it. Shone sheds a big, readable light on Nolan's work through interviews with the man himself, and many of his colleagues, about every film of his up to and including Tenet. There's some reference to classic film scholarship from the likes of David Bordwell, but it's explained very accessibly: you also don't have to have read Jorge Luis Borges or seen classic 1950s crime films to know what Shone's talkin about, as everything is covered with enough detail. If you're a fan of Nolan's work, pick this up.

• The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Non-fiction (Neil Gaiman - Headline)

One of fantasy's greatest writers collects a ton of non-fiction pieces that run the gamut. Most fans will likely have already read this, but it's still a great collection even if you're not a huge reader of Gaiman's work.

• Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner, 2017 Revised Edition (Paul Sammon - Dey Street Books)

This is still on my to-read list, but the snippets I've read were fantastic. This is quite possibly the definitive story of Blade Runner's conception and execution, with the revised edition supplying extra interview material on the eve of 2049's release

I'm currently listening to an Audiobooks which is read from originals and reading the books which is in American's (It's a complete set of 7 books from kindle) because I'm not a native speaker and need some kind of subtitles. And so many things have changed from the original. I understand chaging vocabs from British to American, but sometimes the whole sentence is gone and sometimes the whole converstation is missing! Sometimes they even changed the position of a short paragraph...Why are they doing this? I'm just really curios.

Could be snacks or food you don't need but fancy (the amount of times I've wanted to buy myself a box of chocolates but haven't had the budget !), a book, a toy, literally whatever as long as it's £15 or less. Prime items only, UK only (including NI :) ) and the usual rules for accepting offers of course :') I'll pick 3 people tomorrow (/today it's 1am rn haha) at 2pm randomly if there enough entrants, we all deserve a treat sometimes and in such hard times I'd love to help someone out :) If you'd like to enter just comment what it is you want and, if you wanna, why, maybe tell a lil joke or something hehe

much love !

Fight takes place in a forest with some marshes, it's warm, you can't leave the server which is around 500 by 500 feet, it suits all the animals conditions for temperature

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EDIT: u/serenity-as-ice pointed out that The Bone Ships doesn't qualify for the necromancy square, so I hope I didn't mislead anyone into reading it to fill that square (it's still a fantastic book that I highly recommend). I'll update this post when I've finished reading a different book for that square!

As a summary, the card is visible here. I initially started the challenge to discover a few new writers and subcategories of SFF I’m not familiar with (mainly thanks to recommendations on this subreddit) and ended up with a full card without really realizing it. I made lots of great discoveries and now have a huuuge TBR list full of all the other books written by these amazing authors!

I enjoyed all the books listed below, for different reasons… but I don’t feel competent enough to give them ratings: the difference between books I consider to be good or absolutely great is just a matter of taste… I’ve realised I especially like reading about people peopling (they have realistic personalities, the good guys are trying to understand others and aiming to be better people), soft magic system (mysterious events rather than codified rules of magic), in original settings and with beautiful, poetic prose. I’ve added hearts (<3) before the titles I loved most and would absolutely recommend to people who don’t dislike the things I listed above :)

So here are the mini-reviews, feel free to let me know if I did anything wrong, and I hope they will make you want to discover some of these books!

First row:

<3 Novel Translated from its Original Language: Kenji Miyazawa - Night Train to the Milky Way.

It’s actually a collection of poetic, dreamlike short stories about humanity, kindness, and the beauty of our world. The main one, Night Train to the Milky Way, tells the story of a boy who takes a train through the night sky with his best friend. It’s a beautiful tale about loss and grief, written after the author lost his sister, and one of the most touching texts I’ve ever read… It’s my favourite read on this card, and I deeply recommend it if you’re OK with your eyes turning into fountains (plus, it was published after the author’s death about a century ago, so it’s probably in the public domain and available for free online)

Setting Featuring Snow, Ice, or Cold: Ursula Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness.

We discover a planet where people are neither

>Nothing is impossible.
The word itself says: "I'm possible"!
Audrey Hepburn

Before unveiling the books on my bingo card, I'd first like to thank:

u/Miguelular ... for introducing me to this book bingo a few weeks ago. If it weren't for him, I'd probably never have discovered ...

u/Fantasy ... where my love for SFF-books does only continue to grow out of proportion. Thanks to book bingo I was finally motivated to catch up on my backlog for my reading challenge of 100 books a year on ...

Goodreads ... where my friends help me to discover both popular and - above all - less known books. Some of them are also active here on Reddit. Waving to u/Miguelular, u/barb4ry1 and u/RAYMONDSTELMO 😉

Thank you all for encouraging and inspiring me!

Book Bingo-virus appears to be highly contagious.

Even though I discovered this book bingo just recently, I made a big effort past month to read 13 books in order to complete my bingo card. Because I'd really like to have that bingo-flair 😄

And yes, I admit that I'm totally bitten now! For next year's bingo there are already lots of titles waiting on my shelves. I even set an extra goal to myself: only reading books with less than 100 reviews on Goodreads. Because there exist so many unknown and underrated gems out there and I'm totally ready to discover them!

Or as Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

>"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

But first things first.

During this bingo year I discovered 38 new SFF-authors. Actually Martha Wells was the only one from whom I already read a book. This high amount is also due to the fact that for the 'short stories'-square I read an anthology with 15 different writers who don't occur in the other squares.

Despite a few letdowns, I gave a lot of 4 and 5* which isn't that common for me. Just take a look at my average rating on Goodreads and you'll see what I mean.

The things that appeal most to me in books are originality and humour.

I could say much more, but my list is already long enough to fill up my first post here. So without further ado I present to you my Book Bingo-books of 2020:

FIRST ROW ACROSS

De cirkel by Dave Eggers ⭐⭐

Novel translated from its original language

A dystopic SF-thriller about a powerful internet company that gains more a

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/as-more-americans-get-vaccinated-41-of-republicans-still-refuse-covid-19-shots

The more uncontrolled spread the greater the risk of mutation.

I really dislike the new USA version. How can I watch the UK version?