I don’t believe in New Years Resolutions as such, though I tend to lay out some kind of general, practical plan for my new year. This year’s looking like a bit of a blank slate so far, though, as I have no idea yet which of my projects I’ll be writing, and I’m fairly happy with my current work-life balance.

The only thing in my life that I really need to change is that shelf. The dread To Read Shelf of Doom, the one that I refer to with such exasperation quite regularly on Galactic Suburbia. It’s not just reaching the point of health and safety risk, but it’s actively stressing me out.

It started out as such a nice, organised space, somewhere for me to put, well quite obviously, the books I hadn’t read yet. I set it up not long after we moved here (nearly seven years ago!) and it made me happy.

But flat surfaces. I have a bad, bad relationship with flat surfaces. I put things on them. And then I put things on the things. And somewhere along the way… well, yes.

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Eh, I’ve been trying and failing to write an essay about how often women (fictional and otherwise) end up being shamed, dismissed or hurt in the name of feminism, but it’s tangling me up in knots, so I’m going to stop now and do something productive instead.

Hoyden talk about the myth of the bra-burning feminists, an idea which has been used to try to make women look stupid for decades, and how the false story was spread.

The Moffat’s Women series continues on Tor, with a comparison between the main female character in this Christmas special and last year’s. I find it very interesting how quickly people have leaped to criticise Moffat for writing a story in which the mother is the hero, so this article made me happy.

Sarah Rees Brennan’s response to the post we linked to in Galactic Suburbia about the wealth of positive girl heroes in YA right now.

One that I meant us to discuss on GS but forgot at the last minute (sorry, Sean!) – Sean the Blogonaut surveys his reading after a year of trying to change his reading habits, genderwise.

Linda Nagata talks about her rationale for self publishing rather than going back to big publishers.

The ever awesome Mary Beard comments on the latest salacious media drama about Ancient Romans and brothels. Yes, really. As ever, her pragmatism wins the day.

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Hard to believe we’ve made it to 50 episodes. Of course the alternative is that we stop talking, and that would never happen! Sadly we didn’t eat cake, but we did namecheck Joanna Russ at least once, so that’s almost the same thing, right?

You may eat cake while you listen to it, if you want to. If you do, you know we want to hear about it!

Check out EPISODE 50 now!

In which we leap happily back and forth (with occasional ranting) over those fine lines between feminist critique and anti-female assumptions, plus share our bumper collection of holiday culture consumed. Happy New Year from the Galactic Suburbia crew!

NEWS AND LINKS

Hugo nominations open and we’re gonna have our say

Aqueduct Press to publish Brit Mandelo’s thesis, “WE WUZ PUSHED: On Joanna Russ & Radical Truth-telling”!

Islamic superhero comic turned animated series The 99 to screen in Australia (ABC3)

Amanda Palmer’s wedding post

Great piece on how the very idea of ‘Mary Sue’ is sexist, ties into this episode’s theme about the criticism of female characters.

The wealth of powerful girl heroes in today’s YA

WHAT CULTURE HAVE WE CONSUMED?

Alisa: Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal; The Freedom Maze, Delia Sherman (with cover art by Kathleen Jennings); The Vampire Diaries; Primeval; The 99; Planetary; Homeland and Boxcutters.

Alex: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon, Julie Phillips; Changing Planes, Ursula le Guin; Perchance to Dream, Lisa Mantchev; Twilight Robbery, Frances Hardinge; Chronicles of Chrestomanci vol 1, Diana Wynne Jones. DOA and Going Postal

Tansy: The Freedom Maze, Delia Sherman; Beauty Queens, Libba Bray; Snuff by Terry Pratchett, Going Postal (TV) – Batman (animated) & My First Batman Book by David Katz, David Tennant & Catherine Tate in Much Ado About Nothing (DIGITAL THEATRE DOWNLOAD AWW YEAH).

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

Back in June, I reviewed all of the Big Finish plays I had listened to that were released in the first half of 2011. It was a pretty full on time for me as I wasn’t just a subscriber to the main monthly Doctor Who range, but also to the Sylvester McCoy Lost Stories and the 8th Doctor Adventures. Things were a little quieter for me in the second half of the year, but we’re about to ramp up into a year with new Blake’s 7, Fourth Doctor Adventures, and a whole bunch of other extras that I may or may not have ALREADY subscribed to. So I’d like to keep these posts going!

I’m trying to focus particularly in these recommendations on pointing out the jumping on points for new listeners, because lots of people have indicated they’ve either started listening to Big Finish because of my recs, or they want to and are still not sure where to jump aboard.

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I received an early Christmas present this year, courtesy of my mother Jilli, who is the artist behind the Deepings Dolls. Three dolls, one for each of my Creature Court book covers.

I’m only sad that I don’t have a hard copy of Book 3 to hand so I can photograph my scarlet flapper-with-sword like I have the other two!

First, we have Isangell the Duchessa, who appears on the cover of Power and Majesty [Creature Court Book One] in a gown with roses sewn all over it.

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As I mentioned in my Graphic Novels edition of the 2011 Year in Reading posts, I read 143 books this year, 60 or so of which had a lot of pictures in them.

Others were mostly made up of words, hoorah! I don’t want this to be the neglected younger sister of the graphic novels post, but I’m really not going to write reviews of these at length. Consider it a list of the best, absolute bestiest prose novels I consumed this year. Chances are, if you want to hear more about why I liked them, you can find me raving on a Galactic Suburbia podcast. Or you could just ask in the comments! I have been rather lazy about written reviews this year, but you can’t do everything.

Here we go…

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It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m curled up with my family watching the animated adventures of Batman. As you do. It seems oddly appropriate considering how my year in reading ended up!

In September, it looked unlikely that I’d even hit 100 books read this year, let alone equal the 120 books I read in 2010. But then I took an interest in the DC Reboot, and one of my best friends rediscovered comics and started raving about the Ultimate Spiderman, and one thing led to another, and my house spontaneously filled with graphic novels.

So, yes. My total books read for the year is 143. Of which 61 are graphic novels/manga, all but one of which were consumed in the last three months. YEAH BABY.

Let’s talk about those first. I’ll do a separate post about the actual prose books, for those people (cough, Alisa) who aren’t interested in comic books.

My stand out graphic novels/trade paperbacks for the year were:

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Wow, I’ve been all gung ho and planningy in previous years, haven’t I! Maybe I’ve mellowed. Last year I made a stab at what the shape of 2011 would look like. Presented here with comments as to how it actually was.

1. Page proofs and copy edits to be done for Shattered City and Reign of Beasts
Done and done! Quite early, really, because the date was pushed back for scheduling reasons and yet the book itself was pretty much ready months ago.

2. Write a first draft of Fury, before ROR in September.
We moved ROR to January 2012, but I finished the draft of Fury before Nanowrimo, so that was on schedule.

3. Send in proposal for Fury to my agent to sell before it’s finished.
I did this, but we (my agent & publisher) agreed it would be best to take it back and only formally submit when there was a full manuscript, because let’s face it, it wasn’t a happy year for book sales in Australia.

4. Volunteer regularly at Raeli’s school
Fell down completely on this one, at least as far as helping her class goes! I felt bad about it, but I had so little Jem-free time to work, and it didn’t happen at all. Still, I felt I had a much better relationship to her teacher this year after the calamity of the previous year, and I did sign up to join the School Association, so have been volunteering in that way. It feels like cheating because it’s half a dozen evening meetings a year rather than regularly turning up in Little Miss’s classroom to practice reading with them, but it’s a job that has to be done and being the nosy person that I am, I do rather like being in on some of the school’s admin decisions.

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Well, obviously it’s going to be a brilliant year!

Our January is packed already, and I’m determined to make the most of my last long summer with my daughters (Tasmania is going to 4 terms next year, so the summer holiday will be more of a punctuation point and less of a long, lazy sprawl). Raeli turns seven (SEVEN) and my godson Felix turns four (SERIOUSLY, FOUR?) before the end of the month. There will be parties.

Then there is ROR, a week of critiquing and industry chatter with some of my favourite writing people, right at the end of January, culminating in The Very Much Launch of Reign of Beasts Book Three of the Creature Court on the 2nd February.

The book I’m taking to ROR is Fury, book one of a proposed Nancy Napoleon series. I’m allowing myself 1-2 months afterwards to knock the book into post-ROR extra shiny shape, and then sending it off to my publisher to see if they’re interested in taking another twirl around the dance floor with me.

And then… well, then I wait. Because after a year of grants and publishing deadlines, I’m fancy free for the rest of the year. It’s… exciting and alarming. Given that I’m not going to start work on Nancy #2 until I have a publisher secured for her, I can write anything I want.

So there are plans, but they are nebulous, and multiple-layered, so I can bend to the wind. Anything I work on has to be dropped like a hot potato if Nancy comes up trumps, and if she doesn’t… well, I need to have the next thing up and running, and if that doesn’t work, the next thing…

I’d like to produce at least one publishable full length manuscript (not counting Fury) and one publishable children’s chapter book this year. That’s my plan. But I’m not 100% sure which books those will be.

And I have to do it without exterior deadlines. So deep breaths and inspiration at the ready. GO!

In the rest of my life… well, I still have a few more months to serve on the Tiptree jury, and we’re getting to the crunchy end of that, so more reading for me. I am planning to have a good go at the Australian Women Writers Reading Challenge 2012. And Last Short Story, of course.

But apart from those things (heh, I KNOW) I want my reading to be fairly loose and unstructured, and my main reading goal for the year is to focus on reducing my criminally enormous To Read Shelf to something a little less likely to collapse on visitors. Which probably means reading & seeking out a lot less in the way of the New Cool. So don’t publish any awesome books this year, okay, guys?

Travel-wise my honey and I are keen to make it to the Natcon in Melbourne, because my Mum thinks she is up to taking BOTH GIRLS for a long weekend (or that she will be by the middle of June) which means we could be out on our own for the first time in, well, seven years, basically. We haven’t broken it to Raeli yet, though, who had a lovely time at Worldcon and has mythologised Melbourne in her head to an alarming degree.

And apart from that our important job for the year is to keep to a budget, something we’ve been shocking about in previous years. But if we’re going to make it to World Fantasy in Brighton 2013, that means being sensible about money now. Especially if I want to keep my second daycare day for the next two years, before Jem starts kinder. Eek.

So… I don’t really know what the majority of this year will bring. But I’m hoping for shiny wonders and domestic calmness.

Thud, by Terry Pratchett
Snuff, by Terry Pratchett
(spoilers for both abound below)

I know I read Thud when it came out. But this was the early days of motherhood when my memory retention was out the window, and the days of re-reading were gone forever… I know I read this book, but I’m pretty sure it was a speedy, uninvolved reading. It had to be. Because there is no other excuse for me not realising before now that this is SO GOOD.

For a start, this is the best Angua novel since Feet of Clay – and I think it might actually be better, in the attention given to her character. I like that she and Carrot have been allowed now to settle into a comfortable relationship without any stupid plotty dramas being thrown in to artificially shake it up. I also like that her main plotline for this novel revolves around a relationship/wary dislike/friendship with another female character.

But Sybil also gets to shine in this book, despite her new motherhood which can often cause a female character to disappear into the background, or lose all characteristics apart from those to do with her child (as, for instance, happens to Magrat in the Witches novels).

Then there’s Cheery, who doesn’t get a subplot or even a subplotlet to herself, but remains awesome, cute and gets to play with the other girls.

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