…e than adequately equipped to handle Southerners, might possibly manage to understand Northerners, but that the Centre is a law onto itself. Given that I can barely make myself understood by Southerners, I can’t help but think that the Huể/Hội An section of the trip is going to be so much fun… (Sài Gòn will be better, both because, hey, Southerners, and also because Grandma/the uncles will be around) Three more lessons to go before we leave. Ouch….

…finally got in my nominations for the BSFA (short fiction, since I didn’t actually read any 2011 novels except for the aforementioned Gail Carriger (Heartless, which technically I haven’t started, having just downloaded it to my ereader). Actual content to come, including mini-reviews of Elizabeth Bear’s Range of Ghosts (short version: you have to pre-order this book now), and David Gemmell’s Troy….

…ly the source literature of SF, was the province of the bourgeoisie; while the older texts were the province of nobility) In other news, busy weekend ahead: friends coming over on Saturday, and we’re probably headed into the 13e Sunday to see the New Year’s procession….

…lely financed by grants and by generous sponsors, so naturally seeks enough money to award a decent prize. In a field which is over-focused on Western Anglophone works (I’ve rehashed this to death, so I won’t add anything), this is a most welcome breath of fresh air. Plus, awesome works on that list!. I’ve offered up a signed copy of Master of the House of Darts as a donation prize, and there is plenty more cool stuff on that list (and more to com…

…Chúc Mừng Năm Mới! Tôi chúc các bạn mạnh khỏe và nhiều niềm vui. (normally, it should say something like “Happy New Year. I wish you all good health and many joys”, but since I basically cobbled the sentence together with a dictionary, I’m sceptical about the actual meaning…) Hope it’s a great Year of the Dragon for everyone!…

And a last one before I leave on holidays… The longlist for France’s Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire has been released, and, er, D’Obsidienne et de Sang on there a great number of times–the novel’s longlisted for Best Foreign Novel, my wonderful translator Laurent Philibert-Caillat is longlisted for Best Translator for his translations of my book and Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City, and my cover for the French edition (produced by Larry Rostant) is also longl…

…ok without gushing, because it’s so good. It has Bear’s gorgeous prose and complex characters, as well as intricate worldbuilding that recalls the cultures of the Silk Road–a rarity in a field where non-Western fantasy is still the odd thing out rather than the norm. And the plot zips along from gorgeous set-piece to set-piece (Samarkar’s exploration of the ruined city is wonderful in this regard, conveying both the richness of what has been lost…

…f worth reading and mulling on. -Edroxy (Roxanne) has a series on French Female Writers Through the Centuries: her latest review is of Marie NDiaye’s Three Strong Women, here. Whole series is worth reading, but this has some interesthing thoughts about NDiaye herself, and her sense of identity, or “truncated mixity” as she calls it, and handling what people expect her to write vs what she actually writes. -Nancy Fulda on Readers, Feedback and Good…

…cháo (rice porridge) was worth a laugh or two (I mangled the pronunciation completely, but enough of it got across that I basically got a custom dish made up for me). [2] Incidentally, if anyone knows of a festival that happens to fall on Feb 8th/the 17th day of the First Lunar Month, we’d be interested. We were mildly curious at the queue of pilgrims outside the Quan Vũ/Guan Yu temple in Hội An, and we couldn’t figure out why they’d be there (I k…

…e terms. Yup. Scary scary. That’s all I had. Next: pictures, and I’ll stop complaining, promise. [1] I’ll grant them one charitable intent, which is that they might be aiming this at French people who were in Indochina while it was still a colony. However, you have to realise that Vietnam became nominally independent from France in 1954, and that I don’t know when the renaming of stuff took place (offhand, juding from my bare-bones knowledge of hi…