Sorry, I guess I misunderstood your point then.
Sunbeamsjess #3 Too busy to come up with a thread name
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I've copied the full text inside the spoiler for anyone curious.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/best-science-fiction-fantasy-books-2ktsd0sbq
Jessie Lethaby has been sharing her favourite reads with followers on her YouTube channel for many years. She is particularly drawn to speculative fiction, an umbrella term that covers science fiction, fantasy and everything in between.
Whether you want to travel to another planet, imagine a dystopian future or battle off vampires, Jessie’s picks will cater for all.
Over the course of 2022, we will be bringing together all her quarterly choices of the most engrossing new reads here in one place.
We hope this will build into a comprehensive collection of recommendations that should help you to find the perfect out-of-this-world read, whatever your tastes.
And check back every quarter for Jessie’s latest picks.
Lambda by David Musgrave
Europa £12.99
Lambda by visual artist David Musgrave is an experimental debut set in an alternative near-future Britain. Humans live alongside “lambdas”, an aquatic people that migrate from the far north. We follow Cara, recruited by the police’s data surveillance team as she tracks the movements of terrorist groups. The tension between lambdas and humans ramps up after a school bombing incident is claimed by the ALA — the Army of Lambda Ascension. But Musgrave deviates from this plot to explore everything from sentient objects to a powerful republic of servers realising shady business ends. The lambdas are really a way for Musgrave to ask questions about who we are and what we mean to each other in an age dominated by technology. It may frustrate those in search of a more plot-focused narrative, but this is an accomplished, thought-provoking novel that is also darkly humorous.
The Doloriad by Missouri Williams
Dead Ink £9.99
The Doloriad, a striking dystopian debut by Missouri Williams, imagines a family at the end of the world. Its Matriarch is determined to repopulate the planet in her own image after an apocalypse of sorts. The biological fallout of this, and necessary incest, causes the children to become increasingly unrecognisable both to her and to us. The tension between old and new ways of being unfolds like a kind of gothic Greek tragedy. The prose brilliantly suggests its world, full of sucking mud and tumbledown ruins: it is repellent but also sumptuous, shifting thickly through its main characters’ perspectives to create a dreamlike yet materially vivid world. This brutal novel is not for the faint of heart, but it is a brilliant look at the apocalypse theme.
Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda
Virago £14.99
The vampire novel has been done many ways, but Woman, Eating, Claire Kohda’s intelligent and irreverent take, makes for an enjoyable read. Protagonist Lydia has left her vampire mother in a residential home in order to make a life for herself in London. But it is not easy, partly because she is so hungry. Lydia faces all the challenges of twenty-something life — the unpaid internship with a creepy boss, the loneliness, the romance — alongside an agonising struggle over her mixed heritage: vampire and human; Japanese, Malaysian and British. She is fascinated by human food and how her inability to eat it alienates her, and compromises her ability to socialise. Consciously literary, but in a meaningful and illuminating way, the novel moves towards a perhaps predictable but very satisfying ending.
The This by Adam Roberts
Gollancz £16.99
Veteran science fiction author Adam Roberts returns with The This, an ambitious novel which realises Hegelian absolute idealism (yes, really) through a social media platform whereby users can communicate telepathically with one another — or “Hands-free Twitter” as its more innocuous marketing strategy suggests. We loosely follow several narratives, one of which centres on a journalist, Rich, who is reluctant to join The This but becomes subject to a disturbing recruitment campaign. Despite the rather high-brow concept, it is remarkably readable, thanks to Roberts’s quirky humour and adept characterisation. It asks questions about individualism and belonging, and how social media warps the balance between the two.
Jessie Lethaby has been sharing her favourite reads with followers on her YouTube channel for many years. She is particularly drawn to speculative fiction, an umbrella term that covers science fiction, fantasy and everything in between.
Whether you want to travel to another planet, imagine a dystopian future or battle off vampires, Jessie’s picks will cater for all.
Over the course of 2022, we will be bringing together all her quarterly choices of the most engrossing new reads here in one place.
We hope this will build into a comprehensive collection of recommendations that should help you to find the perfect out-of-this-world read, whatever your tastes.
And check back every quarter for Jessie’s latest picks.
Lambda by David Musgrave
Europa £12.99
Lambda by visual artist David Musgrave is an experimental debut set in an alternative near-future Britain. Humans live alongside “lambdas”, an aquatic people that migrate from the far north. We follow Cara, recruited by the police’s data surveillance team as she tracks the movements of terrorist groups. The tension between lambdas and humans ramps up after a school bombing incident is claimed by the ALA — the Army of Lambda Ascension. But Musgrave deviates from this plot to explore everything from sentient objects to a powerful republic of servers realising shady business ends. The lambdas are really a way for Musgrave to ask questions about who we are and what we mean to each other in an age dominated by technology. It may frustrate those in search of a more plot-focused narrative, but this is an accomplished, thought-provoking novel that is also darkly humorous.
The Doloriad by Missouri Williams
Dead Ink £9.99
The Doloriad, a striking dystopian debut by Missouri Williams, imagines a family at the end of the world. Its Matriarch is determined to repopulate the planet in her own image after an apocalypse of sorts. The biological fallout of this, and necessary incest, causes the children to become increasingly unrecognisable both to her and to us. The tension between old and new ways of being unfolds like a kind of gothic Greek tragedy. The prose brilliantly suggests its world, full of sucking mud and tumbledown ruins: it is repellent but also sumptuous, shifting thickly through its main characters’ perspectives to create a dreamlike yet materially vivid world. This brutal novel is not for the faint of heart, but it is a brilliant look at the apocalypse theme.
Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda
Virago £14.99
The vampire novel has been done many ways, but Woman, Eating, Claire Kohda’s intelligent and irreverent take, makes for an enjoyable read. Protagonist Lydia has left her vampire mother in a residential home in order to make a life for herself in London. But it is not easy, partly because she is so hungry. Lydia faces all the challenges of twenty-something life — the unpaid internship with a creepy boss, the loneliness, the romance — alongside an agonising struggle over her mixed heritage: vampire and human; Japanese, Malaysian and British. She is fascinated by human food and how her inability to eat it alienates her, and compromises her ability to socialise. Consciously literary, but in a meaningful and illuminating way, the novel moves towards a perhaps predictable but very satisfying ending.
The This by Adam Roberts
Gollancz £16.99
Veteran science fiction author Adam Roberts returns with The This, an ambitious novel which realises Hegelian absolute idealism (yes, really) through a social media platform whereby users can communicate telepathically with one another — or “Hands-free Twitter” as its more innocuous marketing strategy suggests. We loosely follow several narratives, one of which centres on a journalist, Rich, who is reluctant to join The This but becomes subject to a disturbing recruitment campaign. Despite the rather high-brow concept, it is remarkably readable, thanks to Roberts’s quirky humour and adept characterisation. It asks questions about individualism and belonging, and how social media warps the balance between the two.
‘scuse my ignorance, but what does ‘consciously literary’ mean? Assuming it’s different to ‘stream if consciousness’?
I wondered the same. A mystery!
It means “pretentious as duck, and basically unreadable.”
Book communities make reading certain books so unattainable to the masses with the language they use, but then laugh at people reading genres like romance and YA. Jack Edwards does it a lot as well. I just think, speak in plain English and let people read what they want to read.
100% an opportunity made possible by her mother purely so that she’d finally have something to say when people ask what her fully adult daughter does for a living besides mooch off her parents’ hard work and trust fund.
“Yah, Jessie has a column in the Times now.”
I've also read an advance copy of Woman Eating and idt she has really grasped it.. It's clearly about her relationship with her mother and a search for identity and a sense of self, This review paints it like a Sally Rooney with vampirism.The end was neither satisfying nor predictable and came right out of the blue..
don;t worry folks.. this book actually isn't like that. Trust me I had an ARC too
I've read the book and it is just a way of Jess trying to sound clever and knowledgeable about lit crit etc....it's nothing of the sort. I have read books that are what I would describe as conscious literary.. ie up their own pretentious arse such as Autobibliography by Rob Doyle where the author picked the most obscure works he could even from my POV as someone with a masters in English hadnt heard of to reference.
don;t worry folks.. this book actually isn't like that. Trust me I had an ARC too
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maybe she’s been writing but kept it private (hence her tiredness is legit) we don’t know if she doesn’t share anything because it would be too much stressful for her, or if she’s actually bad at it (hence nepotism). to me it smells a bit fishy btw
Jess can’t even make her own coffee or iron her own clothes. She’d never be able to write her own book. She’d sooner pay a ghost writer.
or get Mum to
I think influencer’s management agencies are quite capable of finding ghost writers.
does she have one? Cos I'd find it hard that they would let her standard and quality of output go so far downhill without having a word
I mean ultimately all a management cares about is that the money comes in. I doubt they care about “quality” tbh. And she has no shortage of ads, so
She’s represented by M&C Saatchi Social
maybe she’s even made her create a company and appoint her as CEO without doing nothing lol
Right? I saw the ridiculous number of posts within her story and immediately unfollowed. Not the platform for her boring, plagiarised reviews (as much as she’s trying to become a bookstagrammer - she missed that boat about 2 years ago)
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