I read for fun. This is hard to do in grad school; my weekdays are filled with homework and projects and the half-time job that pays for my education, and on weekends I try to get outside and see friends as much as I possibly can without compromising my grades. I can’t imagine what life will be like once I start working on my thesis in a month or so. After squinting at words on a computer screen all day long I can’t bear to read anything that isn’t compelling. Lately my two genres of choice have been domestic fiction and cyberpunk. Between May and September last year I plowed through the complete adult works of Jane Austen, William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, a handful of Discworld novels I hadn’t previously read or didn’t remember, and the first Jason Bourne book (haven’t picked up another). Then I devised a challenge for myself: how long could I go reading only women authors? Twisty’s sci-fi thread served as my initial source of authors and aside from a brief Discworld lapse I haven’t really looked back. I have finally decided to devote this little piece of internet real estate to my exploration of woman-authored science/speculative fiction.
Coming soon: Marge Piercey’s Woman on the Edge of Time.
