Anglo-Filles

We are super stoked (like, SUPER STOKED) to have been joined by Hugo Nominated author Seanan McGuire to talk about women in Speculative Fiction, misogyny in the world and out of it, and swearing!

(It almost made up for the sadness of not having Kayleigh this episode. Almost, but not quite.) In important news, the Anglofilles are thrilled that NBC came to the conclusion that renewing Hannibal was the right thing to do, and we will be doing an episode on Hannibal in the fall.

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Seanan McGuire has written a LOT of urban fantasy, and you can follow her on Twitter at @seananmcguire, on tumblr at seananmcguire, on livejournal at http://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/, and her website is here. You can also find her under her pen name of Mira Grant, where she writes horror, zombies, bloggers, and parasitic tapeworms.

Phew.

The first book of the October Daye series: Rosemary and Rue

Science Fiction Writers of America Bulletin: Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg dialogue sparks internet shitstorm!

This linkspam has a scan of one of the Dialogues in question, in which they double down and accuse everyone of censoring them.

Jim C. Hines does a Roundup of people who have some things to say to Resnick and Malzberg (it’s nice how all these authors are keeping LJ going, yeah?)

Cover flips! Maureen Johnson comes up with what covers would look like if classic books had been written by authors of the opposite gender. It’s hysterical and awesome and painfully true.

Jim C Hines tries to contort himself into ways that women are contorted in many SF/F covers.

Revisiting a techrec from January: Calibre e-reader management software: Possibly the best ebook management software available right now.* First thing first: it’s free; no ads, no trials, just out there for your ebooking needs. It features a versatile tagging system, the ability to download metainfo (including covers), a robust format conversation system, it can be used to sync your ebook collection to virtually any ereaders and smartphone, and supports third-party plug-ins for virtually any need that the default software fails to fulfill (e.g., syncing to your Goodreads shelf).

*Absolutely no research was done to substantiate this claim

Other authors we talked about: The Labyrinths of Echo, Anne McCaffery, Robin McKinnley, Diane Wynne Jones, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Mercedes Lackey, Tanya Huff, Elizabeth Bear, Catherine Valenti. There are a TON of female SF/F writers we didn’t get to mention, so leave your favorite in the comments!

Special thanks to Seanan for joining us! Happy reading!

Episode 8 is live, where it’s all Princess bride, all the time. WITH SPECIAL GUEST MARK OSHIRO

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“Anyway, here’s the ‘good parts’ version. S. Morgenstern wrote it. And my father read it to me. And now I give it to you. What you do with it will be of more than passing interest to us all.”

We are joined by HUGO NOMINATED FAN WRITER Mark Oshiro, of Mark Does Stuff. He runs a large, diverse internet book and TV club where he’s the one who hasn’t read the book. It’s good stuff!

Currently on Mark Reads: Tamora Pierce’s entire bibliography (he is currently on First Test and just finishing up Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy.

Currently on Mark Watches: Friday Night Lights and The West Wing with double features of Dead Like Me, leading to the rest of the Bryan Fuller-Verse.

(Speaking of the Bryan Fuller-Verse: NBC DO THE RIGHT THING AND RENEW HANNIBAL PLEASE.)

The Princess Bride; S. Morgansterns’s Classic tale of True Love and High Adverntureon Amazon

Mark Read the Princess Bride as if Morgenstern was real (hint: we know he’s not) and pissed off half the internet, it seems. It was glorious.

OLD SKOOL COVER (share the pain)

The movie is basically the platonic ideal of a movie adaptation. If you haven’t watched it, you are really missing out.

Spiritual successors: Stardust (2008) and A Series of Unfortunate Events

Alina’s Tech Rec for this month was a thoroughly researched and completely scientific presentation and not at all just a run-on spiel of her opinions on the various e-reading apps she uses: Kindle Versus Kobo! For those who use a smartphone or tablet as their ereader, the main choices of apps are between the official Kindle and Kobo apps. I find Kindle a slightly smoother reading experience. Kobo, on the other hand, has a much easier table-of-contents navigation, the reasons for Kindle decided to hide theirs behind layers of menus escape me. I’d like to hold a moment of silence for Stanza, it was my favourite independent ereading app for a long time. Nowadays, when I need a third alternative, as an Android user, I turn to Aldiko. If the big-name, store-tied apps aren’t your thing, then Aldiko is probably what you’re looking for.

Welcome to episode 7, where we talk about Sexed Up Historical Dramas. (Note: we talk about sex a LOT because that was kind of the topic. There’s a lot of sex, is what I’m saying.)

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First things first: Reidan is in Boston, and was not near the bombings, she’s okay. The Boston mayor Tom Menino and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick set up OneFund Boston as a way to funnel donations. If you could toss in a couple bucks, that would be awesome. Thank you.

IMDB links for the various shows we discussed:

I, Claudius

Rome

The Tudors

The Borgias

Carnivale

Vikings

The Other Boleyn Girl: BBC version.

If you would like to read more:

Tudors: Anything by Alison Weir

Borgias: The Borgias and Their Enemies

Rome: God, I have to pick just one? Livia: First Lady of Rome

List of Sexually Active Popes

Enjoy!

Welcome to episode 6, where we talk about ALL THINGS JANE AUSTEN.

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The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, an on-line vlog adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. We talk about it for a long time, and there are some legitimate criticisms, including Courtney Milan’s Tumblr. (Courtney is a romance author and also a lawyer type person, and we love her.)

Austenland! Book and The Movie.

ITV did a whole thing of Austen adaptations in the late 2000’s:

Lost In Austen – well produced self-insert fanfic and what happens when someone who knows the story ends up in the story and promptly accidentally starts fucking everything up.

The Jane Austen Book Club.

The weird Austen + monstersgenre: Good Reads list including Pride and Platypus, which is basically Kayleigh-bait (she’ll report back). Also a post-apocalyptic version of Persuasion, For Darkness Shows the Stars.

Other things:

Only 11% of Stitcher’s top 100 podcasts are hosted by women, from the NPR Fresh Air tumblr, which is one of the reasons we started this podcast. Other podcasts hosted by women: Made of Fail’s own Strangers From the Internet , Stuff You Missed in History Class, Stuff Mom Never Told You, Fucking While Feminist*, Dear Bitches, Smart Author Podcast* and Grammar Girl.

*Full disclosure: Fucking While Feminist is my roommate’s podcast, and I am the WORST ROOMMATE EVER because I completely forgot to mention it during the show. WORST. ROOMMATE. EVER. (I also forgot to mention Dear Bitches, Smart Authors, which is the romance novel podcast with Sarah from Smart Bitches and Jane from Dear Author, but THAT ONE IS NOT RECORDED IN MY DINING ROOM.)

Kickstarter campaigns! Kevin (exec Producer, founder, all around god of the Made of Fail universe) has started the Morbacon Theater company, because he had some spare time to kill or something, and they are running a kickstarter for their first production: Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters. Help Morbacon out!

There’s gonna be a fan-supported Veronica Mars Movie! They made their goal within ten hours, but more money mean more brooding and smoldering (possibly in space).

Brian Fuller has stated that he is “looking into” the possibility of a fan supported Pushing Daises movie. There is nothing beyond that, but watch the internets for more detail.

Updates!

Alina’s Tech Rec: Google Reader is soon to be no more! How could Google betray us like this? As we pick up the broken pieces of our RSS feeds, we ask ourselves one question, “Where do we go from here?” My answer is: feedly.com. It’s not ideal, but after trying out several alternatives, Feedly is the one I think I’m going to stick with. I was looking for something web-based, like GR was, but Feedly also has iPhone and Android mobile apps. It should be noted that are many options out there. FeedBooster was another that caught my eye. You can also check out this post from How-To Geek for their sizable list of recommendations (note that FeedDemon, second on that list, is also closing down)

Also includes special appearances from Kayleigh’s mum, dad, and allegedly the dog was there the whole time.

Episode 5, where we are joined by Noel, who is determined to inject himself into every facet of the Made of Fail Family, and we talk fairy tales, the 10th Kingdom, and other stuff.

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My notes for what should be in the show notes are at home, and I am not, so this is…. sort of recreated from memory.

The leatherbound Brothers Grimm!

Thie new Philip Pullman Brother’s Grimm!

The 10th Kingdom DVDs You can also watch on Netflix Instant for now.

Grimm, on NBC. Fridays, 9/8 Central.

Once Upon a Time, on ABC. Sundays at 8/7 Central. You can also watch the first season on Netflix Instant.

There were a whole bunch of other books we talked about, but I can’t remember them all. I know Patricia Wrede and Gregory Maguire were in there, and we also talked about the national travesty that Canada recently suffered with the new Anne of Green Gables cover.

You can find Noel on twitter as @NoelCT, on Livejournal, on The Super Saturday Short-Lived Showcase, The Monthly Midnight Movie Exchange, and I Hate/Love Remakes.

Telltale Games is partnering with WB to create games based on Fables.

Alina’s tech rec this month: Rough Draft is a free word processor with a user interface designed to make life and work easy for writers. It won’t have all the features MS Word has that make academic essays look so polished, but I highly recommend it for personal works. It has modes for scripts versus prose, has spellcheck functionality (you do have to additionally download a free dictionary called WordWeb). I particularly like its use of tabs for different files and the side-panel notepad.