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2 weeks ago | 
reactormag.com | Jo Lindsay Walton |with Ada Palmer
March was a great month where I was in Florence with friends visiting, and then I flew to Chicago, where I still am. I was very busy, and I only read six books. Genoa, ‘La Superba’: The Rise and Fall of a Pirate Merchant Superpower — Nicholas Walton (2015)How excited I was to have another Genoa book, to go with Epstein’s Genoa and the Genoese! And yet, this was a little disappointing.
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1 month ago | 
reactormag.com | Jo Lindsay Walton |with Ada Palmer
February was personally a great month, I was in Florence the whole time, I had friends staying, and we ate great food and looked at art. As far as the rest of the world goes, good gracious. It was hard to stop doomscrolling. The best analysis I have is that we’re now living in a Philip K. Dick novel. (Did I ever mention how much I hate Philip K. Dick?) I read ten books, most of them terrific. A Scatter of Light —Malinda Lo (2022) Re-read, book club.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
reactormag.com | Jo Lindsay Walton |with Ada Palmer
December was a month where I was at home in Montreal finishing writing a novel, with a celebration at the beginning for my birthday and at the end for Christmas and New Year. I read sixteen books, and some of them were disappointing but some of them were really great. The Summer Pact — Emily Giffin (2024) Deeply disappointing book. I kept waiting for the rich, spoiled protagonists to wake up and get it, and I suppose in the end one of them did to some extent.
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Dec 4, 2024 | 
reactormag.com | Jo Anne Walton |with Ada Palmer
November began in Chicago with friends, and I took the train to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where I saw some Boston friends, and then I came home to Montreal, where I still am. I was writing in Chicago and Plymouth and have been writing a bit at home too, and I have high hopes of finishing this novel this year. I read twelve books, and they were an assorted lot, as usual. Alliance Rising — C.J. Cherryh and Jane Fancher (2019) Re-read, because the sequel came out.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
reactormag.com | Jo Lindsay Walton |with Ada Palmer
October was a really excellent month. I was in Florence writing the whole time except for two weekends in Bologna—one for a tortellini festival and one to see a rock opera of Henry VI in Italian, both really fun. On the 31st I left for Chicago, where I am now. I wrote around half a novel, and I saw lots of beautiful art and architecture, and Ada (Palmer) was there, and friends visited, and we ate great food, and I read just six books. But actually this is the kind of month I want in my life.
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Nov 12, 2024 | 
reactormag.com | Jo Lindsay Walton |with Ada Palmer
When Reactor asked me to select a top ten “iconic” books of the twenty-first century so far, titles immediately started coming into my head. I realised immediately that the problem wouldn’t be coming up with ten, it would be cutting it down to ten. This is a question I felt qualified to answer. Of course I haven’t read everything published this century, but I’ve been here and I’ve been reading, and I’ve read quite a bit. Also, I always say that there is no one best, but surely ten is reasonable.
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Nov 7, 2024 | 
reactormag.com | Jo Lindsay Walton |with Ada Palmer
There are times when it’s very hard to stop doomscrolling and yet there’s nothing to actively do but bite your fingernails. That’s the time for the books that will take you out of this world, and into another that will have problems of its own that will be so absorbing that you can forget, for a little while, the problems that surround you.
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Oct 9, 2024 | 
reactormag.com | Jo Anne Walton |with Ada Palmer
September was an excellent month, I was in Florence the whole time. The first few weeks were very packed with museum visits and dashing about, and since then I’ve been writing. So I only finished eight books this month, but they’re very interesting ones. The Letters of Queen Victoria Volume 3, 1854-1861 — Queen Victoria (1908) The thing that would surprise you about Queen Victoria’s letters is what a passionate person she was. She cared so much.
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Sep 5, 2024 | 
reactormag.com | Jo Lindsay Walton |with Ada Palmer
August began in Florence with friends, then we went to Worldcon in Glasgow by train via Cologne, then a week in Edinburgh at the Fringe seeing three or four plays a day, then back to Florence by train via Lyon. It was all excellent, especially sitting next to Naomi Kritzer at Worldcon when she won not one but two Hugos! My very first Worldcon was in Glasgow back in 1995, so it made it especially great to be back and seeing so many friends. So, a terrific month, but very busy.
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Aug 12, 2024 | 
reactormag.com | Jo Lindsay Walton |with Ada Palmer
July began at home in Montreal, where as it was very hot and we were having work done that meant keeping the windows at the front closed, I spent a lot of time sitting on the back balcony reading. Then on the 21st I flew to Florence, where I have been ever since. I read 23 books, and some of them are sufficiently predictable that people guessed in last month’s comments that I was likely to read them, and others are perhaps less obvious.
