Time to get to know our Curators better! How? By asking them the questions that really matter! This time with another special New Year edition!
2025 is upon us, and we are once again trying to be better versions of ourselves! Let’s set goals and resolutions and reduce the piles of media that are still waiting to be consumed! That’s how it works, right?
In the spirit of the New Year, we asked ourselves:
What are your 2025 to read/watch/listen/play resolutions?
1. Start reading again
I read very little in the past year and I miss it quite a bit. I would love to get lost in books again. The number doesn’t even really matter to me.
2. Have fun with writing and worldbuilding
This resolution is mostly the same as my resolution from last year and quite similar to my first resolution for this year. My interaction with these hobbies has grown more…’market-oriented’? with the years. I would like to approach them more from a position of ‘childlike wonder’ again, if it makes sense. I have some plans on how to do this, and I hope to execute some of these plans in 2025.
3. Read ‘The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi' by Shannon Chakraborty
Maybe this is a little bit of cheating, because it relates to the more broad resolution of ‘reading more’, but frankly I don’t actually know what else to put here? And I really like the Daevabad Trilogy, so I find it somewhat of a sin I haven’t made time for The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi. So let’s just call this “setting myself up for succes”.
Jop
Robin
1. Indulge my cravings for dystopian fiction
For some reason I’m really in the mood for dystopian fiction, so I’ll be on the lookout for books and movies in that genre that are either new or have not appeared on my radar before. On the list so far I have the book Private Rites, and the movie Flow. If you have any other suggestions, do let me know! But please nothing too gorey or thrillery, that’s not really my kind of thing.
2. Continue to make time for drawing
I am glad to have gotten back into it over the past year, and I am hoping to keep it up. I am finding it hard these days to find the concentration to sit down with a physical book. But drawing while listening to audiobooks has been a great combination.
3. Read The Priory of the Orange Tree
The Priory of the Orange Tree has been recommended to me by several people, but for some reason I have not picked it up yet. It’s been quite some time since I lost myself completely in a fantasy world, so I am really hoping this book can do that for me.
Both this book and it’s sequel are incredibly long, so if I do enjoy them, I’ll be set for some time!
1. Read a little outside of the speculative genre
So over the past year, I think I’ve read close to 50 books and novellas, nearly all of them fantasy or sci-fi. I think the genre is amazingly broad and varied, and I loved getting around to reading some really early works by Clarke and Heinlein as well as stuff that was released over the past year. I like having a depth of experience in a genre, because I feel it gives me a better appreciation of authors’ influences and the development of literature and themes over the decades.
But I also sometimes feel like I’m missing out because I am focusing on speculative stuff this much!
So I am going to try and allow myself to miss a week of uploading sometimes to read some other books, like some non-fiction and more literary works that I’ve missed over the past years. Hopefully that’ll help me appreciate the speculative genre all the more!
2. Decorate my home
I’ve been living in my current place for a couple of years. It has a really long boring hallway that when I moved in, I resolved to fill up with art and drawings to make it interesting.
I have yet to hang a single picture there (no, wait, that’s not actually true – I do have a picture of a dragon Lotte drew!).
What is worse, I’m hoping to move in the foreseeable future.
I’m not sure why, but over the past years, I have just never felt the creative energy to actually decorate. But this is me resolving to fix that and put up some speculative themed art, whether it be at my current place or the next one.
3. Read the Broken Earth-series
Broken Earth is one of the recent (if you can call ten years ago recent) hits that for no reason I can think of I have never picked up yet. It might just be that they have not appeared on my audiobook app yet…
From what I’ve heard and read, the books seem ambitious, layered, grim, and original. They should be right up my alley, and I have no excuse for missing out so far. And three consecutive Hugos is an incredible achievement!
Honestly, now that I am writing about these books, I am really itching to dig into them. Robin, gimme your login!
Peter
Lotte
1.Play Baldur's Gate 3
I’ve actually already started this game and I LOVE it, but I know it’s gonna take me a very long time to finish. Ideally I’d like to do two playthroughs, but if I can finish my first one before the end of the year I’ll be very happy!
2. Get back to doing art, specifically fantasy-themed
That’s right, if in 2024 you don’t succeed, just put the resolution back on your list! I genuinely do want to draw more and I feel like this is the year! Am I deluding myself? Maybe!!
3. Play more video games
In order to play Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I purchased a Playstation 5. I’ve never had such a powerful console before (my gaming PC was pretty good ten years ago, but I only really used it for… Dragon Age: inquisition) so I really want to take this chance to play some games I wasn’t able to play before. Of course, I’m also planning to play Baldur’s Gate 3, so I’m not sure I’ll manage to play much more than that in a year. But if I find the time, I want to game a bit more!
Happy New Year, folks!
