Happy Cinco de Mayo!

If you're looking for a book with Mexican flavor, I just finished reading Flora Segunda : being the magickal mishaps of a girl of spirit, her glass-gazing sidekick, two ominous butlers (one blue), a house with eleven thousand rooms, and a red dog by Ysabeau Wilce, which was on the Tiptree honor list last year. This year, the sequel, Flora's Dare is. You can find both of these in the teen room.

But what is the Tiptree?

The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award is "an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender". It's named after James Tiptree, Jr, which was one of Alice Sheldon's pen names. Unlike the Nebula and the Hugo, this award is decided by a panel of judges, though anyone may recommend a book or story for consideration.

This year the winners of the award are:

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. I borrowed this through interlibrary loan and read it over the weekend. It's very good, but ends on a horrible cliffhanger! The next book won't be published until September. This is a young adult book, but, again, don't let that stop you from reading it. Surely it says something about the quality of YA books that they keep winning non-YA specific awards.

Filter House by Nisi Shawl. This is a collection of short stories and I'm still in the process of reading it. A 'collection', by the way, differs from an 'anthology' in that it's a book of short stories by one author, instead of short stories by multiple authors.

You can find what the judges thought of these works and the honor's list for this year on The Tiptree Award website. The library has a number of the books and series on the list, if you'd like to read them.

I also highly recommend the three Tiptree Award anthologies. Past winning and shortlisted short stories are compiled along with excerpts from the novel winners and essays by big names such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ. The library has all of them.

The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1

The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2

The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3

And when you're done reading those, you can check out James Tiptree Jr. : The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips

Happy reading!