There’s so much I hate about this time of year: the financial stress, the societal pressure to conspicuously consume, the fraughtness of family gatherings, the cold and (paradoxically) the fact that we never get decent snow in Cincinnati in December. However, I’ve come to kind of love Christmas Eve. I’ve finished all my holiday baking and candy-making, so I’ve got an apartment full of delicious sweets. the shopping is all finished, and it’s almost time for my favorite part of Christmas: wrapping presents (this year’s theme: brown paper packages). Christmas wrapping means I’m FINISHED. With everything! The whole messy business! Also, I am very good at wrapping things really beautifully, and I love doing it.

So, Christmas is a bit of a mixed bag for me, but I’m glad it’s almost done with for the year. The rest of this week will be taken up with getting together my end-of-year wrap-up stuff, Best of 2017 lists and a bunch of New Year’s resolutions that, let’s be real, I’m probably mostly going to forget about sticking to halfway through February. I’m also doing some last minute short fiction reading, and I would love recommendations, so tell me what short stories and novelettes you read and loved in 2017 in the comments or shoot me an email at sfbluestocking (at) gmail (dot) com!

Speaking of short fiction, A.C. Wise has a fantastic list of her favorites of 2017, with links to a lot it that’s free-to-read.

Civil Eats lists their Favorite Food and Farming Books of 2017, just in case you wanted to make some 11th hour additions to your TBR like I did.

You can hit Literary Hub to check out the Best Reviewed Sci-Fi and Fantasy of 2017.

Space.com lists the Must-Read Space Books of 2017.

The next issue of Uncanny Magazine is out on January 3, but you can already see it’s lovely cover and read its table of contents.

Book Riot already has a list of 24 Amazing Feminist Books Coming Out in 2018.

If you’re excited about next year’s sequel titles, B&N’s Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog lists 30 of them.

There’s a new Naomi Novik book coming out in 2018: Spinning Silver, which I’m hoping is based on her story of the same title that appeared in last year’s The Starlit Wood. I can’t wait to have a copy of it to look beautiful on my shelf next to Uprooted.

Also coming up in 2018, and quickly (January 3!), is Season 11 of The X-Files, which I am kind of unreasonably excited for, even after the decidedly mixed quality of Season 10. This coming week I’ll be preparing, possibly with the aid of these lists of Gillian Anderson’s favorite episodes and/or this Mulder and Scully Ship Guide over at Syfy.

It’s just one more sleep til the Doctor Who Christmas Special and the introduction of Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor. In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying this Doctor Who yule log video:

It’s been a good week for takes on The Last Jedi, now that the initial hype has died down:

• “Star Wars’ Vice-Admiral Holdo and Our Expectations for Female Military Power”
• “The Last Jedi has no respect for nostalgia — and that’s a good thing”
• “‘Star Wars’ Has Created a Villain Too Real for Its Own Fantasy Universe”
• “The Last Jedi is the A Feast for Crows of Star Wars”

All instances of “icicle” will now be replaced in my vocabulary by:

#FolkloreThursday shared an erotic folktale for the holidays: The Yule Buck and the Girl.

I learned that women in the mid-1800s used to catch on fire and die horribly with pretty alarming frequency. Not a “fun” fact, but interesting.

The Book Smugglers’ Smugglivus celebration continued:

• A Very Anyta Christmas Menu
• Seven Young Adult Fantasy Books You Shouldn’t Miss from 2017
• Top Five Accidental Favorite Contemporary YA Novels of 2017
• “Everything in the World Wants Something” a Crown of Stars Short Story by Kate Elliott
• List of Things That Got Me Through 2017
• Stephanie Burgis’ Comfort Reads
• Karen Healey’s Smugglivus
• Rediscovering Re-Reading with Forest of Glory
• Reading Romance in 2017: Happily Every After Afters as Resistance and Respite