Margaret's Nearly Monthly Annual Wrap-Up 2024
2024 end of year wrap-up and we ponder the nature of time in the Duolingo dystopia
Hello returning friends and welcome new subscribers! The Nearly Monthly News began in December 2021, so this installment marks three years of newsletters and our fourth year in review. Where does the time go?
I'll confess, when I sat down to write this, I wasn't sure I'd have much to talk about from 2024. Work was slow, and end-of-year fatigue was casting a dark shadow.
Fortunately, since one of the things I did do this year was publish a nearly monthly newsletter, I don't have to rely on my memory alone for this task. And with that:
On to the news!
What Have I Been up to in 2024?
One big project was my resolution to go see more movies, and boy did I. Final count was somewhere around 80 trips to the theater. Even with a couple of repeats (shout out to Thelma and Dune 2, bet this is the first time they've been tagged together), that's a lot of movies. Even better, I enjoyed almost all of them, and the others have quickly faded from memory!
I wrote an essay about my summer of AMCmageddon in this very newsletter, and also as a guest post for The Full Lid.
Short Fiction
I had two new short stories out in 2024:
“So Much More Fun” appeared in the anthology 99 Fleeting Fantasies (ebook and paperback), edited by Jennifer Brozek.
“All Bellknaps Go Under the Mountain” (free online) was my second story for The Sunday Morning Transport, edited by Julian Yap & Fran Wilde. It got a very nice Locus review, and has popped up on a couple end of year rec lists, which gives me more joy than I can say.
I was also honored to be a presenter at this year’s Nebula Awards in Pasadena.
Television
Nothing I wrote for TV in 2024 has come out yet, but an animated special I pinch-hit on premiered on Netflix, and I am very happy with the way it turned out.
So all in all, I suppose the year wasn’t quite as unproductive as my brain had been telling me. Pfew!
What I'm Reading and Watching
In addition to all the movies, I did read books in 2024. The most recent addition to the list was Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson.
In spite of this book being a Pulitzer Finalist, winner of the PEN/Hemmingway Award for best first novel, and appearing on more than one “100 Greatest Novels of All Time” list, I hadn’t come across it until my virtual book club picked it to be our next read. (Clearly, I live under a rock.)
Unsurprisingly, it’s very good. Even if the book group couldn’t decide for sure what what we thought the metaphor meant. (Was it even a metaphor? Great minds still differ!)
From the Cutting Room Floor of the Duolingo Dystopia
I asked Junior what he’d done this year. I think he’s messing with me.
Then again, who can say how time works in a language-based dystopia? Certainly not I.
And That's the Nearly Monthly News!
I hope this letter finds you and yours healthy and safe, and that 2025 sends you only good things. Got something you're looking forward to? Drop me a line! Otherwise, I'll see you next month.