2023's Opening Lines, Reading Goals, and SFF Adaptations!

To view this email as a web page, go [here.]( [Tor.com Newsletter]( [Forward to a Friend]( NEW YEAR, NEW BOOKS [What’s the First Line of the First Book You’re Reading in 2023?]( New year, new books! New Year’s resolutions can be a pain, but tackling a reading pile feels oh-so satisfying. Do you have any goals? Number of books to read? A series you’ve been dying to tackle? An author you’d like to get to know? The Tor.com crew shares the first lines of the first books we’re picking up in 2023—add yours in the comments! [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( NERD YEAR IN REVIEW [A Few Things that Brought Us Nerdy Joy in 2022]( Since the beginning of time, there have been nerds. And some years ago, those nerds finally began to feel joy. And thus it has become a tradition here at Tor.com to celebrate nerdy joy, in the face of tumultuous times, political upheaval, and the devils of the void. In this list you will find celebrations of Star Trek, odes to David Bowie, multiple dance-offs, and a surprising number of gay pirates. Here are a few of the things that brought us joy in the last year! [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( SFF ART [Four Surprise Cameos in SFF Cover Art]( Writers and artists have long been known to incorporate real people into their work as the basis for characters and countenances—usually models, but occasionally someone a little more recognizable shows up! James Davis Nicoll presents four fun SFF cover art cameos, with plenty more discussed in the comments. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( MARK AS READ [How Do You Measure a Year in Reading?]( It is the season for a lot of things, and one of them is people bemoaning the fact that they didn’t read enough books this year. “Enough” in this situation tends to mean a specific goal, set roughly twelve months ago, back when we had no idea what a given year would hold. But what is the purpose of reading goals, really? In a new Mark As Read column, Molly Templeton dives into how we quantify our reading time, and the satisfaction of finishing books. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( MESOZOIC MONSTERS [The Land Beyond Spacetime: Dinosaurs and Cosmic Horror]( Every book ever written on the subject of dinosaurs is a literal Necronomicon: a book of dead names, dead names for dead monsters in dead languages. Even movies like The Land Before Time present a potent mixture of wonder and trauma, causing children everywhere to grapple with the passage of time and the concept of mass extinction. Fletcher Wortmann delves into his childhood obsession with dinosaurs and the end of the world, and examines their place in works of cosmic horror, from the Lovecraft Mythos to modern kaiju movies. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( HALLE BERRY, THAT HAS A KICK! [Here’s Another Clue for Us All: Glass Onion Gives Us a Multifaceted Mystery]( Rian Johnson’s newest whodunnit, like Knives Out before it, follows gentleman sleuth Benoit Blanc as he travels into the world of the ultra-rich in search of truth and, if possible, justice. Leah Schnelbach reviews the film. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( SFF ON SCREEN [8 SFF Adaptations Currently in the Works]( We love to see our favorite stories brought to screen, which is why it’s so exciting to talk about books that are actually being adapted and the films and shows that we’ll (probably) soon get to see. Here, Cole Rush takes a look at eight announced or in-progress SFF adaptations and digs into all the details about casting, release dates, and more. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( FULFILLING THE PROPHECY [“Love Takes a Million Forms”: His Dark Materials’ Series Finale]( At the start of the final season of His Dark Materials, it was clear the show had a tough job ahead of it, needing to stick the book’s impeccable landing while also making up for the final installment’s pacing issues and story problems. Here, Tyler Dean reviews the series finale and its relationship with the source material. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( CREATURE FEATURE [Six of the Best Monster Movies From Around the World]( The creature feature is a gloriously varied subgenre, showcasing a fabulous array of imaginative monsters and incorporating elements from basically every other genre, from horror to comedy and everything in-between. If you love a movie with monsters, here are six films with an international assemblage of creatures. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( ORIGINAL FICTION [“Burning Books for Pleasure and Profit” by K.J. Parker]( A talented bookbinder is tasked with creating a copy of a text so inflammatory it threatens to alter the very existence of Truth itself. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( Follow Tor.com to get updates on all of our original fiction. 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