The Sword and Laser discussion

It's end-of-year book list time! And we have a list of our favorite end-of-year lists. Plus, our initial thoughts on Akata Witch!


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We read 1Q84 at the same time we read Elantris.

This was pre-Geek & Sundry, when there was no 1 month time limit. Books were wrapped up when Veronica and Tom were finished.

We started both books on Nov. 17th 2011 & wrapped them up on Jan. 2 2012. 46 days total.

So we had an extra 2 weeks to read both.

I don't see the stats etc I do for S&L as work. It is a labour of love 😎

I wonder if the confusion over Dracula is because quite a few of us did the Dracula Daily read along a couple of years ago, so there was some discussion about the book on here?

As for the word “Akata”, I have never heard it outside the context of Okorafor’s book series, so it’s certainly not in common parlance in the UK. Maybe it’s common in the Nigerian community, but not in the general population. I don’t know why the UK publisher decided to give the book a new title and more childish-looking cover, it seems a strange decision to me but I’m sure they have their reasons…

I think I mentioned this somewhere in my post, but Nnedi Okorafor has been quite clear that the discussion was entirely about how it would be received in the Nigerian edition. At the time she had been unable to publish Who Fears Death in Nigeria because it was deemed "too controversial" so she finally agreed to the title changes in the Nigerian edition. Who Fears Death finally got a Nigerian edition in 2018 and she feels like she would make a different decision in her publishing position today.

The Nigerian edition publisher, Cassava Republic International Press, also publishes in the UK. That's why the UK edition has the same title. It's the same edition as the Nigerian edition from the same publisher.

Or as I realized, I think it's more technically accurate to say that "What Sunny Saw in the Flames" is the Nigeria/UK edition published by Cassava Republic International Press.

Scott wrote: "I think I mentioned this somewhere in my post, but Nnedi Okorafor has been quite clear that the discussion was entirely about how it would be received in the Nigerian edition. At the time she had b..."

Ah, thank you Scott, that makes sense. I don’t remember the details of that discussion, I must have skimmed your post and not absorbed it all properly.

There was discussion of a Sword and Laser best-of - just wanted to point out Trike started a thread like that a few weeks ago. Found some good books to try there:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...