The British Fantasy Award short list has been announced. One thing this list convinces me of is that I need to read the Stephen Jones anthology A Book of Horrors next. Plenty of time to order it before it’s published in the United States in September.

The John W. Campbell Memorial Award finalists have been announced.

I’ve been writing a column for Fantasy Literature for a little over a year now in which I look at SF/F/H magazines. Many of these magazines publish poetry, which means I’ve been reading more speculative poetry than I’ve ever read before. It is a very difficult medium. Locus has a roundtable constituting an introduction to speculative poetry that is well worth your time if you enjoy this devilishly tricky medium.

Powell’s Books, perhaps my favorite bookstore in the entire world, has made some recommendations for your SF/F/H reading for May. There’s not a book on this list but that I want to read it, and I own several of them. Bitterblue, in particular, is right at the top of my list.

io9 has its own ideas about what you should be reading in May. There’s some overlap, but less than you’d imagine. I particularly recommend Laird Barron’s The Croning, which is a magnificent horror novel.

Looking for some free reading for your Kindle? Amazon’s running a promotion through Phoenix Pick through early June. You’ve already missed out on a number of good books if you haven’t come across this site before, but there are still plenty to grab as well.

If you love H.P. Lovecraft’s work and milieu, this is the recommendation list for you. There’s an enormous amount of good reading here, and some awful stuff, too, but then, that’s precisely Lovecraft’s legacy, at least in my mind. He had a great imagination but was a pretty terrible writer. Still, chances are good that you’ll find uses of the word “eldritch” in quite a few of these works written in his universe.

MIT’s Science Fiction Society maintains an enormous library of SF/F/H materials: it contains 90% of the science fiction published in English to date. Wow. I could actually move in to that library with great happiness.

If you want to write a bestseller, there may well be a formula to doing so. Me, I’d rather write something good someday. Money really truly isn’t everything. Still, perhaps it couldn’t hurt to take a look….

And if your habits as a writer require some guidance, Tin House has some suggestions. Of course, these particular suggestions don’t seem to translate to everyone.

If you’ve been following Sunday Links, you know that Amazon is remaking the publishing industry in about a hundred different ways, and sometimes it seems like they’re all bad. That’s not the case, say some writers; the new paradigm might actually help writers. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Sort of along the same lines, Salon looks at what will become of the paper book. In essence, it seems, the paper book will become a luxury good, an artwork – and that doesn’t seem like an entirely bad thing.

Pity the poor book reviewer, says Lev Grossman. Actually, my own reaction is something more akin to jealousy – and really, Grossman admits, he’s got it a lot better today than Orwell did in his. An interesting perspective on the life of the full-time reader and writer. Gosh, I wish I were one of that fraternity.

But we readers have our own power. Damien Walters writes that writers need to pay attention to their fandom or pay the consequences.

I don’t find it particularly surprising that reading about a character in fiction can affect your own behavior, but apparently that’s one of those things that requires proof. Ohio State University researchers have discovered that fictional characters can influence real life actions.

A very cool thing to do – and one that raises the bar for every husband-to-be of every science fiction fan: this man forged his wedding ring out of a meteorite. I told my husband I want a ring like that, and he promised to get right on it. Of course, he also promised to slow the rotation of the earth so that I’d have more reading time, but I’ve seen precious little progress in the 12 years that have passed since then, so I won’t hold my breath about the ring, either.

Okay, this last link has nothing whatsoever to do with reading, really, but I found it fascinating and had to share: unexpected photographs of famous people. You haven’t really lived until you’ve seen Dr. Martin Luther King Junior as a pool hustler. Cool beans, as my nephew Will used to say when he was small. Stalin as a gorgeous hunk and Alex Trebek as a young hipster also have taken up permanent residence in my subconscious, which should lead to some interesting dreams.

My review of Maureen McHugh's collection of short stories, After the Apocalypse, is up today at Fantasy Literature. It's an excellent collection, the stories quiet and unassuming but powerful.

My Magazine Monday column is up at Fantasy Literature. This week I look at the Nebula-nominated novelettes. Geoff Ryman wins hands down, in my estimation, but judge for yourself -- and let me know what you think.