If you even mildly like detective novels, give The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall a try. His protagonist, his hero in an odd sort of way, Vish Puri, India's most private investigator, is the most interesting character I've run across in mysteries in a good number of years ( Read more... )

A pretty entertaining read with an interesting cosmology and genuinely likable protagonists ( Read more... )

http://gaygamer.net/2009/11/gamestop_in_fresh_meadows_quee.htmlRead more... )

She's one of those authors that you (and by 'you' I mean 'I') will let get away with almost anything because she's just so damned fun to read. Especially with a certain fussy, puffed-up little Belgian who can use his 'little grey cells'.

It's interesting reading some of her work from the 30s, say, Poirot Loses A Client and then something from the ( Read more... )

So I'm reading an older but still interesting collection of 'Hard SF' stories (the quotes will be explained in a second) called The Ascent Of Wonder: The Evolution Of Hard SF and I find myself becoming increasingly annoyed by the anthologists' comments on each story and author as well as a somewhat painful attempt on the part of said anthologists ( Read more... )

http://www.davidmixner.com/2009/11/election-part-one-enough-no-more-enough.html#more

David Mixner says what needs to be said about equality and the Democratic party and Obama's administration not being interested in achieving it.

Which is to say staying up all night to read a book. I read The Gathering Storm, either the first of the last three books of the Wheel of Time or the first third of the last book, depending on how you choose to look at it in one long, throughly enjoyable go last night/this morning ( Read more... )

Except that I totally do. I am in the habit of using that titular line occasionally in conversation, these days. And while technically true, it's a lie in spirit. I don't watch TV on TV. With the arrival of streaming TV and iTunes and such, I watch TV on the computer. And what's interesting for me is that I don't watch TV the way I used to ( Read more... )

I am a bit of an alt-country fan. Hard to escape those early roots. And every so often an alt-country act comes along that makes you stop and say 'WOW!'. The last one to do that for me was The Handsome Family ( Read more... )

 Or at least broadly, comically (hopefully) exagerated characters.

For VoI's new D&D game, I had no idea who my Wizard/Warlock hybrid was until the words 'Center for a New Andajarian Century' left my mouth in relation to the character's study group at the combat wizardly college. And just like that, Aerik became a parody of a right-wing capitalist ( Read more... )