Serious, gripping novel. Won Hugo and Nebula and craploads of other prizes fairly. Excellent plotting, characters, even prose. And there's a ghost;  Shakespeare and Dexter's writers would approve.

The WindUp Girl is set in a frighteningly believable future with giant corporations but without fossil fuels (no nuclear or solar power, even). All the ( Read more... )

This is worth making, devouring while sweating, and then standing on rooftops shouting about (the whole jumping on a couch thing a la Cruise is too reserved).  It's like this:

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1. At dinner last night, while we were happily interrogating K about her first day at the Chiro (like boy scouts, only for both boys and girls), K asked for something to watch while we ate. We said no. She howled, "But I need something to distract me!" We asked in unison, "From what?" She said, "FROM THE BOTH OF YOU ( Read more... )

Did anyone happen to wind up with my Elfquest archives Vol 1 & 2? 

Unlike some parents, I don't have a problem with K playing computer games. When I was a kid, anything that wasn't bolted down could be a toy. I did unspeakable things with wicker furniture. Oh ok.  I made a lot of extremely unflightworthy spaceships with my brother and other neighborhood children tucked away in, um, flight pods. Ahem.  I digress.  ( Read more... )

I'm listening to Newton Faulkner on YouTube cause he's so talented it's sick, and YouTube is suggesting that I watch Katy Perry's "Firework" next. Um, no, no thanks, YouTube. Then I wonder why on earth she is so famous and Newton isn't (yet). It's obvious. It's the boobs. So, if Newton were to mold his dreadlocks into boobs, give them different ( Read more... )

Could have been so much better! So much Nothing happens here, it's sad.  Whoever is filming all the stuff that happens without dialogue is awful-- opportunities to tell the story get thrown away. Two examples ( Read more... )

 does      weird                 things.

sometimes you can't post
sometimes posts

change

hmph

The Hunger Games is a young adult novel by Suzanne Collins. It has a well-deserved buzz. I couldn't put it down. Collins says she was flipping channels between a survivor show and a history of Cretan politics when the core idea popped into her head: what if a modern city-state demanded children, the most precious tribute imaginable, from subjugated ( Read more... )

I had a Calling for a few weeks. Logic grid puzzles at Puzzle Baron called me. At first, I just wanted to get a fastest solve record. I managed that after a month. Then I thought I'd see how well I could do if I flogged those games day and night. Though most players started on the first of the month and I began on the 11th, in overall points, I ( Read more... )