Thanks to my sister's excellent advice, I signed up for BritBox so I could watch Gardeners' World. I think I would like all my entertainment delivered by soothing British gardeners from now on. I mean, The Irregulars was fun too. But this show somehow offers the closest thing to the uplifting, restorative feeling you get from being in an actual ( Read more... )

I haven't read any Frog and Toad since I was about six year old. Based on this short (under four minutes) claymation adaptation of one of their stories, I've been missing out. Look how perfectly they capture the eternal struggle not to binge on cookies in just three lines:

FROG: *puts cookies in box* There. Now we will not eat any more cookies.
TOAD ( Read more... )

I stumbled upon a blog by a military historian who analyzes pop culture, and his series on the Battle of Helm's Deep and the Siege of Gondor are fascinating. He analyzes both the book and movie versions of the battles (which have some crucial differences). And is fair enough to note that while the movie versions usually make far less sense and have ( Read more... )

So Ann Leckie has posted about typical Radchaai music and Breq's favorite song and now I am desperately hoping someone will make the Radchaai version of that music video. A tea shop instead of a bar, everyone wearing gloves, the eerie feeling that all the people singing are in fact the same person, sort of...

I should start making a list of ( Read more... )

There is a lot to like about Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma series, but also plenty that is... well, bad. Every time I read one, I am annoyed and wonder if I should just quit reading. Yet I have read about thirty of the damned things, and am almost certainly going to read that new one my library just got an ebook copy of ( Read more... )

I was doing homework or restricted from watching such horrible violent television or something back when Xena: Warrior Princess came out, so I decided to watch a couple of episodes. Only 20 years behind!

I can already see how the Xena/Gabrielle relationship could get really compelling quickly, but it is so hard to focus on that when the show keeps ( Read more... )

Reading a review of Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor (here) made me realize I don't think I've ever written up my own reactions to the book.

I first read Shards of Honor about 10 years ago, after reading The Curse of Chalion and The Paladin of Souls and hearing that the Vorkosigan Saga was also great. Out of what I'm sure is a natural ( Read more... )

I've been thinking again about the Imperial Radch trilogy (Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy), and how differently the trilogy progresses from what I'm used to: instead of Breq acting on a wider and wider scale with each book and leading an increasingly huge revolution, the action stays relatively personal and local, and the ( Read more... )

For some unfathomable reason, I started watching Alphas. I... well, I think I keep watching because there are things I like about the concept and I keep hoping the show will live up to what it could be ( Read more... )

Over at a recap/deconstruction of Speaker for the Dead, it's mentioned in passing how utterly weird ansible communication plus relativistic travel could make things. Like so:

I mean, imagine that back in 1900 CE we were all in contact by magic instant radio with England, and they're all "Oi, Germany seems like it could be the centre of some big ( Read more... )