I liked quite a bit about Havemercy (in particular, the role-play sensitivity training exercises for the Dragon Corps, which was very nicely done), but it also has its problems. Chiefly, plot (but also gender), and my issues with this tie in with an in-progress email I’ve been failing to send to alecaustin about writing fanfic vs writing original fic. It’s ( Read more... )

Martin McDonagh, The pillowman (playscript). I saw this in the UK three years ago, and although it’s not a perfect play it was very well performed, and in addition it is a difficult, edged (and edgy) piece that got thoroughly stuck in my head, and I eventually gave in and bought the script. Quotes largely from memory, as I’ve packed the book.

( Read more... )

Nibbling away at my backlog with some re-reads; for these ones, either the books or I have changed since our first encounter.

( Tanya Huff, Summon the keeper (re-read) and The second summoning. )

A friend of mine gave me back the stack of books I’d lent him. Holding up volume 1 of Takehiko Inoue’s Real (wheelchair basketball manga, brilliant, am trying to find v2): “Genius”. Holding up Terry Pratchett’s Nation: “Genius.” Holding up Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (still on my waiting for write-up list): “Absolute genius”. Holding up volume 7 of The ( Read more... )

The librarian did look at me a bit oddly with this lot (I also stuck in Diana Wynne Jones’ The Homeward Bounders as a more cheerful re-read, but didn’t get around to it). I have written three thousand words of essay about all of this, so this will be significantly shorter. Hopefully.

( Williams, P., & Wallace, D. Unit 731: The Japanese Army's secret of secrets. )

27 degrees today (80F for my international readers) and I am now trying to pack winter clothes, thus creating a mild cognitive dissonance. The main problem I have (well, currently) is coats, in that I can have a coat that is a) waterproof or b) stylish or c) warm, but I only have two coats that manage even two of these, both of which will take up ( Read more... )

I think this leaves me with about 27 books to write up, two of which are definitely on my list for best I've read all year and so are taking me longer to write about than they did to read (possibly a slight exaggeration, but I'm certainly spending more time procrastinating about writing them up than I did reading...).

( Marjorie Williams, The woman at the Washington zoo. )

I am currently on a roll, which is unusual enough to take advantage of. This first book is an interesting example of how two major faults can effectively cancel each other out, so that I finished this book in a state of Zen-like calm that was quite far removed from some of my earlier reactions. I am going to spoil the ending quite thoroughly, ( Read more... )

Saying I'll catch up by the end of the year will almost certainly doom this to failure (especially as I will be travelling), but I can at least try to get down to a pending review pile of reasonable numbers (hmm. Having just looked at it, "reasonable numbers" will probably have to be defined as less than 20, although I'd really like to get that ( Read more... )

The following reviews may be a little hazy on details (or even wrong) due to a) the title of this entry and b) the fact that while somewhere on my harddrive there are some partial reviews of some of these, I appear to have given the relevant word document a completely unrelated title. Anyway.

( Marian Keyes, This charming man. )