It's a complex world,
Sometimes I feel like a ch... ch... ch... chimpanzee,
It's a complex world,
So hard for a casual guy like me.
"Complex World" - The Young Adults

Changes - Jim Butcher

A friend (I'm pretty sure it was serenada) once referred to Stargate SG-1 as a show with "mad continuity." The same can be said for Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden books, ( Read more... )

Cruel Zinc Melodies - Glen Cook

About halfway thorough Cook's latest Garrett, P.I., novel, I began to wonder if Cook had read any of debg's Haunted Ballad series. Garrett is called on by old friend and client Max Weider to look into some strange goings on at a theatre he's building in Tun Faire. What Garrett finds are gang activity, giant bugs, and ( Read more... )

I've actually been reading quite a bit, I just haven't been writing it down.

Preludes and Nocturnes -- Neil Gaiman
The Doll's House -- Neil Gaiman
Dream Country -- Neil Gaiman

This is the second time I've tried Gaiman's Sandman series of graphic novels, and although I got further this time, I'm still not as impressed as a lot of folks seem to be ( Read more... )

Show, don't tell. That's what they always say to do, and Glen Cook is a believer. His The Dragon Never Sleeps contains nary a bit of exposition until right near the end. The learning curve is steep. It was fifty or sixty pages in before I started feeling like I had a clue as to what was going on and who was opposing who. If it hadn't been Cook ( Read more... )

What a lovely day. Sunny, temps in the sixties. I stopped on the way home, and picked up three different tomato plants, a three pack of canteloupes, and another package of strawberry plants (10 of 'em, all very healthy looking). I raked all the dead strawbs out of the old tomato patch, and put in a row of tomatoes and a row of strawbs. I stuck the ( Read more... )

I finished Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere on the flight down to NOLA, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's great fun, and it all hangs together rather well. I liked it so much that when I happened across the six-part BBC miniseries of it at Newbury's last night, I bought it. Watched the first two eps last night, and it seems wonderfully cast so far, and very ( Read more... )

Finished the new Garrett novel (Angry Lead Skies) by Glen Cook last night. It was fun, but not his best. Garrett is a private detective in a fantasy universe, sort of modeled after Archie Goodwin. The plots usually involve the supernatural, so sometimes the mystery doesn't really play fair with the readers, but this time it was exactly the opposite ( Read more... )