Finished Mieville's The Scar. I like it rather better than Perdido Station, if only because it happens on the sea, and feels less claustrophobic than the former. The idea of the Fractured land and probability mining is also rather intriguing, but not really developed. One gets the sense that he comes up with clever words based on some vague idea ( Read more... )

Finally picked up China Mieville. Got Perdido Station and The Scar from the Borders @ penn station that's closing, rather sad. He's one of the authors that people are always surprised that I haven't read, and in fact I'm surprised myself that I haven't either. Well, now that I'm half way through them, I'm not sure if I'm actually missing ( Read more... )

Have read Guards! Guard! and Men at Arm. Lots of fun, and just the antidote for the times. Like they say in the afterwords, bring your troubles too, don't bother to leave them behind, because chances are you'll see them in a completely different Discworld light. But I'm somewhat disappointed, because Terry Prachett is not going to be an author ( Read more... )

Finish volume 15 and 16 of Hundred Ghosts. 15 I find more horror than strange tales. A couple of the stories were truly scary, the one where the girl can see the red thread around people's neck, and the first one about the girl who always bring misfortune to those who associate with them ( Read more... )

Finished the first vol of yoru to hoshi no mukou. It's an easy read for Ima Ichiko, and the layout is much more clear and straight forward, meaning I didn't have to reread every speech bubble three times before understanding, and I guess plot wise it will be somewhat simpler than her other stories as well. But I still find everyone in this series ( Read more... )

This book, The Indian Clerk, is very strange. I can not decide whether I like it or not, and so I keep on reading. On one hand he does something that I thought would have been incredibly difficult, if not impossible: he not only conveys to the lay reader a basic understanding of an extreme obscure area of mathematics, but in addition the joy that ( Read more... )

The long rec entry first -- I did keep something of a travel journal over at pitas, but I'll post these here later once I have my pictures uploaded.

海岭荒城 by 王十一A young reporter, Tao Rujiu, arrives at a movie park to write a special insider report, but what was supposed to be a simple assignment turns into something much more sinister as ghosts, ( Read more... )

Finished Liz William's Snake Agent. It's actually not really a detective story, which is a little disappointing -- I was kind of expecting Judge Dee, with mythology and fantasy thrown in for good measures, but there's really not a lot of deductive investigation, just a lot of dashing about with plots hanging on amazing serendipity, and a true ( Read more... )

Jinjiang, the premier Chinese BL site, was recently hacked, so that put a stop to my reading for a little while. Fortunately two shipments came in, one from books.com.tw, and one from Amazon, so I had quite a bit of reading material ( Read more... )