Last year, before I went to Australia, I bought a Kindle so that I could load it up with books for my trip and thus reduce the weight of my luggage. I've found it very amenable for leisure-type reading, but today for the first time I tried to use it for academic reading, and found the experience utterly frustrating and tedious ( Read more... )

I haven't caught up on unwritten film reviews yet, but this evening I feel like taking on a book. I read this particular book while on holiday in Cyprus last April with the lovely
( Read more... )

I learnt via fjm this morning that Diana Wynne Jones has finally lost her long battle with cancer. She was easily my favourite children's author, and indeed quite probably my favourite living author full stop. The world will feel several shades greyer without her in it ( Read more... )

2009 was my third year of reviewing all of the (non-work-related) books I read and films I watched here in my journal, and my second year of also doing the same for Classic episodes of Doctor Who. My overviews of 2007 and 2008 are at the links, and the same for 2009 follows below.

( Books )

One of the things that happened when I moved into my lovely proper new house here in Leeds is that I finally took possession of all the accumulated gubbins which I had left behind with my parents when I first moved out at the age of 18. Mainly, this meant the books of my childhood and my teens - with which I am now at leisure to get nostalgically ( Read more... )

The 'unread books' meme, as created by nhw, alphabetised by loganberrybunny and last seen by me on huskyteer's journal:

( LibraryThings's top 106 unread books )

It's very exciting to go to Mugglenet right now and see their counter to The Half-Blood Prince enumerating the remaining time in terms of a few hours! I was perfectly sanguine about it all when I woke up this morning, and genuinely spent the day thinking more about Timgad than Hogwarts - but that's entirely out of the window now ( Read more... )

I did finish Conrad's Fate last night, as I had expected to. My final verdict is that it was a real delight to read, and it is now my third favourite in the Chrestomanci series1. Since no-one on my friends list will have read it (with the exception of pickwick who, like me, bought an advance copy on Ebay), and a few might want to, I shall note down my ( Read more... )