Okay, I am no longer even ashamed of myself for enjoying these. Because - and I wish someone had told me this - the ridiculously tropetastic "Prisoner of the Harem" stuff is really only the first half of the first book, and after that it's all intrigue and politics and a very satisfying slow-build love story: the whole second book is entirely ( Read more... )

Oh God, this week /o\ But let's not talk about that, let's talk about books! That I was not researching or reviewing or teaching, but rather reading on a lovely Greek beach, only a few short days ago! Most of these are substantially copied off what I said on Goodreads at the time.

The Emperor's Edge by Lindsay BurokerSort of a female Miles ( Read more... )

Recently finished: Lexicon by Max Berry. Fast-paced, well-executed thriller with some excellent ideas about the power of language -- I didn't know they still did those in the post-Dan Brown era.

Currently reading: Blood of Tyrants by naominovik. This whole series is just such a pleasure -- it's terribly rare, these days, that I just want to sit down with a ( Read more... )

Watching: Recently finished the second and, alas, last series of The Hour, which was really the perfect thing for me to watch right now. It's one of these shows that gets you hooked despite its flaws -- by the end, I was even rooting for Freddie and Bel to get together, even though they're both workaholic egotists, the course of whose relationship ( Read more... )

I don't think I ever posted a vid in more trying circumstances -- as it was uploading, there was a plumber in my flat prying up half the floorboards in the study, to get at the massive clog in the central drain that both the sinks and the shower go to (apparently the plumbing in here is all dreadful; but, like the firemen earlier this week, he ( Read more... )

So late last night the Partner in Crime and I were having a discussion on Facebook, as you do, about the texts we're teaching this semester and her wrong opinions:

F: I know, I just don't like a novel that knows what it's doing quite as much as Brodie does. It sort of smirks at you. Turn of the Shrew, on the other hand ( Read more... )

Saw The Hunger Games as planned this evening, on one of the lovely leather couches at the Dominion. On the whole, I thought it was really well done, though the jerky camera-work took a while to get used to. The music is lovely, Jennifer Lawrence is impossible to look away from every time she's on screen (I literally have no idea how this would ever ( Read more... )