If you want an interesting look at a particular aspect of human psychology, you should go read the comments on this Io9 post about an island of immortals by Ursula LeGuin (non-spoiler alert - in the story, being immortal sucks ( Read more... )

Two posts in one day - imagine that! Spoilers for sorting and wanding: ( Sorting and Wanding )

I want to go back and find all your usernames and friend you all now that I'm actually on (I'm QuillHex170!), but it'll have to wait at least until I get my wand and get sorted.

In the meantime ( mild spoilers for process )

The "d" key on my stupid macbook stopped working. As a result of the teensy, tiny amount of gazpacho I spilled on it yesterday? Maybe, though there was a gap of a couple of hours and a minor crisis involving the "b" key that got resolved when I plugged it into the outlet in between, so it's kind of weird. Anyway, I popped the "d" key off to ( Read more... )

Writing a brief and need to look up every now and then. This meme seemed like a good opportunity, stolen from genarti. NPR came out with its Top 100 SF/Fantasy books list. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you intend to read, and underline if it's a series you've read at least one of but not all of. Comments in brackets. Also, since I ( Read more... )

I'm QuillHex170! Now what???

I love, love, love dystopia novels, so I was all excited that this was the new big YA publishing trend. Unfortunately, while you know Hunger Games was my favorite thing ever, most of what I've read since has been pretty disappointing. I keep meaning to do comprehensive reviews, but I've been having a hard time doing so. (Do you ever find that ( Read more... )

Since I'm still in brain candy mode,* I decided to re-read the Storm trilogy by Mercedes Lackey. Whatever; I need a break sometimes, y'all. I bought the first one for Kindle and actually, as Mercedes Lackey books go it was remarkably unwhiny (though super-powered mages who are always right about everything all the time were replaced by super- ( Read more... )

I think that, as is usually the case, people are going to have different emotional reactions to what happened yesterday and I don't think it means that any of them are stunted, uncaring, unseemly, unpatriotic, jingoistic, or anything else in and of itself. (Of course, many of them - us - are many of those things, but not because of a particular ( Read more... )

A fun challenge would be to try each sandwich in Wikipedia's American sandwich category.

Doesn't a beef on weck look good? And a bierock fits right into my bailiwick of meet encapsulated by bread (I think a remnant from a childhood of reading fantasy novels where characters ate nothing but meat pies and sausage rolls for hundreds of pages). ( Read more... )