I am so scattered of late. I had intended to use this holiday weekend to catch up on some lj posting, but instead I slept, dejunked the house a bit, wrote thank you notes, and made waffles. I started to try out mint.com, but one of my credit unions isn't accessible, so I don't know that it would be any use to me ( Read more... )

20 Best SF Books of the Decade

SF here is being used inclusive of sf and fantasy.

I have read 8.5 of the 20: Air, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Oryx and Crake, Pattern Recognition, Stories of Your Life and Others, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Tooth and Claw, World War Z, and half of the Harry Potter series.

I agree that Air, Stories of Your Life ( Read more... )

I won't be going to Philcon this year. Buying a laptop made me a little poorer than I had intended, so I think it best that I not go. One day I shall get there.

Several weeks back I went to the Small Press Expo ("North America’s Premiere Independent Cartooning and Comic Arts Festival") in hopes of discovering something new that I'd really enjoy. I ( Read more... )

If I had read Minion 10 years ago, I probably would have liked it much better. Now however I'm over vampires and need more than a female main character to keep my attention.

What Minion has going for it is intriguing mythology encompassing many religions, decent writing, and a multicultural cast. Unfortunately, L.A. Banks has a tendency to tell, ( Read more... )

Can I take upon myself the rights and privileges attendant upon having read Pride and Prejudice? In all honesty and I believe without presenting myself as more than I am or bringing a taint of dishonor upon myself, the institutions that assisted in my education or my family, I believe that I can indeed allow that having over the course of several ( Read more... )

Black Blood by John Meaney. "Donal Riordan, a recently murdered Tristopolis police lieutenant, now a zombie, is tasked with exposing a powerful cabal of conspirators ... while also trying to track down those responsible for the death of his lover, Laura."
I am not on board with the idea of sapient zombies--and certainly not sapient zombies who are ( Read more... )

• I now have a pair of bifocals. I got them for work because I became really annoyed having to constantly take off and put on my glasses. I spent the day seeing everything blurry. Yeah, yeah, sure; I will adjust to them.
  
• Last night, lanchid took me to Bistro D'Oc, an authentic French restaurant. It was lovely and had the best cappuccino I've ever had.
  
• I ( Read more... )

I picked this up and scanned a couple chapters in Barnes & Noble. What I like about this guide to financial planning is that it tailors its advice for the decade of life one is in (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s+) and one's marital status. Frequently, advice that I find for persons of my age is geared toward married couples with children and I'm left ( Read more... )

Well-written, excellently paced medical thriller about an outbreak of a terrorist-designed form of dengue in a future Holy Renaissance-run Mexico City. The science fiction elements (chiefly, the pilone network that allows instant communication among those who have had the surgery) are key to the plot and its resolution, but rarely take center stage ( Read more... )

Of the Good

• oracne was here for Capclave. We attended panels, talked Doctor Who, ate at A Taste of Morocco, and watched DW: "Survival" (Seven) and "The Time Meddler" (One). I bought no books and only one piece of jewelry: a lanyard for my work ID.
  
• My ergonomic keyboard for Mac arrived Thursday and is now hooked up and I'm typing on it right now. I'm ( Read more... )