As previously mentioned, I've been reading a lot more this year due to a) no freelance work, b) a bus commute, and c) a concerted effort to do so. I have friends and acquaintances who have read twenty or thirty books at this point in the year--I am not so fast a reader. But I also read the news and magazines (and the interwebs), so some of my ( Read more... )

1) I just finished reading Christopher Moore's Sacre Bleu, which was recommended to me by skidspoppe and I am here to tell you that it's not only a good book, it's a good fantasy, and that if you read genre you must read it. Seriously. (And if you are interested in art or history you should read it, too.) It's set mainly in Paris in the 1890s, mostly on ( Read more... )

1) Norwescon was great. As usual I spent time with a lot of awesome people, old friends and new, and didn't have nearly enough time with any of them. I did two panels, three critiques, and finished a short story that I've been bashing away at for a month (on which more in another LJ post, I suspect). I attended two panels, the Fannish Fetish ( Read more... )

1) The Bus and Books: With the new commute--a bus and the streetcar into downtown Seattle, and then a bus home--I'm getting a lot of reading done. And my reading pattern is becoming more what it was like back in New York, which is to say that I have a commuting book and a bedtime book--back to reading two at a time. I feel more like myself. My last ( Read more... )

When I got home from Europe, I dove into my reading ferociously. Finished the Adams biography (and made a list of all the related reading I want to do, like the Adams-Jefferson correspondence and the John-Abigail correspondence and so on). Flew through the Anne Frank diary. Read through the catalog of the Vincent Van Gogh paintings that I picked up ( Read more... )

1) There's a big, handsome Steller's Jay on the neighbor's roof pecking at moss. Of which we have a lot in the Pacific Northwest ( Read more... )

On Sunday nights: I guess I don't like Sunday nights very much. I mean, they're just as good as other evenings for getting together with friends--and I did have a lovely afternoon and evening with EB--but I always get a little blue past about 8 PM on Sundays. The weekend is over, and once the sun rises on Monday, my time stops being my own in 8 ( Read more... )

When in Amsterdam, I visited Anne Frank House as one does, and while I was there I picked up a copy of the book. Astonishingly, I'd never actually read the book, though I knew the story and have seen the play. It seemed like it was time. What I picked up was "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl--The Definitive Edition," so called because up until ( Read more... )

I'm very excited to learn that a project I edited, The Complete Kobold Guide to Game Design, has been nominated for an ENnie Award for Best RPG Related Product. I'll take a tiny bit of credit here, but most of it goes to our fabulous authors, most especially the_monkey_king (Wolfgang Baur), but also to Keith Baker, Monte Cooke, Ed Greenwood, Rob Heinsoo, Nicholas ( Read more... )

Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal (maryrobinette): The sequel to Shades of Milk and Honey, this volume finds glamourist Jane Vincent and her new husband on their honeymoon in Belgium with friends as well as on assignment to complete a magical mural for a client. The trouble is that Napoleon is on the march, and what started out as a trip promising ( Read more... )