Re: The Element

I was interested in The Element, by Ken Robinson because I agree that everyone does have something they enjoy that they’re talented at, and that too many people forget or bury that passion. But I found this book more inspirational than instructional. It’s 95% stories of talented people who figured out what their talent was […]

Re: Lord of Emperors

Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay is probably the fattest book I’ve ever read in one sitting. (It helped that I started reading early, about 9 pm.) I immediately warmed to the physician, Rustem. As he entered Sarantium, we re-entered the the story from the previous book. About halfway through, when realized what danger […]

Re: Sailing to Sarantium

Sailing to Sarantium, by Guy Gavriel Kay breaks the pattern of the previous books. It focuses on one character, Crispin, a skilled but flawed mosaic artist. He travels to Byzantium, I mean Sarantium, apparently in the same world as Al-Rassan, but centuries earlier, there’s no war at the end, and not a word about Fionavar.

Re: The Lions of Al Rassan

Perhaps because I wasn’t drawn strongly to any particular character in The Lions of al-Rassan, I found myself checking off tropes from previous Guy Gavriel Kay books. Leisurely beginning introducing us to the characters, check. Cast of extraordinary people, check. Historical setting (Spain when it was Al-Andalus, just before the Reconquista) with the serial numbers […]

Off to get a Backson

Since I’ll be in New York this weekend and off the web, I’m currently queueing up posts for the next week. (I love scheduled posts.) Mostly I’m going to get my notes about Guy Gavriel Kay out of my system, even though I’m still not convinced I can properly express my feelings about the books. […]

The gasman cometh

I don’t know if this is scifi-related, but I dreamed the other day that Heinlein was our house guest and he was a pain in the ass. Instead of building the house into a tesseract, he took everything apart and left the pieces lying all over the place. There were things as big as engine […]

A Guppy Named Sue

Well, well, well. Look who turned about to be a boy after all. The one pretty guppy of the six sisters is now quite beautiful, with a flaming red tail, and shiny white flag, and gleaming sides. So he has a name, now. Sue.

Re: Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper

Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China, by Fuschia Dunlop. is full of great stories about food, cooking, and China. About half the book is about Sichuan: how she came as a student to Chengdu, fell in love with the food, and enrolled in the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine. […]

Tracks

I thought I would try an experiment. While I didn’t care for what I wrote in the flash fiction workshop at Boskone, I did feel inspired enough to try again. So here’s a picture I took this morning, after letting it sit in the back of my mind, here’s what came out when I started […]

Shoveling Prevention

During Boskone, I was knitting steadily in the back rows. It seemed very important to finish my mittens to ensure that I wouldn’t need them. A couple nights ago I finished the thumb and thought, That’s it. It’s not allowed to snow! Then it snowed anyway. And I groused. Then it rained long to wash […]