Why I’m not posting anything today

When I fall in love with a book, it’s hard for me to describe it without making it sound stupid, let alone explain even to myself why I like it so much. I was going to try to write about one of them, but just taking a quick look into it is sucking me back […]

Re: The Grand Cheat

“The Grand Cheat,” by Hilary Moon Murphy is a charming deal with the deva story, where not only do we find a loophole, the god is forced to enforce it. If there’s a contract, that’s even better. As the narrator observes in the first line: A contract is only two people, each doing his damnedest […]

So it snowed, blah, blah, blah

Last night’s snow came down wet. So did the sleet, and the slush, and the rain. To be followed by freezing cold over night. I hate when that’s about to happen. The warning sign comes when you look out at the patio and all the fluffy white snow has gone grey and semi-translucent and it’s […]

Re: Tigana

Last year, when I read Ysabel, I remarked that Guy Gavriel Kay looked like the sort of writer I would like, and that largely turned out to be true. And now I’m noticing that I never got around to talking about his books that I do like. The first of his books to break away […]

Books I didn’t read in 2008

Another resolution for this year is to be more selective about what I put on my To Read list. I’ve heard way too many interviews with engaging raconteurs, only to find that they gave away all the interesting stuff in the interview. And yet it’s really hard to totally give up on authors that I’ve […]

Cats in snow

It seems to take life-threatening weather to keep the cats inside. After all, there is Important Cat Business that Needs to be Attended to. Therefore, they must go out, barefoot or barepawed, sidle along the house, leap between dry spots, and–if pressed–wade through snow belly deep. And just when I’m getting impressed by how little […]

Time to read Darwin

2009 is Darwin Year, among other things, because it’s 150 years since On The Origin of Species was published. I’m a little late mentioning this, because the commemoration really started last July, on the anniversary of the day Darwin felt pressed to lay claim to natural selection. So one of my resolutions for this year […]

Re: Bender’s Game

As I mentioned a while ago, Futurama is practically the only sci-fi on TV that I can stand. That is, I like it enough to keep watching the reruns and to enjoy watching the latest Futurama release, Bender’s Game, which makes two hours feel like 20 minutes.

Akemashite Omedetou

Or, “Happy New Year” in Japanese. Actually the literal meaning comes closer to saying “Congratulations on opening up another year.” After making it through such an interesting year as the last year, I think we’ve earned some congratulations. Here’s hoping you’re having a good New Year. And now, as has been said so often, I […]

Today, I like snow

Call me crazy, but I really enjoyed shovelling this afternoon. There was maybe four inches of beautiful white fluffy snow. Even through the shovel, it felt soft and silky. That’s the weird part. How could I feel the snow without touching it?