Very late Yuletide letter

Y: The Last Man

I was on a years long break from comics, when I read a review of this and several other comic books For Grown Ups. Y: the Last Man (and Preacher) are entirely responsible for my getting back into comics, and now I mod a comics community, a comics-fanworks recing community, and I'm trying to write my own! I love comics, and I've loved them since I was a kid, but for a while there I was burned out. Y: the Last Man both reminded me of all the things I adored about funny books, and reminded me of their great potential - to be moving, ambitious, hilarious, tragic. ( Read more... )

C J Cherryh - Fortress series

Cherryh is one of my favourite SF/F writers, and Fortress is, I think, one of her tighter universes. Fortress is what happens when you apply SF style world building to a fantasy series: you get intimate details of political alliances, the economics of trade, warfare and the supernatural. Because it's Cherryh, there's layer after layer of character development, personal conflicts, cultural mixups, and so very much detail. She's created a system of the supernatural, differentiating between magic, wizardry and sorcery, laying out the possibilities and practices of each, but managed to retain a sense of the numinous. Not to mention, the characters. <3 ( Read more... )

Caroline Stevermer - College of Magics series

Ok, Faris Nallaneen? Wins at life as far as I'm concerned. As does Stevermer, who built such a lovely fantasy world in this series. Intrigue on trains! Magical hats! Highway men! Rides in early limos! Shopping in Paris! It's all so much fun, made even more fun by how badly it chafes Faris. A College of Magic is a great coming of age tale, with political finagling, and and understated love story thrown in as bonuses. It's filled to the brim with deep and abiding friendships, complicated family dynamics, and conflicting loyalties. And it's funny. ( Read more... )

True Blood

I was not blown away by the first episode, but by the third, I was hooked. I have so much love for this show and all its insanity, sexiness, twists, turns and over-heated drama. What I like best about True Blood, is how it balances the relentless advance of the (insane) plot, with screwball hilarity, and small moments of humanity. It's like every once in a while the show takes a breath, gets serious, and real, and sometimes devastating, and then before you've had time to process it, it's back to strippers, cultists, and psychic waitresses playing super hero. ( Read more... )

Dinner

If you follow me on Twitter, or chat with me, you've probably heard about what I cooked for dinner tonight. The menu:

Arugula and grapefruit salad, with toasted chestnuts.
Toasted whole wheat baguette with aioli.

Sauteed swiss chard and portobello mushrooms, with prosciutto.
Bouillabaisse.

All of that with a nice Pinot Grigio. And for desert:

Portuguese egg tarts.
Espresso.


I purchased the tarts, but made everything else from scratch. Time consuming but easy. This was a really great meal! The salad was perfectly balanced: crispy, crunchy, soft; sweet and tart. The bouillabaisse turned out quite nicely. It was my first time making it, and heck, my first time working with lobster, but definitely a success. :D