Reading

Aug 5 E The Wise Man’s Fear***** – Patrick Rothfuss. This is the sequel to The Name of the Wind. They are the first two books in The Kingkiller Chronicle and I am looking forward to the next. Excellent world building, and characters (even the minor ones) so detailed and three dimensional I couldn’t help caring deeply about them. There are stories within the story, which itself is told as a story to a Chronicler at an inn. Intricate and enthralling fantasy, beautifully written.

Aug 7 E The Gallows Tree**** – RJ Scott. An American, fleeing an abusive relationship, comes to England and gets involved with a ghost story and a local man. The ghost element was hard to follow at times but the story was well written and charming.

Aug 8 E Hot Head* – Damon Suede. Basically porn, dressed up as a very lightweight story about New York fire fighters. It also had very strange dialogue punctuation. I hated it.

Aug 10 E Renfred’s Masquerade*** – Hayden Thorne. An intriguing YA novel of magic and mystery. I’m pretty sure teenagers would love it but although the plot hooked me the characters didn’t. I felt distanced from them and never really lost myself in the story as a result. Ghosts, magic, and mechanical marvels abound. I know the author (and indeed she has done incredibly helpful beta work for me) and I admire her YA stories but most of them don’t really appeal. For this one, she deserved a better editor – there were a lot of typos and similar errors. She has changed publishing houses and it shows.

Aug 12 E Riptide Rentboys Collection * – Various authors. I bought this because I know one of the authors well and she was excited about her new publisher. I reviewed her contribution a couple of months ago, The stories were acceptable though not special. The formatting, however, was appalling, which really annoyed me, because there is so much said about how publishers, such as Riptide, give the readers good formatting, unlike self-publishing… One story in the collection was unreadable, because the file was corrupt. The others had elementary formatting errors which kept interfering with reading enjoyment. I will pass on my comments via my friend, and I am unlikely ever to buy from this publisher again.

[Update: I contacted the publisher and was able to download another copy of the story. It wasn’t worth the effort but the publisher was polite and helpful. Also, I got a mobi download this time and the formatting was much better, so .pdfs can clearly be a problem.]

Aug 13 E In search of saints**** – Harper Fox. As usual, Harper Fox’s research and location were mind blowing and beautiful, but this time I felt that the story deserved a novel and this was only a novella. A fascinating tale of rival archaeologists and a discovery that needs to remain hidden, side by side with an m/m romance. True to form, the author introduces paranormal elements with a light touch. A lovely book, but one that should have been longer.

Aug 18 P Revelation*** – C.J.Sansom. This is a volume in the writer’s much-hyped Tudor detective series. The historical research and background details were fascinating and the plot was at times gripping but… First of all, the whole thing was too long and could well have been cut to about two thirds its length with some good editing. It was full of repetitions, ponderous info dumps and clumsy (though grammatical) sentence structures.  The crime element of the story, whilst exciting, never quite convinced me, and some of the sub-plots simply petered out though of course they might re-emerge in future volumes. I was  transported into Tudor England by the descriptions of everyday life and the effect was both haunting and lasting, but I won’t be reading any more books by this author. Disappointing in some ways.

Aug 20 P The Safe House*** – Nicci French. Another crime story, this time set in present day Essex. Gripping plot with a lot of twists but whilst I was caught up in the story while I read, the whole thing didn’t quite convince me when I wasn’t reading. A very unsettling ending, and I don’t think I’ll be reading any of their other books (the author is a husband and wife team).

Aug 24 E Point of Knives***** – Melissa Scott. A lovely addition to the Astreiant series which deals with ‘police’ work in a fantasy world. When Melissa Scott’s partner and co-writer died, fans of the books thought there would be no more but she has finally given us this novella which bridges the two previous books, and she is promising us another later in the year. Beautifully written, with interesting characters and detailed world-building. This story could probably stand alone but would benefit from being read after Point of Hopes. Recommended.

Aug 28 E Love Ahead*** – Madelaine Urban and Abigail Roux. Two long novellas with a modern m/m romance theme. The stories were pleasant but not particularly memorable, and the writing, whilst good, was full of American dialect and cultural references that left this Brit reader at times bewildered. I read books like this to check out the competition. I don’t think I’ll be in the same competition as these.

Viewing

Aug 9 Third Man Out** – One of the Donald Strachey mystery series. Poor acting and poor filming.

Aug 14 Shelter** – very lightweight m/m romance made film length by the addition of a lot of surfing scenes and a great deal of unmemorable music.

Aug 19 Page Eight**** – beautifully directed and acted made-for-TV spy film with Bill Nighy and Michael Gambon plus a sparkling supporting cast. Reminiscent somehow of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I was disappointed by the ending which I thought was left slightly ambiguous for some kind of ‘art’ reason.

Aug 21 The Boat that Rocked*** – Nighy again, and Kenneth Brannagh, both of whom were somewhat wasted in this film. The story of UK’s pirate radio stations was one that needed to be told but the film couldn’t make its mind up over whether to be serious or comic, true to the facts or just a generalisation. It was too long for the story it ended up delivering, and was too lightweight, I thought, for its theme. The music was included in short snatches which were tantalising but unsatisfying. I have heard the CD which was better. The star-studded cast must have felt strongly about the subject matter in order to go ahead with this project. I found it disappointing.

Reading

3July E Savage City**** – Sophia McDougall. The final part of the Romanitas trilogy. Excellent and gripping writing but… During the first two books I got incredibly attached to some of the core characters. Now that I know their fates and futures (some dead, some on unexpected  paths) I don’t think I will ever be able to re-read the first two parts. That saddens me in some ways because I adored those books. The third – well, clever and satisfactory but not quite as special.

4July E Beneath the Neon Moon** – Theda Black. I usually like werewolf stories but this was strange. Two guys, strangers to each other, are kidnapped and chained together in a cellar. One is bitten and will soon ‘change’; the other is intended as his first prey. They have to trust each other in order to escape though the bitten one will still be a werewolf. Unsatisfactory.
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5July E Blind Items*** – Kate McMurray. Forgettable, though well written, m/m romance between a left-wing journalist and the son of a conservative senator.

6July E Blind Space*** – Marie Sexton. Space pirates. Some rather dubious non-consensual sex, fetishes, justifications of piracy, and insufficiently developed characters. I was sufficiently interested to read to the end, and the actual writing was quite good but I wouldn’t recommend it wholeheartedly.

7July E Human for a Day**** – edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Jennifer Brozek. An intriguing anthology of stories where something or someone becomes human for twenty four hours. There are swords, cities and statues as well as robots and zombies. As usual in an anthology the quality was varied but there were more memorable stories than poor ones.

7July E Are You There, Blog?*** – Kristen Lamb. This was an attempt to show authors how to use social media to sell themselves and their books. Despite the blurb, I learnt nothing new, and found the style (and humour) too American to read happily. I’m sure I probably ought to be on Facebook and Twitter but for now I won’t be following the advice. But it might inspire me to post about it…

8July E Forgotten Soul*** – Natasha Duncan Drake. Another story by this author who is a friend. I can admire the writing and plotting but as I am less than enamoured of most vampire stories I am unlikely to read the sequels.

9July E The Only Gold***** – Tamara Allen. Unusual thriller with an m/m sub-plot, set in nineteenth century New York banking circles. Pinkerton’s agents end up chasing bank robbers through one of the worst ever snow storms which paralyses the city. Interesting and well written.

10July E City Falcon***** – Feliz Faber. Intriguing m/m romance based around the research into using birds of prey to control bird strikes at airports.

11July E The Book of Dragons* – E. Nesbit. Collection of Nesbit’s short stories about dragons. I vaguely remembered enjoying her children’s books but this irritated me. The narrator voice was omnipresent and alternated between condescending and coy. Even at the time these were written this must have grated on a large part of the readership.

12July E Floaters** – Joe Konrath and Henry Perez. A short and competent thriller. Konrath is a good writer but in his attempts to have lots and lots of ebooks available I feel he has lost the interest of this reader at least. This story, co-written with Perez and involving both writers’ detectives, never really gets into the character of either.

13July E Hammer and Air** – Amy Lane. This was intended as an m/m fairy tale but I thought it was heavy handed and had far too much explicit sex for the genre.

14July E A devil’s own luck**** – Rowan McAllister. Competent and entertaining m/m version of a typical Georgette Heyer style Regency novel.

15July E The Song of Achilles** – Madeline Miller. A disappointing retelling of the Trojan Wars which got rave reviews (which was why I bought it). Unlike other modern versions of old legends and ancient history this was too short, and it was impossible for me to become sufficiently involved in the story to forget the ending. The narrator was Patroclus and he was an interesting character but Achilles never really became three dimensional.

17July E His Hearth** – Mary Calmes. Forgettable story of a demon hunter who needs a ‘hearth’ or human to ground him.

19July E Enlightened* – J.P.Barnaby. An unlikely tale of teenage m/m romance. Very American and very annoying as it turned out to be the first part of a serial, not a series as the title page suggested. I won’t be reading the rest.

21July E Kill for me***** – Karen Rose. The third part of a story started in Die for me, though the books can be read alone. Excellent convoluted thriller, which, as usual for this author, has the reader on edge until the last minute.

26July E Stolen Moments** – Ariel Tachna. Long and boring story detailing the difficulties of a gay relationship in the southern states of America. I felt sympathy for the characters but kept wanting to yell at them to emigrate to Europe. The writing was good and I’m sure the author had the best of intentions. Maybe the book just wasn’t directed at me.

I read more original fiction than usual this month, perhaps because I was in Portugal with no TV, magazines, etc.  Unfortunately, the books I had loaded on my Kindle didn’t include many ‘keepers’.

Viewing

24July The Prestige**** Interesting film, with some good acting by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bayle. The story concerns the deadly rivalry between two stage magicians at the end of the nineteenth century and moves between England and America. The insights into stage magic were fascinating. The plot was occasionally impenetrable.

25July The Bridge***** Final part of the Swedish/Danish TV thriller based around police co-operation between the two countries after a body is discovered on the centre of the bridge between them. Some excellent acting and suspense – this was a ten part story with each part taking an hour. Subtitles.

31July Mirror Mirror**** An interesting take on the story of Snow White. The plot is tweaked slightly to good (and feminist) effect. Some lovely special effects and clever fight scenes. I adored the monster. Some of the humour was rather heavy handed. Altogether a pleasant experience but not a film that I would bother rewatching.

Fewer films etc. than usual, because in Portugal we can only get news channels on TV and I hadn’t taken DVDs.

For anyone who’s wondering, the photograph is of a wall of cut plaster work in Alsfeld, Germany.

We’re in Portugal, with erratic internet access, hence the lack of posts in the last couple of weeks. This little wasp in building a nest on a pile of coffee-table books in my study. The nest will probably have to go, but meanwhile, I am fascinated.

Reading and Viewing

Reading

4 June E With a twist*** – Jack Kilborn and JA Konrath. Clever ‘locked room’ mystery but not very memorable.

8 June E Westward Weird***** –  an anthology edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes. The stories, a really odd mixture of sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal and horror, are of a uniformly high quality and I thoroughly enjoyed the collection. The factor than ties them together is the ‘Wild West’ setting, though the connection is not always as it seems and one or two of the stories take place on other planets or in alternate histories. I bought this because it contains a short story by Seanan McGuire that ties in with one of her urban fantasy series, but I loved all the other contributions too.

14 June P Discount Armageddon***** – Seanan McGuire. The author had a short story in the Westward Weird anthology, set in her new ‘world’ of cryptozoologists (monster hunters) and I had read some snippets on her blog. So I bought the first novel in the the series and it was excellent: exciting, well-written and fun, with lots of well-imagined non-humans including a dragon under Manhattan. But although I admire it, it didn’t really hook me the way the October Daye series does. I wait impatiently for the next October Daye novel; I think the cryptozoologists will be more of an occasional read.

14 June P The Ice Dragon** – George R. R. Martin. I assume this was intended as a children’s book; it is short, fully illustrated and simply told. However, it’s a very melancholy story and I’m not at all sure it would be popular with the age range it seems to be directed at. I’m also not sure Martin has really got inside the head of a small child. Disappointing.

15 June E All Roads Lead to You***** – Harper Fox. I love Harper Fox’s m/m romances and after reading about this one on her blog, and the ‘competition’ to name it (no, I didn’t win), I had to buy it. A very romantic and satisfying story of an ex-model who is seeking the boy he thought was a just pizza waiter in Rome.

17June E Against the Light*** – Dave Duncan. The author takes the idea of the Gunpowder Plot and transforms it into a fantasy with magic instead of Catholicism. The story is exciting and the characters are well drawn but the world building fails. References to police officers and people being ‘dorky’ in an essentially historical story simply don’t work. There is also too much explicit description of tortures and punishments.

17June E Lonely*** – Scarlet Blackwell. Sweet but unmemorable m/m romance about a lonely vet who bonds with a client over a dog.

18June E A Solid Core of Alpha***** – Amy Lane. Gripping sci-fi m/m romance. A twelve year old boy, sole survivor of a planetary catastrophe, creates a family of holograms to sustain his ten year journey through space. Then, grown up, he has to face reality. I loved this book.

20June E Sister of the Hedge and other stories**** – Jim Hines. Interesting and very different take on a number of fairy stories and myths. Good writing.

21June E Perfect Day***** – Josh Lanyon. Bittersweet and ultimately satisfying m/m romance short story in which everything hinges on a bee sting.

24June E Close Enough to Kill** – Beverly Barton. Boring and banal serial-killer ‘thriller’. The plot was poor and there was far too much explicit sex between various characters, including the lead detectives, and far too much detail about the killer’s torture programme.

27June E The Quiche of Death** – M.C.Beaton. Boring ‘whodunnit’ with and unpleasant ‘heroine’. The first story in the Agatha Raisin Omnibus. I won’t be reading the other three.

28June E Rome Burning***** – Sophia McDougall. Second book in the Romanitas trilogy, set in a word where the Roman Empire never fell. Exciting, fascinating, romantic, tragic… I enjoyed Romanitas, the first book, and I shall be buying the sequel, Savage City.

29June E Necessity’s Door*** – Fiona Glass. A novella in which a cop goes undercover as a rentboy and is tempted both by the money and by one of his customers. I felt the format was too short to explore the issues properly.

Viewing
1June Star Trek 9: Insurrection.**  Boring. Maybe when it was first made the special effects would have saved it. (I understand it was the first of the Star Trek films to be made with CGI effects.) Watched today it just seemed like an over-long version of a TV episode.

2June Garrow’s Law Season 2***** Fascinating series that mixes fact with fiction to create drama from the life and career of William Garrow, the barrister who is regarded as the ‘father’ of the English adversarial courtroom system. I will definitely buy Season 3.

6June Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ****  Much better than  part 1, with some excellent special effects, but I wonder if anyone who hadn’t read the books had the faintest idea what was going on? Of course, the majority of viewers would have read the books, but still…

9June The Colour of Magic***** Two linked films on one disc – the made-for-TV versions of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, overseen and introduced by Terry Pratchett. Excellent sets, special effects and acting – and of course I love the books anyway.

11June Desperate Housewives *****  Season 8 (final season). I’ve followed this series all the way through and loved it. It was quite sad to watch the final finale and I will always remember the inhabitants of Wisteria Lane. Great scripts that combined humour, excitement and tragedy, great acting that made the people seem completely real, and an interesting look at a small part of a very foreign culture.

12June How to Train your Dragon**** Beautifully made ‘cartoon’ (Dreamworks) film about ‘Vikings’ and dragons.  Exquisite artwork and quirky plot. My daughter recommended it and I enjoyed it very much but wouldn’t watch it again now that I know the outcome.

15June Eragon** A rather trite story with very unrealistic sets and some stilted script. I liked the dragon but the rest was disappointing.

Reading
2May E Scrap Metal***** – Harper Fox. This is a beautiful m/m romance set on the Scottish island of Arran. I love Harper Fox’s writing style which is very lyrical but at the same time detailed and earthy, and I love the UK settings for her stories, especially the northern ones. She describes landscapes well and her characters, even the minor ones, are very real.  Her romances usually have an element of suspense and violence and this one is no different, but as usual, the story ends on a note of hope for the future.

7May E Cat’s Creation**** – Natasha Duncan-Drake. A competent sequel to Cat’s Call (with the same proofreading flaws). The team have an interesting assignment which takes up most of the book. Probably a very appealing book for YA readers wanting excitement with plenty of character development and coming-of-age plotlines. Now that I have gained some insight into the ‘world’ of Charlie and his cat spirit I am less interested but can still admire the story structure.

9May P The Church of Dead Girls** – Stephen Dobyns. A very unpleasant story about how a serial abduction case (later known to be a murder one) creates suspicion and havoc in a small American town. I was intrigued by rave reviews by writers I respect (e.g. Stephen King) but found myself disliking almost all the characters, including the narrator and the victims, and skimming the detailed descriptions of  society to find out who was the villain. Not an author I would try again.

11May P Treasure Islands***** – Nicholas Shaxson. Subtitle: Tax havens and the men who stole the world. This was a very readable and gripping acount of offshore banking and the effects it has on global finance in general, and the current banking crisis in particular. I kept feeling that I was being told something I ought to have known – and yet the details are carefully brushed under the carpet by politicians and journalists alike, and the ordinary citizen is kept in ignorance. A fascinating book and one that has opened my eyes to the way finance works. Highly recommended.

14May P Piece of my heart** – Peter Robinson. Thriller set in a semi-fictitious Yorkshire Dales which threw me because of my own connections with the area. I kept trying to fit the made-up names and descriptions to real places. The story dealt with a case in 1969 and one today. Eventually, the two turn out to be linked. The modern case concerns DI Banks, a detective I enjoyed in the TV series but found slightly boring in novel form.

15May P Kingdoms of Elfin** – Sylvia Townsend Warner. A few people had recommended this and other books by the same author, presumably because I have written about ‘fairies’. I managed to buy a second hand copy of this one (supposedly her best) which is currently out of print. I was terribly disappointed. Ms Warner’s fairies are arbitrary, cruel and amoral but that wasn’t the problem;  my own fae don’t always adhere to human rules of conduct. The trouble is that the fairies in Elfin (and the mortals, for that matter) are never developed into fully three-dimensional characters. We learn what they do, but not really how they feel about it. I really didn’t care about anyone in the stories and whilst their antics were intriguing it was almost like watching flocks of birds or clouds of insects. Some of the societies and events were brilliantly depicted and the descriptions showed unusual imagination but there was no attempt to develop any empathy or sympathy. I had to struggle to read to the end and only did so to be able to discuss the book with the people who recommended it in such glowing terms.

18May P You Belong To Me***** – Karen Rose. Karen Rose’s thrillers are over the top and somewhat formulaic. They shouldn’t fascinate  me but they do. She creates characters I care about from the first chapter, in some cases from the first page, and the action is always intensely gripping. I put off meals and bedtime to read just one more chapter… So her writing is extremely good, to have such an effect. I think the appealing characters are the key. Other thrillers have fast-paced and exciting plots but don’t hook me. In this story, from the moment when Lucy stumbled across a corpse and met JD, the homicide detective, I wanted them to be together so I read on through 547 pages of angst. It was worth it.

19May E Human Tales**** – ed. Jennifer Brozek. An anthology of ‘fairy tales’ told from fairy and other supernatural points of view. The humans of the title come across as difficult – and sometimes wicked – but always interesting. As with any anthology the quality varied but every story drew me in and made me care about the main characters. Much more to my taste than The Kingdoms of Elfin, read earlier in the month.

23May P Edge***** – Jeffery Deaver. I bought this at a charity shop because I’ve enjoyed his detective novels and because I was interested to see what the author given the task of writing a new James Bond novel could do in a slightly different type of thriller. Edge follows four days in a case of protecting a family who are the targets of a ‘lifter’, someone paid, not initially to kill, but to get information by any means possible. It’s all told in the first person by the main protector and is quite gripping. There’s a great deal of discussion about game theory which is interesting, and the plot has numerous twists and turns. Not my usual choice of fiction but very good, all the same.

25May P Wink**** – Leyton Attens. This is a volume of One Short Story to be Told and I was the latest recipient of the single copy that is travelling around the world. The story was readable and competently written but the main intrigue is in following the story of the stories.

31May P Everything is Obvious (once you know the answer)**** – Duncan J. Watts. Subtitle: How common sense fails. An interesting book about sociology and recent research in the field. The author does indeed manage to get the reader to question their common sense assumptions. The experiments, particularly the ones carried out on huge samples via the internet, were fascinating. The explanations became somewhat repetitive on occasion.

31May P The Rook Trilogy (The Edge Chronicles)**** – Paul Stewart and Chris Ridddell. This is a children’s book – a long saga of war and friendship in a world of humans, goblins and gnomes and stranger monsters, some good and some evil. The descriptions and world building are richly detailed as are the black and white illustrations. I found it interesting and will definitely keep it for my grandson, but I did find myself skimming a lot of the battle scenes. I would probably recommend it for reading aloud to seven year olds upwards and for slightly older children (or maybe just more able readers) for reading to themselves, but the reviews at the back suggest that younger teenagers love the series and are thrilled by the associated website at http://www.edgechronicles.co.uk. There are apparently three trilogies, to date, and a book of oddments.

Watching

3May Ratatouille*** – Disney cartoon film about a rat who wants to be the best chef in Paris. Quite a sweet story but it dragged a little.

16May The Golden Compass** – Gorgeous special effects but if I hadn’t read the book I would be very confused. I assume they are going to make films of the other two parts of the trilogy otherwise there really doesn’t seem much point to the story.

20May Misfits**** – Season 1. Clever dark comedy about a gang of young offenders who get superpowers during a freak storm.

22May The Lakehouse** – I rented this because I’d read an intriguing fanfic based on the premise in the story. Well made but disappointing with an ending that didn’t make sense. The couple in the film are living in different times, roughly two years apart, and though they meet it is never ‘right’. It’s a romance, but a strange one and it never explained how they got together at the end.

24May The Brothers Grimm***** – A gorgeous mix of fantasy, folk tale, horror and humour, with excellent acting and special effects. Slight echoes of Tim Burton and of Pan’s Labyrinth, and all the unusual detail you can expect from Terry Gilliam and Czech film making. I don’t know why this didn’t attract greater critical acclaim.  Highly recommended.

25May Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1* – I thought this was a deeply flawed film. I enjoy the Harry Potter world – books and films – but this was far too dependent on knowledge of the book, to make sense, too slow to retain interest, too visually dark and too unfinished. OK, they made Part 2 (and I have yet to watch that) but although the first part of the final book drags in much the same way as the film the slowness is in keeping with the context and the reader is able to go straight on into the rest of the story.  As a piece of cinema, I think this film fails. I think it was made purely with the profits of the series in mind, and not with any artistic vision.

An interesting month with some highs and unexpected lows. What have you been reading and watching?

Reading:

2Apr P Driving Force***** – Dick Francis. I love Francis’s books. The combination of the racing community and the inadvertent hero theme really appeals to me. (I grew up in a ‘racing’ town.) And the novels are gripping. All the characters, villains, heroes and supporting cast, are well developed and the plots/crimes are intriguing. This was set in the horsebox transport business and was a fascinating and exciting read.

2 Apr E Sharing***** – Philippe and Suzanne Aigrain. Subtitle: Culture and the eonomy in the internet age. A fascinating set of proposals for reform of copyright law, put forward by one of the founders of La Quadrature du Net, a French organisation dedicating to fighting the ACTA treaty in Europe. This was a hard book to read, as it relied a lot on statistics, which are not my favourite subject, but it had some incredibly good and fresh ideas about copyright, piracy, sharing, and creative commons.

3Apr E Write Good or Die*** – Scott Nicholson and others. A collection of essays/blog entries by known authors about how they achieved success with tips as to how other authors might emulate them. I didn’t learn anything but then I’ve read quite a lot of books like this. The overall advice was that everyone will find their own way, but that you must write the book you would like to read.

8Apr P The Little Paris Kitchen***** – Rachel Khoo. We started watching the TV series then a neighbour lent us the book. There are some great recipes and ideas, beautifully explained. The book is much better than the BBC website entries which fail, miserably, to enlighten the would-be cook about such things as which kind of flour or sugar to use. It’s an expensive book and I suspect the inflated price reflects the TV tie-in but we’re ordering it from Amazon which is quite a lot cheaper. There are instructions for such essentials as making your own fromage frais, something we will have to do in Portugal if we’re to have it at all.

10Apr E Cat’s Call**** – Natasha Duncan-Drake. YA fantasy about an eighteen-year-old who finds himself taken over by a cat spirit and thrust into leadership of a team that fights to save the universe. Engaging characters and some interesting magic. The book could do with a higher standard of proofreading but is otherwise delightful. Self published by the author, who is a ‘real life’ friend as well as someone whose blogs I follow. I only bought this to check out her writing but will definitely buy the sequel as the story is quite exciting and I like following other YA writers.

19Apr P Trick of the Dark***** – Val McDermid. Stand-alone thriller that is just as good as her series. A psychiatrist/profiler is dragged into a case involving some old murders and potential threats.

21Apr E King’s Conquest* – Valentina Heart. I bought this because the blurb said it was about an arranged m/m marriage in a fantasy kingdom so of course I wanted to check out the competition. I don’t think I need worry. The writing was poor – characterisation was sketchy and world building even more so. The protagonists were meant to be a different species and one type of male could bear children but this was not really explained and the whole ‘otherness’ of the people could have been so much better done. The actual writing was technically competent but the plot was so shallow and boring that I only finished the book in the name of research. This was published by Silver, who usually publish quite good novels. I’m surprised it made the grade.

24Apr E Set in Darkness**** – Ian Rankin. Rankin’s murder mysteries are good value because you get a whole novel, with well-developed characters, as well as a competent police procedural. This one, set just before the inauguration of the Scottish Parliament, was interesting and wide-ranging in its commentary on Edinburgh society. The way three deaths and a rape case were tied together after seeming to be totally unconnected was clever. It was also depressing, as the Rebus novels often are.

28Apr P Blue Skies and Black Olives** – John and Christopher Humphrys. The famous (in UK) TV presenter and journalist, and his musician son wrote a book about building a house in Greece. There are the occasional interesting or amusing anecdotes about life in Greece, which could probably be duplicated in a book about almost anywhere. The trouble is, a friend lent us this assuming we’d be agog to read about settling into and building in a new country. The book is more about the relationship between father and son and is largely boring though it did make me look more kindly on Portuguese bureaucracy. I had the niggling suspicion that it got written as a ‘lots-of-people-make-money-out-of-books-about-building-abroad-so-let’s-see-if-we-can-too’ kind of book.  I only finished it because it was a loan. I sincerely hope we’ll be able to do better, but then we aren’t famous journalists so the readership won’t be as guaranteed.

30Apr E The Pauper Prince** – Sui Lynn. A shapeshifter romance. There was lots of repetition in the abortive attempts of the various characters to explain their powers to each other. The romance was too sentimental and too sudden to be likely. The plot was confusing and, once unravelled, not particularly interesting. I finished it because I like werewolves – but I’ve read much better!

A mixed bag this month, in terms of both subject matter and quality. I feel as if I’ve spent too much time on non-fiction but that’s maybe because the non-fiction titles took longer to read.

Watching:

3Apr Sweeney Todd***** – the Tim Burton film with Johnny Depp and other famous names. Different. Horror done as an opera/musical with lyrics and music by Sondheim. Very interesting and dramatic – there were parts I could hardly bear to watch because the tension was so high. When murder is inevitable but is preceded by an aria… Depp was suitably insane with grief, Rickman and Spall were delightfully  villainous, and Helena Bonham-Carter was sometimes unintelligible in her spoken parts but looked superb and sang like an angel. Burton created sets that echoed some of his darker cartoon backgrounds and turned into a kind of stage set appropriate to the music. The story was gruesome and predictable but strangely engrossing. An intriguing idea, beautifully executed.

9Apr Outlaw*** – Sean Bean plays an Iraqui War veteran who returns to a crime-ridden UK and gathers a team of ‘victims’ to fight the situation . Some good acting, especially from Bean, but the plot was a bit disjointed and confusing, and I strongly disliked the vigilante message.

14Apr Inspector Montalbano***** – Season 1. Italian cop show set in Sicily. (Subtitles.) Complex cases, fascinating scenery and a big helping of comedy in the background story about the police in the small town of Vigata. I’m looking forward to Season 2.

21Apr Rabbit-Proof-Fence***** I’d seen this before and in fact we have the DVD somewhere but when it came on TV I couldn’t help but watch again. It’s a powerful and enlightening film about the attitudes of early twentieth century Australians towards aborigines and ‘half-casts.’ Some stunning performances from previously unknown child actresses who outshine Kenneth Branagh, though he might have hoped that would happen, in order to get the film’s message across.

23Apr City of Ember* – A fantasy about a society deep underground after some kind of apocalypse where the infrastructure starts to fail and someone must find a way out. The events, the location and the social structure didn’t ring true and the eventual ‘adventure’ up into the light was almost cartoon-like in its unlikeliness. I got the distinct impression that even the actors didn’t believe in it. I think it was aimed at a YA audience but that doesn’t usually stop films being good or gripping.

26Apr Hawaii 5.0***** – Season 1 – new version. I love this. The plots are unbelievably trashy but the characters are charming and the team banter is sharp and funny. Season 1 ended in a cliff-hanger so no doubt I will try to beg or borrow Season 2 from someone or other. Fortunately, a number of my friends share my tastes.

27Apr Run Fatboy Run*** A romantic comedy  (set around the London marathon) from the team who brought us Hot Fuzz (which I adore). It was OK but although there were some funny moments I was disappointed.

30Apr Blame it on the Bellboy***** Zany Brit farce with Dudley Moore and other well known Brit actors, set in Venice. Extremely funny with gorgeous photography of the location.

Some excellent viewing this month.

What have you been reading and watching?

I shall start giving stars to the books I’ve read and the films I’ve seen.

***** a wholehearted recommendation, within any given genre

**** a recommendation with slight reservations

*** OK but unmemorable

** poor but with some redeeming features

* dire

March Reading

4Mar E A Discovery of Witches ***** – Deborah Harkness. A vampire romance. Not my usual choice of light reading but I really loved it. If I’d read any of the reviews on Amazon first – good or bad – I wouldn’t have bought it and can’t quite believe how different people, even some who liked it, have misread the book. It’s a vampire romance, yes, but it’s also a book about academics, about research and, as the author says, about books. It’s set initially in Oxford University. It is apparently the first in a trilogy and I shall be buying the others.

8Mar E Rent Boy Murders * – John Simpson and Robert Cummings. I gave up at p51. The writing was flat and boring. There were plot holes. We already knew who the murderer was and I wasn’t going to spend another 200 pages finding out how the very dull cops caught him. There was gratuitous sex – the cops were both gay and had both recently married but surely we didn’t need blow-by-blow accounts of their sex lives? This book was a waste of time.

10Mar E Clouds and Rain**** – Zahra Owens. This was an m/m romance set on a ranch. The plot (ranch owner falls in love with stable hand) could have been trite but the writer made me really care about the characters and their problems. It wasn’t the best writing in the world but the story left me satisfied. There was a lot of explicit sex but every sex scene was essential to the narrative. A worthwhile read. It’s a companion volume to Earth and Sky, by the same author, telling the story of two of the minor characters. That’s a worthwhile read, too.

12Mar E Let’s Get Digital***** – David Gaughran. An excellent handbook on the whys and hows of self publishing. Has lots of resources and links, too. I read it on my Kindle, in hospital, but have it on my laptop to refer to – probably again and again. He’s on WordPress – go and look for him! http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/author/davidgaughran/

13Mar E Nanny Dearest* – Shawn Bailey. Trash. An m/m romance that simple didn’t work. I didn’t believe in the characters or the plot or even the baby around whom the plot revolved. Poor style, poor writing, poor editing, a waste of space. And this was professionally published so if anything it’s a further push towards self-publishing.

14Mar E Chicken Little*** – Cory Doctorow. A sci-fi novella with some excellent ideas but I found the ending disappointing. I wanted something more – an epilogue? Good writing but the plotting was just slightly too experimental for me. This is the book I bought when my writing was compared to Doctorow’s on the ‘I write like’ site.

16Mar E Last of the Lesser Kings**** – T.L.K.Arkenberg. Fantasy, with an underlying thread of m/m romance and a hefty dose of philosophy about the uses of power. Intriguing but rather erratic – periods of excitement (magic, war, sex) followed by stretches of boredom and too much thought. However, I couldn’t stop reading!

19Mar E Shot of Tequila** – J.A.Konrath. I hated this. Dark, brutal and full of impossible fights and deaths wrapped up in a skimpy plot. I read it, or rather, mostly skimmed it because it was listed on Konrath’s website as the first (chronologically) in the Jack Daniels stories and I’d liked Whiskey Sour. Now I’m not sure whether to try any more.

19Mar E Microsoft Research DRM Talk**** – Cory Doctorow. A short e-book version of an interesting talk by the author explaining the destructive aspects of DRM to Microsoft staff. I’ve been helping prepare some papers arguing for DMCA exemptions, which of course centre round DRM, so the information in this talk was timely and fascinating. The only thing I’ve done is proofreading but it still helps to know a lot of the background. (For anyone who isn’t sure, DRM is Digital Rights Management, the technology that ‘locks’ DVDs, CDs and e-books.)

21Mar E Finding Lisa*** – Carolyn LeVine Topol. A well written but fairly bland book about a woman going through a divorce who finds herself again as a lesbian. Pleasant, and a nice antidote to too much horror and technical stuff. Totally unmemorable but just what I needed at the time I read it.

24Mar E Dawn in the Orchard*** – Cooper West. I’ve been following West’s blog because of her interest in fanfic so decided to try one of her novels. It was a pleasant enough m/m romance, tecnically well written but badly edited. The plot got a bit repetitive and then the ending was rushed. I seem to be getting very critical…

29 Mar P Wonderful Life***** – Stephen Jay Gould. Subtitle: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. Totally absorbing book about paleontology, the revision of early assumptions about the Burgess Shale, and the implications for our history as a species. Gould is a fantastic science writer, making things crystal clear to the interested layman but never compromising the integrity of his thesis. To summarise, the fossils found in the Burgess Shale in Canada suggest contingency rather than any purpose in evolution and add interesting philosophical ideas to Darwin’s central theory. If you like science and history, read this book! But be warned – it took me about a month to get through it!

30 Mar E Bullied**** – Jeff Erno. An interesting, distressing, inspiring book about the bullying of gay teens in America. It takes the form of a number of short stories, each dealing with different teen experiences. Most of the stories, even one that ended in suicide, gave some kind of foundation for hope. I did have a slight problem with it: I found the stories and the characters quite hard to relate to – American teen culture looks remarkably like a very foreign and almost impenetrable country from here and I even had to spend a lot of time getting to grips with the basics of the school system. This was a very worthy book, but also a rather insular one; I think its value would be greater to Americans than to anyone else, and particularly to American teens of any orientation. Read purely as a sociological document in ficional format it gives telling insights into American culture in general in respect of a variety of issues that are quite differently handled elsewhere. Whilst I am not for one moment suggesting that bullying does not take place in UK (I’m an ex-teacher, after all), it would be enlightening to read a UK book on the same subject.

March Viewing

2Mar Cowboys and Aliens.*** Westerns in general meet ‘Alien’ (plus ‘Indiana Jones’) with help from Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford. It started well – good concept – but degenerated into trash. Well acted.

5 Mar. Whitechapel.***** (Season 3.)Modern police drama in which the crimes echo Victorian murders. Some preposterous plotting but excellent photography/direction; Rupert Penry-Jones and Phil Davis are a joy to watch. I enjoyed the first two seasons as well and will now look forward to the next.

15Mar The Social Network.**** The story of Facebook, told through flashbacks during the lawsuits that followed its beginnings. The lawsuits were absolutely fascinating. I always knew I didn’t like Facebook… Informative and well done.

19Mar Dirk Gently**** – Season 1. A kind of dark comedy detective series that grows on you. It’s based on characters by the writer Douglas Adams.

20Mar Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.**** I preferred the Alex Guiness version (which I’ve seen twice), and I think I preferred the book (which I’ve read twice) to either. However, I did think Gary Oldman made a better Smiley. This was a mesmerisingly beautiful film but the astounding camera and direction techniques overwhelmed the plot and characterisation. It was full of mega-actors who were given no opportunity to develop the roles they were given. Explanations were missing, truncated or couched in elliptical dialogue. If I hadn’t already known the basic story I think I would have been completely confused. As it is, I still think I only grasped 75% of it and had to discuss the older versions to sort my head out. Worth watching for the visual aspect alone.

25Mar Being Human*****– Season 4. A ghost, a vampire and a werewolf set up house together and try being human… By the end of this season only one of the original cast remained. The plots have got wilder but the acting and direction remain superb. I adore this series.

30Mar Spiral***** – Season 2. We watched season 3 and were so impressed I asked for the boxed set for my birthday. So we have now seen the first two seasons and are still impressed (and might have to watch season 3 again). French cop show (with subtitles) set in Paris where everyone is somehow crooked or incompetent or both – villains, cops, lawyers, etc – and every action is somehow connected with everything else. Superb. Quite violent and dramatic, with wonderful filming and great acting.

I do seem to have a leaning, in both reading and viewing, towards cops and quirky horror. Who knew? If anyone has read or seen any of these, I’d love to have your views!

Books read/finished (as usual, E denotes e-book and P denotes print version)

3Feb P Fat-free Indian – Shehzad Husain and Manisha Kanani. Useful. Some interesting low fat cooking techniques, and a good, helpful overview of ingredients. Some nice new recipes, too.

9Feb P My Grammar and I (or should that be ‘me’?) – Caroline Taggart and J. A. Wines. I bought this for a friend who keeps saying she recognises correct language but doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain it to others. And I bought a copy for myself. It’s good – concise, up-to-date and written in a humorous style that makes points really memorable. A useful resource.

11Feb P The Book of Night with Moon – Diane Duane. A long fantasy novel. I loved the cat characters and the world/language builiding but thought the overall plot was rubbish.

13 Feb E Crystal Halloway and the Forgotten Passage – Seanan McGuire (short story). Fabulous, in every sense, like all this author’s work, and desperately sad. How and why young adults forget the dreamworlds of childhood.

13Feb E Uncle Sam – Seanan McGuire. A short horror story, purporting to explain why American women go in groups to public restrooms. Truly creepy.

14Feb E Calvin’s Cowboy – Drew Hunt. A sweet m/m romance (suitable for Valentine’s Day). Believable characters in a Texas and then a New York setting. Slightly flawed by too many euphemisms in the sex scenes; I counted five in one paragraph.

15Feb E Caught – A.B.Gayle. Well written m/m romance novella set in Sydney. Daniel tries to rescue Taylor from what he thinks is a suicide bid. Lighthouses, disabled landladies, professional photography, kung fu, cross dressing and tropical fish all contribute to this intriguing story.

17Feb P The Unbearable Lightness of being in Aberystwyth – Malcolm Pryce. Rather pretentious spoof detective/horror. I read it because it was lent to me and people were insisting it was good. I didn’t enjoy it very much.

18Feb E Publish Yourself E-book – J M Snyder. Extremely useful guide to formatting and distribution.

19Feb E Smashwords guide to publishing and style guide to formatting. Scary but well put together and I might be beginning to understand.

20Feb E Arcane Sampler – ed. Nathan Shumate. Anthology of short horror stories, cheap to enocurage readers to buy later annual anthologies. There were one or two good stories but the quality was mostly poor (though the editing standard was high) and I shall not buy any future issues.

26Feb E Stormfront – Jim Butcher. I had heard so much about the Harry Dresden ‘files’ and I was bitterly disappointed. Flat writing, far too much extraneous description, boring demons and ‘overkill’ in the fight scenes. Plus, scorpions are not insects.

27Feb E Sullivan’s Yard – Chris Quinton. A delightful m/m novella in which the m/m protagonists fall in love with a house, which they hope to turn into a hotel. Lots of detail about various cultures – New Orleans French, American Spanish, Andalusian Spanish – something quite hard to get across in the short format and very praiseworthy since Chris is Brit.

i seem to have gone in for horror in February – something I don’t often read. I think maybe the books about formatting fall into the horror category too…

Films (and TV Series)

10Feb We Were Here – documentary film about the height of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. Harrowing, beautifully produced and very informative.

16Feb Inception. Sci-fic adventure… Boring. Very very boring. I’d rented it from LoveFilm, partly because I had just finished a beta of a long fanfic which included some of the Inception characters and I wanted to put faces to them. I quickly realised it wasn’t for me but decided to get my money’s worth – but kept reaching for a book. As the book I was reading was The Unbearable Lightness (see above) I had a less than interesting evening.

21Feb The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. A Terry Gilliam film. Heath Ledger and Christopher Plummer with guest appearances by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and others. Visually stunning plus remarkable acting. Convoluted plot along the lines of Faustus but with the daughter’s soul as the bargaining chip.

24Feb Transamerica. (Felicity Huffman). Really good. This is the one that lost out to Brokeback Mountain in the Oscars. In my opinion it should have won. Stanley is about to become Sabrina when he finds he had a son, Toby, an underage hustler. ‘She’ bails him out of NY police custody and agrees to take him to LA. Together they travel across America and through aspects of their lives until Toby finds out that Bree is his father.

I ought perhaps to note that I subscribe to and read a number of magazines (cover to cover) every month.

Writing: a useful resource with interesting articles

Searchlight: the magazine of the anti-fascist research group (European focus)

Good Food: recipes, techniques and food-related news

Cardmaking: papercraft ideas, techniques and resources

Saga: travel and lifestyle for the over 50s – some interesting articles

And some more that I skim weekly.

Radio Times: weekly listings and reviews plus interesting interviews with actors and directors

The Week: current events UK and worldwide. This is a trial subscription and I won’t continue it. I get as much from Google.

The Economist: another trial subscription. Mainly, as the title implies, finance.

Have you read or seen any of these and if so, what did you think? What have you been reading and watching?

I thought I would post a monthly account of what I have been reading and watching. The date beside each book or film/series refers to the date of finishing a book or watching the last episode of a series. So Culpeper only just squeaked in. P refers to printed versions and E to e-books. I have not included fanfiction, despite reading a lot of it, and I have also left out most of the books I bought for/read with my grandson though Lost Worlds has made it onto the list. Magazines and e-zines have also been omitted. I have included unfinished books – which are rare in this household. I give a very brief comment on everything but if you have read/watched them and would like to discuss them, or if you would like further information, I would be delighted!

Books.

Jan1. P Culpeper’s Complete Herbal – Nicholas Culpeper. Fascinating insights into old medical

practices and a good resource for both plant information and names for fantasy writing.

Jan3. P Simply Sushi – Steven Pallett – Instant Masterclass. Interesting but overwhelming. I think

I’ll stick with Tesco’s ready-made variety.

Jan6. P Supertips 2 – Moyra Bremna. This was a re-read, found when I was packing books. It has

some timeless/great tips on all kinds of cleaning, gardening, cooking matters, etc. but also

some dated/hilarious ones. The sections on caring for your record collection/record

player are fascinatingly out of date!

Jan6. E Whiskey Sour – J A Konrath. A competent and gripping, somewhat gruesome thriller, on

the same lines as Karen Rose. I bought it because I’m following his blog about self-

publishing and was curious but will definitely read more by him and have already bought

two. I’ll talk about the blog in another post.

Jan10. P Mystery – Jonathan Kellerman. Yes, that’s the title though it’s also the genre. Mystery is

the latest in the Alex Delaware series and is as competent as usual. A kind of comfort

reading with exciting bits.

Jan12, E Men under the Mistletoe. Four fabulous m/m novellas brought out as a Christmas

anthology and on a Christmas theme. I bought it for the stories by Josh Lanyon and Harper

Fox, whose work I already know. Ava March and K.A. Mitchell were new to me but are

equally admirable writers.

Jan15. P Manchester Poets – an anthology including a friend’s work. I went to the book launch.

and my copy is signed. A mixed bag, as poetry anthologies so often are, but there’s

something there to appeal to everyone.

Jan19. P Personal Connections in the Digital Age – Nancy K Baym. This was a great summary of

the issues surrounding digital communication, both online and via mobile phones. The

had some interesting research results and some sensible arguments to make. As I’d put in a request to

‘Santa’ who kindly brought it, I had to read it a.s.a.p.

Jan20. P Books do furnish a room – Leslie Geddes-Brown. This is a visually fascinating ‘coffee

table’ book with gorgeous photographs and some good ideas about book storage. Some

weird ones, too.

Jan24. P Madness of Angels – Kat Griffin. This is a surrealist fantasy about London and magic, lent

to me by the same friend who let me borrow the Books book. With this one, I gave up at

p35. Overdone descriptions and no ‘hook’ or suggestion of where the plot might be going.

Jan28. P Lost Worlds _ Jon Howe. Howe illustrated much of Tolkien’s work. This is a great simple

reference book with beautiful pictures of ‘forgotten’ civilisations, some mythical and others

real enough but swept away by history or nature. I bought the book to put away for my

grandson but I suspect it will remain in my house so that I can share it with him.

Jan29. E The Best Christmas Ever – Anel Viz. A delightful and thought provoking m/m story about

an ‘unequal’ relationship between an intellectual and his mildly retarded lover. I shall be

reviewing it for Wilde Oats.

I note that this month’s reading is short on fantasy though Harper Fox’s story Midwinter Knights in the anthology contains supernatural elements.

Films: DVDs or TV series (usually watched on DVD or iPlayer). Some of the DVDs are rented.

Jan2. Spiral Season 1. (8 eps) A French cop/law show. We had already seen season 3 and bought

seasons 1 and 2 because we liked them so much. Season 1 is gripping and sets up a lot of

scenarios/relationships for the following seasons. The photography, all in Paris, is great, and

the acting is superb.

Jan3. Legend of the Guardians. A confused fantasy, unsure whether to be a cartoon or a serious CGI

adventure. Australian owls battle against the forces of darkness!!! Fun, but I won’t buy it.

Jan7. La vie en rose. Biopic of Edith Piaf. The story was told in a confusing way with too many

flashbacks, and the dark sets didn’t help. There were no complete songs other than ‘Je ne

regrette rien’ at the end. The story was interesting and sad but the film was disappointing.

Jan17. Public Enemies.(BBC. 3 eps) A well-acted drama with an interesting plot exploring the

problems faced by people wrongly accused/convicted. I was surprised by the happy or at least

hopeful ending.

Jan23. The Libertine (Johnny Depp). Amazing acting. Pity about the plot. The story deals with the

decline and fall of the Earl of Rochester in Restoration England. Depp’s portrayal of the earl,

from beautiful courtier to disease-ridden misery, was a masterpiece, though I have to admit I

would watch Depp in almost anything. The story is very thin and hardly worth a full length

film.

Jan24. Sherlock (BBC) Season 2. (3 eps) The second and third episodes were terrifying to watch, for

me. I find knife-edge scenes in films and on TV unpleasant, even though I will read them

happily in books. These were alarming and although I am familiar with Holmes canon, the

BBC version tweaks the stories for the twenty-first century and the viewer does not know

what to expect. I will no doubt watch season 3 next year and be scared all over again.

Jan29. Birdsong (BBC) (2 eps). Visually stunning, filmed around Budapest rather than in northern

France where the story is set. Mediocre acting and some odd ‘takes’ on WW1. I disliked the

book (by Sebastian Faulks)and disliked this.

Jan31. Bent. A Channel 4 film originally made for TV, based on Martin Sherman’s play about

homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps. Incredibly well acted and directed; powerful and

moving. I cried. Highly recommended but I wouldn’t put myself through it again. However,  I now

want a copy of Mick Jagger singing Streets of Berlin and it isn’t available.

So, 12 books and 8 films/series in January. I shall be interested to see what I manage in February. And as I said, I’d love to hear your comments on any of these.