No More Book Reviews

I’m not doing any more book reviews. For a couple of reasons. One, I don’t think I’m very good at it and secondly I can’t be bothered any more. And thirdly, nobody really cares what I’m reading.

Eleventh Book of 2008

I started reading Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones, but my wife seized it and read it cover to cover before I had made much progress. Jones, or is it Wynne Jones, is her favourite author and she hadn’t read this one. After she’d read it we had a conversation that went something like the [...]

The Size Of Lemons

On Saturday we had NE’s siblings, their partners and her mum around for a bit of a buffet and a natter. I decided to make a cake with the intent of having my son, G, help me with it. When the moment came to help with the cake, he was far more interested in playing [...]

A Time Of Light

My ship of energy has run aground on the rocky shoals of too many early mornings this week. As with most children, my son doesn’t really know how time works. So, in his elemental way, he measures the day by the passage of the Sun. When the Sun is up, then that equals morning in [...]

Tenth Book of 2008

Isn’t In A Dark Wood at all, but I wish it had been!
I’ve not read many Clive Barker books in my time and after Mister B. Gone, I might give him a miss entirely. Not that it was horrible, but the conceit of it all (that there is a demon living in a book and [...]

Ninth Book of 2008

My ninth book… is not In A Dark Wood.
What happened is what sometimes happens. I receive a shipment of books from the library that have been in my reservation queue for a while. They always seem to come in clumps. So a clump came in and I ended up reading…
The Final Solution by Michael Chabon. [...]

Not Well

I’m not well. I’ve got a runny nose, bit of a headache (might be sinus) and I feel tired all the time. I’ve got a bit of a cough, but I don’t know whether that’s from all the snot running down the back of my throat or an actual cough.
If that’s all this was, then [...]

Eighth Book of 2008

The Steampunk Trilogy by Paul Di Filippo
I must admit to a weakness for the steampunk genre and genre-bending in general. I’d grown up on a diet of straight fantasy until I could spout the tropes of BFF (Big Fat Fantasy) by rote. I’d read enough Sci-Fi as well to know that it was fairly devoid [...]

Saturday

We went to a Polish Festival on Saturday, which was quite small and was meant to defuse anti-polish immigrant feeling in Lincolnshire. This really got me to thinking about anti-immigrant sentiment.
I’m an immigrant here in England, although I am now a  British citizen, and most people don’t seem to hold my immigrant status against. My [...]

Energy Drinks, Coffee, and The Cost

The title might be a bit misleading. If you’re reading this expecting a rant about the increasing price of caffeinated beverages, then I apologise in advance.
Coffee is great. I love the taste and probably fetishise the experience to a very moderate degree. In other words, I talk to workmates about coffee, the taste of it [...]