fiction

Some of the fiction I've been enjoying lately:

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. Another of those books that's esily (mis)categorised as "young adult", while really being worthwhile to readers of many ages. I keep wanting to compare this to the Harrey Potter books, but I won't, because that would devalue it. Highly recommended. (This means to you, Anna.) I started to dive right into the sequel but decided to save it for a rainy day when I could really enjoy it.

Very Bad Deaths by Spider Robinson. Not my favorite work, it all seemed fairly predictable to someone who's read every single book Spider wrote before this. Of course there's a reason I keep going back and reading everything of his I can get my hands on, so I'm not really complaining. By an interesting cooincidence, it's set in Vancouver, which I visited the next week.

Trailer Park Boys is a Canadian tv show that was mentioned to me by either Luca or neuro, I forget which. Everything mindless entertainment with cliched characters can ever hope to be. Also disterbingly realistic and a ton of fun.

Coalescent by Stephen Baxter. Fairly interesting social SF with a nice broad historical scope. Pretty flawed though.

Little Faces, a short story by Vonda McIntyre. It's been too long since I've had the pleasure of reading something new by Vonda McIntyre and this was quite an interesting one especially due to its lack of any exposition. Enjoyed working things out; this three-species symbiosis is the kind of thing McIntyre writes about very convincingly.

Junk that's not worth mentioning by John Ringo. Annoyed I wasted my time.

The Anita Blake series by Laurell Hamilton. I would be much happier with this if the nonstop action slowed down for more than a page at a time. Still, some interesting takes on some overused bits of its genre. Apparently this series goes quite downhill later on so I'm planning my exit now..

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind directed by Hayao Miyazaki. I think this rounds out my collection of Hayao Miyazaki's work. While pretty early and reflecting a lot of things he did better later, it's still a moving tale and I couldn't help but like it.

Goodness, that's less than a month's worth, I wonder how I get any work done.