a vintage year for scoundrels

Dusty Answer - Rosamond Lehmann
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: BFF
The Assassin's Curse - Cassandra Rose Clarke
Wildthorn - Jane Eagland
Signal to Noise - Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Child of Flame - Kate Elliott*
Mockingbird: I Can Explain
Reflections: On the Magic of Writing - Diana Wynne Jones
Tell the Wind and Fire - Sarah Rees Brennan
Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome
To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis
Hemlock and After - Angus Wilson
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel You Know It's True
Sex Criminals: Three The Hard Way

*with a certain amount of skimming; it's book four of seven, over 800 pages long, and there are some storylines I just do not care about any more. /o\

( Wildthorn (two stars), Signal to Noise (two stars) )

Didn't finish: ( The Long War )

Short stories I enjoyed this month:
Flying Magic (Stephanie Burgis): Delightful short story set in the Kat, Incorrigible universe, in which Kat has to deal with her own children. <3
Fire Watch (Connie Willis): wonderful and also heartbreaking.
Superior (Jessica Lack): v. enjoyable m/m romance, with superheroes.

(Cut for length rather than spoilers!)

( Sunshine, Short Trips: Companions, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Strong Poison, The Day Watch, House of Many Ways, Option Lock, Kindred and Stormbreaker )

1.) Reading an exellent book, as I am at the moment, is very cheering to the spirits. My train of thought goes something like this: "This is a great book. It surely cannot be unique in its greatness. Thus the world must contain many great books for me to discover. Therefore I deduce that the world is a wonderful place." Then I have to go and have a lie down until the Pollyannaish feelings wear off. (The book in question is Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog; I heartily endorse this product. It may help at this juncture for you to imagine me with two thumbs up, grinning widely, but I will quite understand if you prefer not to.)

2.) I have been watching a fair bit of Red Dwarf recently. I decided to try and catch up with all the episodes I never saw when it was on the telly by starting at the beginning of series three (having probably definitely seen the repeats of serieses 1 and 2) and proceeding from there in an orderly fashion. Apparently I've not seen nearly as much as I thought I had, because I've just finished series six and could only say with any certainty that I'd seen two of the episodes before. But this is all to the good as it is like having LOVELY NEW STUFF to watch. Anyway. The DVDs are great, they also get a hearty endorsement due to having many excellent extras: I always save the smeg ups for last as they are usually the best bit. The series six DVDs had a feature about the music which has a) inspired me to try and learn how to play the theme tune on the piano (Howard Goodall made it look so easy! But then he is v. good at the piano and I am a bit rubbish) and b) made me look forward to 'Blue' very much, as just a tiny clip of the Rimmer Song made me laugh like a hyena. Also I now have a new addition to my Red Dwarf Commentary Drinking Game.

3.) *reads over this post* I do talk a lot of nonsense, don't I? Oh well, hopefully it is entertaining nonsense.