via ithiliana, Sir Terry was on the Queen’s New Year Honours List for services to literature. and he (of course) is gracious and charming about it.

May the rest of the New Year be as good to all of us!

PS slashababy fics are up, and I even wrote one, solo, wheee.

As I may have mentioned, I broke my left knee and then I slipped on the crutches and broke my left right heel. So I'm sitting a lot.

Fan happiness: Dom lunching with Liev Schreiber in Australia, yay for new co-stars!

Book that got me through the long day of tests: Beat Until Stiff - a really good murder mystery set in San Francisco, written by a friend of mine. The insights into the SF restaurant scene are fascinating and I even like the first-person narration, which usually bugs me.

( Other things that have been amusing me )

ETA: Happy Birthday beizy!!!

telesilla was right, The State Within is really excellent, and Jason Isaacs is fabulous, also there's mankissing :-)

Laurie King's new novel, "The Art of Detection," is more a paean to San Francisco and its gay lifestyle (1920s and now) than much of a mystery. Plus: story within story and lots of Sherlock Holmes aspects. It's not bad exactly, it's just a little smug.

(My link up there is to worldcat.org, which points you at public libraries instead of amazon. yay libraries)

Billy's movie, "Master and Commander" is coming out and rynalwyn has delicious Billy pictures. He looks a bit more rough and tough than as Pippin. Is good because the Barrett Bonden of the books is a big manly kind of guy!

Someone at bboyd posted a link to the movie trailer.

And AICN has an anonymous rave report from someone who saw an early sneak preview.

( book series vs.movie )

Conclusion: this movie is more like fanfiction than an adaptation of a book. They took the characters and some of the situations and created a new story. Beyond merely juicing up the action, they seem to be altering the entire dynamic of the characters and many of the most important parts of the stories. And that bugs me.

I wasn't going to get the book, but succumbed to peer pressure (everyone here doing it) so I got it. And I'm a fast reader, so I'm done (took about 8 hours, off and on).

( thoughts and spoilers here )

Found this on the marizpan Dunnett mailing list.


Pawn in Frankincense -- fourth book in the series!

Which volume of Dorothy Dunnett's LYMOND CHRONICLES are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

For those who don't recognize this, Dorothy Dunnett wrote two fabulous series of incredibly good historical fiction. Think Patrick O'Brien in early Renaissance Scotland and the Continent and the Mediterranean. With great historical research, wit, swashbucking, romance, sex and some tragedy. I've adored her since the 70s, and wish she was alive to write more more more!

The first series is Francis Crawford of Lymond and the other is The House of Niccolo