The Girdle of Melian

hank you to everyone who commented on my last couple of posts! I'm coming 'round to visit you all soon. Real life has been rather hectic which is why... even though it's the end of another Round of Words in 80 Days , I haven't met my goal yet. Still have a few days left in June in which to do so -- I want to take part in the June exercise on the writers' forum. I can't pretend it's all been real life, though. I spent four days reading, after this happened: You don't have to have read the first seven (!) Outlander books to enjoy Written in My Own Heart's Blood , and I highly recommend this latest one. It's a brilliant example of seamless storytelling, filled with emotional highs and lows, pathos and humour, and wonderfully involved family relationships. Plus adventure, battles, romance, intrigue and time travel -- and more. I've got lots of photos today! Peacock supervises deer at the Geneva botanical gardens First time...

aried reading habits... It's funny how sometimes I'll read a book by an author, love it, and then never read a book by that author again (ever, or at least for many years). Sometimes I don't even seek out the sequel of a book, even if I've adored the first one. I'm not sure what makes me do that, when other times I'll race to devour everything by a newly-discovered favourite author (*cough* NeilGaiman *coughcough*) or at least read and reread every book of a particular series. Every once in a while it's because other books by an author turn out to be a disappointment. One example that comes to mind is the Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery. I love those books. I reread them all the time. I even complained about a recent reissue that failed to include both Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside . At some point last year I re-realised that there were other Montgomery books out there. I think I read Kilmeny of the Orchard ages ago, but ha...

week of anniversaries and commemorations. 6 June was the thirtieth anniversary of Tetris! I remember playing the game on a desktop pc in 1992 or thereabouts. We had one 3.5" disk with Tetris on it, one with PacMan and two (because one didn't have enough memory!) with a set of games called California Games, which included things like hackey sack and BMX. Oh yes, and another disk with J-Bird and two with Dark Castle -- an awesome game that I was never very good at. I watched my dad and my sister play. They were good at Kingdom of Kroz too, but I loved Moraff's Revenge. I think I even have a semi updated version of Moraff's Revenge on the laptop I'm using right now. Yet I always go back to Tetris. At one point I had the highest score in the family. My grandmother, meanwhile, beat us all at PacMan. Every once in a while I take a break and play for a while over at Free Tetris , but it's not the same colours and music that I remember. And I'm not allowed bre...

ook at this fun meme! The Borough Press is doing a #bookaday celebration on Twitter: I'm not going to attempt to answer them all in one post, but will list here the ones that come to mind first. The answer to #1 is all of them! I reread a lot of the books I read as a child. #3 One with a blue cover: Why, Outlander , of course! #4 Least favourite book by favourite author England, England by Julian Barnes . #6 The one I always give as a gift That's an easy one: I always give away Forumites' books ! Diana Gabaldon, Jo Bourne, ZanMarie Steadham, Kristen Callihan...and many more wonderful authors! #7 Forgot I owned it I have an ongoing problem with Lynne Reid Banks' The Indian in the Cupboard . I've read the first one, and I have one of the others, which I think I've read, but I keep buying that one by accident at book fairs, instead of the one I'm missing, which comes in between that one and the first book. So silly! #19 Still can'...

emembering two authors today, who've recently passed away, Farley Mowat and Sue Townsend. I've done "why doesn't my newspaper report on the important stuff" features before, on the passing of favourite authors: Peg Bracken , Madeleine l'Engle, Norma Fox Mazer , and so on. This time, of course, I don't even know if the local Montreal paper reported on Sue Townsend, though I'm sure they did write about Farley Mowat since he's Canadian. I heard about both of these through Twitter. It's been many years since I read any Farley Mowat. It's possible that I only ever read one - Owls in the Family , about his childhood. Now, of course, I feel guilty about this. I'd especially like to read his autobiographical works about World War II, though the ones about Canada's North are intriguing too. Here's a list of his first 15 works: People of the Deer (1952; revised 1975) The Regiment (1955) Lost in the Barrens (1956) The Dog Who...

atching up! Slowly, but surely. I'm still working my way through A to Z Challenge posters and commenters, but I did catch up on all the blogs I was due to visit as part of my minion duties! Here are a few of the new bloggers I met: A Taste of Travel Reflections En Route Joyful Antidotes Anseo A Mhuinteoir My Sweet Peanut Trigger's Horse Moon, Light and Shadow Word Stories I've also moved a little further on one of my ROW80 goals, which is to participate in the May exercise on the writers' forum. Here's a brief description of the exercise: "The Power of Place. How does a writer go from a generic "dark and stormy night" to creating a world that is so real, so tangible and vibrant that readers and characters alike live in it? This power of place goes beyond simple world-building such as sketching maps of towns or creating blueprints of buildings. It goes beyond a mention of the weather, or the mountains, or ...