Books.

Finished: _The Fairy Godmother_, by Mercedes Lackey.

What the heck am I doing reading a Lackey novel? Simple: I pulled it out of the wrong pile. Then I kept going: no treeponies or sexually conflicted teens appear in this book.

Take Pratchett's magic system, in which Plot (in Lackeyspeak, Tradition) is the force which overwhelms all else. Subtract out his humor, including the million-to-one-shot gag and all the rest of that. This book is a telling of the raising, education, and early life of a human girl apprenticed as a Fairy Godmother. Since the fairytales are generally the Red Book and original Grimm style, some fairly nasty things happen. Well written, doesn't inspire me to pick up more Lackey.

Books.

Finished: _The Fairy Godmother_, by Mercedes Lackey.

What the heck am I doing reading a Lackey novel? Simple: I pulled it out of the wrong pile. Then I kept going: no treeponies or sexually conflicted teens appear in this book.

Take Pratchett's magic system, in which Plot (in Lackeyspeak, Tradition) is the force which overwhelms all else. Subtract out his humor, including the million-to-one-shot gag and all the rest of that. This book is a telling of the raising, education, and early life of a human girl apprenticed as a Fairy Godmother. Since the fairytales are generally the Red Book and original Grimm style, some fairly nasty things happen. Well written, doesn't inspire me to pick up more Lackey.

Books.

Finished: _Spiderman and The Human Torch: I'm With Stupid_ written by Dan Slott.

I want to make a clear distinction here between the comics that I generally read and this. After several false starts, I've decided that the word for that distinction is Quality. This volume doesn't have it. Whatever it is that _Sandman_ and _Watchmen_ and _Invincible_ and _Mage_ and _The Authority_ and _Planetary_ and _Tom Strong_ all have in common, this isn't it.

Not worth the time I spend reading it.

Books.

Finished: _Spiderman and The Human Torch: I'm With Stupid_ written by Dan Slott.

I want to make a clear distinction here between the comics that I generally read and this. After several false starts, I've decided that the word for that distinction is Quality. This volume doesn't have it. Whatever it is that _Sandman_ and _Watchmen_ and _Invincible_ and _Mage_ and _The Authority_ and _Planetary_ and _Tom Strong_ all have in common, this isn't it.

Not worth the time I spend reading it.

Boskone.

I now have faces and voices to put to the following people whose words I read regularly:
John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow, John Ford, the Nielsen Haydens, Karl Schroeder, Ken MacLeod, Chad Orzel, Tobias Buckell... oddly, I did not have a single coversation in which halfway through I discover that one of the hitherto anonymous participants is someone I wanted to meet.

Boskone.

I now have faces and voices to put to the following people whose words I read regularly:
John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow, John Ford, the Nielsen Haydens, Karl Schroeder, Ken MacLeod, Chad Orzel, Tobias Buckell... oddly, I did not have a single coversation in which halfway through I discover that one of the hitherto anonymous participants is someone I wanted to meet.