pedanther

Fiction books
Zen Cho. The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo (e)
Agatha Christie. N or M? (re-read)
Graham Greene. Brighton Rock
Robert Harris. Imperium
Joan Lindsay. Picnic at Hanging Rock
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle. The Mote in God's Eye
Naoki Urasawa, tr. John Werry. Asadora! volume 3
Gene Luen Yang, Gurihiru. Superman Smashes the Klan (e)

In progress
Douglas Adams, John Lloyd. The Deeper Meaning of Liff
Robert Harris. Lustrum (e)
Jules Verne, tr. George Towle. Around the World in Eighty Days (e)

Non-fiction books
Kelly Bishop. The Third Gilmore Girl (e)
Ben Macintyre. Operation Mincemeat (e)
Ewen Montagu. The Man Who Never Was (e)

Abandoned
Eric Thompson. Tales of True Adventure volume 1

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Robert Harris. Dictator

Fiction books
Arthur Upfield. The Barrakee Mystery (e)

In hiatus
Charles Dickens. Our Mutual Friend (e)

Non-fiction books in progress
Adrian Goldsworthy. Philip and Alexander (e)

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Jason Aaron, Esad Ribic. Thor, God of Thunder: The God Butcher

Fiction books
Ben Aaronovitch. Tales from the Folly (e)
Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel, Lee Sullivan, et al. Body Work
Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel, Lee Sullivan, et al. Detective Stories
Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel, Lee Sullivan, et al. Night Witch
JRR Tolkien. The Fellowship of the Ring (e) (re-read)
JRR Tolkien. The Return of the King (e) (re-read)
JRR Tolkien. The Two Towers (e) (re-read)
Martha Wells. All Systems Red (e)

In progress
(anthology). Batman Black and White, volume 2 (re-read)

Non-fiction books in progress
Karen Armstrong. A Short History of Myth (e)

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
P Djeli Clark. A Dead Djinn in Cairo

Fiction books
Ben Aaronovitch. The Hanging Tree (e)
Julie Edwards. The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles
Terry Pratchett. Jingo (e) (re-read)
Anthony Price. For the Good of the State (e)

In progress
Katherine Addison. The Goblin Emperor (e)
Ursula Vernon. Summer in Orcus (e)

Non-fiction books
Jimmy Maher. Let's Tell a Story Together (e)

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Terry Pratchett. The Last Continent

Fiction books
Terry Pratchett. Mort (e) (re-read)

In progress
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Saltation (re-read)
Terry Pratchett. Sourcery (e) (re-read)

Non-fiction books
Daniel Boyarin. The Jewish Gospels
Nigel West. MI5

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Agent of Change

1. How is it only today that I learn that Groot, the large tree-like alien in the new Marvel movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, is played, or at least voiced, by the same actor who voiced the title character in The Iron Giant? This is important information!


2. I've finished playing through the storyline in Lego Marvel Super Heroes, which leaves the part of the game that involves wandering around Manhattan finding all the side quests: foiling bank robberies, helping citizens in distress, and so on. The "helping citizens in distress" bits range from appropriately superheroic to things like finding lost pets and helping little old ladies cross the road. (Also, for some reason, at least two people having trouble getting a taxi to stop for them, the correct solution to which is apparently to steal a taxi and drive them to their destination oneself. Super heroic.)

[edit: I belatedly realise that you're probably supposed to use one of the passenger vehicles you get as a reward for other side quests. But finding the nearest taxi and stealing it is usually easier than remembering where your own vehicles are parked, anyway.]

One amusing aspect is that, because the sidequests don't take into account which character one happens to be playing at the moment -- the free play portion of the game lets you switch at will between any of the available characters, including villains, and to an extent encourages spending a little time as each of them to learn their capabilities -- the juxtapositions can sometimes be rather incongruous. My two favourite examples from my own playing are the time a little old lady calmly requested assistance from Spider-Man's nightmarish evil counterpart Venom, and the time the X-Men casually asked Magneto to help them repel an attack by his own League of Evil Mutants.


3. It took me a while to get around to seeing the second How to Train Your Dragon movie; maybe I should have left it a bit longer, because a few days after I saw it I found myself rewatching the first movie on TV. Oh well. I don't think anything was badly harmed by doing it that way around.


4. Since I mentioned that I have been unable to attend Toastmasters recently due to having something else on the same day, I have been to two Toastmasters meetings, though neither on my home club's usual day. One was at the new Gourmet club, which meets monthly over dinner; I enjoyed that, and intend to go again next month. The second was this weekend; there were a couple of higher-level officials in town to do club officer training for the three local clubs, so we had a combined meeting and potluck dinner with people attending from all three clubs. I ran Table Topics for the meeting, or as I announced it, Iron Chef Table Topics, in which each speaker is given a mystery ingredient and immediately has to spend two minutes talking about what meal they're going to prepare with that ingredient.


5. I've mentioned before that I enjoy cryptic crossword puzzles because a good cryptic clue can be satisfying in the same way as a really bad pun, and that sometimes I'll be stuck on a clue for a long time and then one day pick it up again and immediately see the answer. This one is a case in point:

Resort city is half a mile, pal, from Paris (5)

1. Over at Mark Watches, Mark Oshiro has just watched his very first episode of Star Trek. (Yes. The fact that Mark somehow missed out on a lot of popular fiction growing up is kind of the point of the blog.) The plan is that he will go on to watch every episode of every Trek series in the original broadcast order. To say that he seems to be enjoying it so far would be a considerable understatement.


2. June 23 is Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Appreciation Day. I showed some concrete appreciation for one of my favourite living fantasy authors by buying a copy The Sea of Time, the latest volume of PC Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath series.


3. I have been to see X-Men: Days of Future Past. I didn't go to see the first of the new-young-X-men movies because it didn't have Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in it, but I gather that the thing with X-men being involved behind the scenes of famous historical events of the late 20th century is something of a running theme. I understand the temptation, but I get the feeling that that's only going to work up to a point before it becomes impossible to pretend that this is a secret history and not an outright alternate timeline... and furthermore I suspect that point went past somewhere in the course of this movie. (The moment where Magneto drops the thing on the thing is a major contender.)


4. I have also been to see Maleficent. I'm not sure I liked it, either as a new take on Sleeping Beauty or as a story in its own right. Lots of telling-not-showing, and a few too many of the kind of plot holes you get when something happens because that's what happened in the old version even though the reasons it happened in the old version no longer apply. (When I try to think of other movies to compare it to, I keep coming up with TV miniseries and things that went direct to video.) And even though this is supposed to be a version with the female characters front and centre, by my count it actually has fewer interesting female characters than the original, because the three good fairies who were a significant presence in Sleeping Beauty have been almost completely sidelined.


5. 'Allo 'Allo is going well. I have learned quite a bit about theatrical makeup in the last week or two, since something was required to make plausible the jokes about my character being over the hill, and since this is amateur theatre I had to come up with something by myself that I could apply by myself. By opening night I had managed something that was generally agreed did the job; with practice, repetition, and incremental improvement, it's possible I'll have achieved something I'm satisfied with before the show closes.