Yearly Archive: 2011

Black Dogs by

ISBNs: 9781936689026 & 9781936689033 Book One: The House of Diamond – Book Two: The Mountain of Iron The world was green and grey, balanced on a serrated knife of pine and...

Mad Bad Richard Dadd by

Mad Bad Richard Dadd has been commissioned by Sir Thomas to paint a record of their journey through Europe. But travelling from Greece he is visited one night by a strange figure calling himself Osiris. But that is just a name this figure has taken, he is insistent that he is no supernatural character.

Dadd is a real-life character, a famous Victorian painter, and infamously a murderer. This is a possible telling of how he became this murderer.

2011 #5

Sligo Rugby Football Club won the Connacht Junior League division 1 with a 42 – 3 win over Castlebar.

Tongues of Serpents by

ISBN: 9780007256778 book 6 in the Temeraire series There were few streets in the main port of Sydney which deserved the name, besides the one main thoroughfare, and even that bare...

Brutal women by

Author Kameron Hurley has been getting a bit of coverage in the sff-world lately on account of her debut novel God’s War and to tie in with this publicity a collection...

Tor’s Best SFF novels of the decade

And how scary is it to hear that we’re a decade into the 2000s? Scary Scary, that’s how Scary Old Man’s War by John Scalzi[1] – 295 votes American Gods by...

Delusions of gender by

How our minds, society, and neurosexism create differences ISBN: 0393068382 ; Quotes I liked Suppose a researcher were to tap you on the shoulder and ask you to write down what,...

2011 #4

While on holiday in Wales I came across the following garden ornaments. Simples!

The Stainless Steel Rat omnibus by

When I spotted this in Chapters bookshop I knew I had to buy it, if only because it is the inspiration for Carl’s blog. Plus, you know, it is one of those sci-fi adventures that you really should have at least flicked through at some stage.

Slippery Jim is our narrator, and our hero, of sorts. He is also the Stainless Steel Rat, or at least that is how he describes himself. Slipping through the technological world and committing many daring acts of thievery and innumerable cons. Safe and secure in the knowledges that his wits, charm and logic will get him out of danger. Until, that is, he is caught. The Special Corps, so special that no one is really sure they exist until, of course, they catch you, succeed in arresting him. But instead of throwing him in jail, or punishing him they offer him a job. Come and work for them. So he does, after all, he was never a bad man, just one who wanted his bit of freedom.

February spotlight by

One of the nice things about working in a library & processing all those new books is that you come across titles you normally never would. For instance I don’t often...

The Wee Free Men by

ISBN: 9780552549059 ; Annotations on L-Space Some things start before other things. Tiffany Aching lives up on The Chalk of Discworld, in a rural shepherding community. She was the youngest of...