2019 high school sports story, original anime in 12 episodes: AniDB. The boys' soft tennis club is the joke of the school; the student council decrees that they'll be disbanded unless they win at least one match at the summer tournament. Then a new kid joins the school… vt Stars Align.
2009 urban fantasy, sixth in the series. Kitty Norville, the late-night DJ who has become the world's most famous werewolf, thought she'd dealt with the problems in Las Vegas. But some of them have followed her home.
I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. The latest was about list manipulation.
1964 science fiction, re-read. The Fuzzies are legally recognised as sapient, and that means big changes to the government of Zarathustra.
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey.
2009 police procedural mystery, tartan noir, fifth in the Logan McRae series. Someone is attacking Polish immigrants in Aberdeen, cutting out their eyes and burning the sockets – but taking care to leave them alive – then sending ranting racist letters to the police…
I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. Last week's was about parsing a specific file format.
Clarkesworld is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Neil Clarke.
2019 audio drama, adapted in eight parts by Julian Simpson from the story by H. P. Lovecraft. Henry Akeley has vanished from his home near Rendlesham Forest, and the podcasters investigate.
2019 non-fiction. Nott is a general and vascular surgeon who uses his leave to volunteer with MSF in combat and disaster zones.
2019 high school story, 4-koma manga adaptation in 12 episodes: AniDB. Miki is terminally shy, but learns to make friends through an interest in boardgames. vt After School Dice Club.
Back to the boardgame café. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
1991 police procedural mystery; first of Mankell's novels of Inspector Kurt Wallander of the Ystad police. Two elderly people living in a remote farmhouse are tortured to death; nothing's obviously missing, but someone fed the horse before they left. And a couple of clues point at foreigners in Sweden… (Translated by Steven T. Murray; original title Mördare utan ansikte.)
I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. Last week's was about parsing an odd date format and generating words in a Scrabble-ish manner.
1989 mystery, second in the Carlotta Carlyle series (neo-noir private investigation). Carlotta's old friend on the force Mooney has been suspended after he beat up a man who attacked him; he says the guy had a knife, nobody's found one, but there's one witness who hasn't come forward. While Carlotta looks for the prostitute with the snake tattoo, a rich teenager who's been roughed up is looking for his missing girlfriend in a part of town that neither of them should be visiting…
2019 fantasy. The god Raven sustains the city of Vastai, via his Lease, a human ruler destined to sacrifice himself to the god. But Mawat the Lease's Heir returns to find that his father is missing and his uncle is the new Lease…
1997 police procedural audio in four parts, by Nick Fisher. Someone is poisoned in the Reading Room of the British Library, and someone else is mummified; Detective Superintendent Julie Enfield investigates.
Well, we're fucked then.
1995 cozy American detective fiction; eleventh of MacLeod's novels of Boston Brahmin Sarah Kelling and art investigator Max Bittersohn. The administrator of the Wilkins Museum dies suddenly, and Sarah turns out to be named as her executrix.
I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. Last week's was about counting weekdays and working out total daylight.
The author of the webcomic xkcd gives desperately impractical but scientifically rigorous advice on how to solve common problems.
I invited some friends over for a day of V-Commandos, a cooperative boardgame of WWII special operations. (I'd planned for six but two couldn't make it.)
2019 non-fiction, examining the life and work of Gropius.
2006 science fiction, first of the two books of Lords of Creation. The first Mars and Venus landers found breathable air and human life. Twenty years later, Marc Vitrac is assigned to the American base on Venus, studying the planet and its natives.
I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. Last week's was about validating VINs and solving the knapsack problem.
1991 mystery/police procedural, fourth in the John Sanders/Harriet Jeffries series. A corporate chairman is found shot in a hotel room, and it looks as if the people who did it are going after the witness too, even though she doesn't know much.
2004 detection, first in Greenwood's Corinna Chapman series. Corinna runs a bakery in Melbourne; someone's sending threatening letters, the local junkies are dying, a new neighbour is drinking himself to death after his daughter ran off, and a lovely but mysterious man finds her interesting.
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: It does not matter much what a man hates, provided he hates something.)