2019 thriller, 12 episodes. An antiquities expert and an art thief work together to catch a terrorist who funds his activities through the sale of ancient artefacts.
1987 collection of short mystery stories by MacLeod.
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey.
2020 SF novella in the Innkeeper series. During Treaty Stay, an annual holiday, Dina has to cope with yet more potentially-lethal alien guests.
2017-2018 seinen manga adaptation in 22 episodes: AniDB, vt "March Comes in Like a Lion". Kiriyama Rei is a young professional shōgi player, but is profoundly lonely.
Contemporary thriller novella, introduction to the John Milton series. Milton is an assassin for the British government, in North Korea to deliver a "message" to the controllers of their hacking teams.
This long-running games convention had another instance at the start of January. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
Clarkesworld is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Neil Clarke.
I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. The latest was about generating number sequences.
1998 cozy American detective fiction; twelfth and last of MacLeod's novels of Boston Brahmin Sarah Kelling and art investigator Max Bittersohn. A family wedding is complicated by the return of jewels long thought lost, an unexpected balloon landing… and a dead body.
On New Year's Day I went to the Jack of Both Sides in Reading (now renamed the Hope and Bear, but it has a different name each time I go there – all right, I only go there once every few years – and the locals still call it the Jack) for boardgames with the Reading Boardgames Social.
2019 non-fiction. Macfarlane explores natural and man-made underground spaces.
For the fifth year in a row, a bunch of us without family commitments got together for boardgames.
2009 urban fantasy, seventh in the series. Kitty Norville, the late-night DJ who has become the world's most famous werewolf, gets invited onto a reality show: shapeshifters, vampires and psychics put together in a remote house.
2017 science fiction, 10 episodes. The space bounty hunters rapidly shift into preparations for all-out war.
1996 mystery, sixteenth in Muller's series about Sharon McCone, private investigator in San Francisco. Sharon's brother-in-law, country music star Ricky Savage, has a stalker who may be turning nasty, just as his personal life is falling apart.
I've extended my mpd-tools suite to allow for a new mode of operation.
1994 mystery, sixth and last in the John Sanders/Harriet Jeffries series. Sanders and Jeffries are setting off on a romantic holiday in New Mexico when they find themselves giving a lift to two children who've missed the tour bus on which they were supposed to hitch a ride. Then things start getting quite strange.
I went to what's left of Brooklands, near Weybridge.
2007 urban fantasy. In modern Ohio, Cat hunts vampires, surprisingly well for a human, but she has some hidden advantages. Bones is an ancient vampire who's tracking down his own kind for his own reasons. Eventually, they make common cause. There is also sex.
I went over to a friend's place on Christmas Eve for some short games
1996 comic mystery; tenth and last of MacLeod's novels of Professor Peter Shandy. Peter's neighbour Jim spends most of his evenings at Fraternal Brotherhood meetings to avoid his horrible wife Mirelle; but he doesn't come back, and soon murder is afoot.
I did last year's Advent of Code, and had a lot of fun working on it. Spoilers.
2019 short SF novel in the Innkeeper series. Dina's sister Maud turned down a marriage proposal from the vampire Lord Arland, but she's travelling to his homeworld anyway…
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: When our hatred is too keen it places us beneath those we hate.)
1992 mystery, fifth in the John Sanders/Harriet Jeffries series. Harriet's old flame Guy, who dumped her and ran off with her assistant, shows up again in Toronto… but not for long.
2019 science fantasy, 8 episodes, Star Wars tie-in. After the fall of the Empire, there's still work for bounty hunters.
In 2018 I watched 5 films; in 2019 I watched 32.
2019 was another very boardgame-ful year.
In 2019 I read 138 books, down again even though that included several Book-of-the-Week condensations; I did a lot of other things too, and generally didn't remember to make time for reading.
A friend likes to sum up his year in a set number of words, and I copy this fine idea. "Think of it as a short and un-boastful summary of the year, which nobody is expected to understand all of."