RogerBW's Blog

Blood & Treasure season 1 31 January 2020

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.

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Grab Bag, Charlotte Macleod 30 January 2020

1987 collection of short mystery stories by MacLeod.

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Marlow Tabletop and Board Games 2 January 2020 29 January 2020

This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey.

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Sweep With Me, Ilona Andrews 28 January 2020

2020 SF novella in the Innkeeper series. During Treaty Stay, an annual holiday, Dina has to cope with yet more potentially-lethal alien guests.

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3-gatsu no Lion season 2 27 January 2020

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.

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1000 Yards, Mark Dawson 26 January 2020 - 7 comments

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.

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Stabcon 2020 25 January 2020 - 1 comment

This long-running games convention had another instance at the start of January. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

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Clarkesworld 160, January 2020 24 January 2020 - 2 comments

Clarkesworld is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Neil Clarke.

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Perl Weekly Challenge 41: obscure number sequences 23 January 2020

I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. The latest was about generating number sequences.

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The Balloon Man, Charlotte MacLeod 22 January 2020 - 2 comments

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.

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New Year's Day Boardgames 2020 21 January 2020

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.

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Underland, Robert Macfarlane 20 January 2020

2019 non-fiction. Macfarlane explores natural and man-made underground spaces.

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Boxing Day Boardgames 2019 19 January 2020

For the fifth year in a row, a bunch of us without family commitments got together for boardgames.

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Kitty's House of Horrors, Carrie Vaughn 18 January 2020

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.

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Killjoys season 3 17 January 2020 - 1 comment

2017 science fiction, 10 episodes. The space bounty hunters rapidly shift into preparations for all-out war.

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The Broken Promise Land, Marcia Muller 16 January 2020

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.

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mpd and YouTube 15 January 2020

I've extended my mpd-tools suite to allow for a new mode of operation.

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Short Cut to Santa Fe, Medora Sale 14 January 2020

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.

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Brooklands 13 January 2020 - 5 comments

I went to what's left of Brooklands, near Weybridge.

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Halfway to the Grave, Jeaniene Frost 12 January 2020

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.

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Christmas Eve Boardgames 11 January 2020

I went over to a friend's place on Christmas Eve for some short games

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Exit the Milkman, Charlotte MacLeod 10 January 2020

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.

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Advent of Code 2019 09 January 2020

I did last year's Advent of Code, and had a lot of fun working on it. Spoilers.

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Sweep of the Blade, Ilona Andrews 08 January 2020

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…

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December 2019 Trailers 07 January 2020

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.)

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Pursued by Shadows, Medora Sale 06 January 2020

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.

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The Mandalorian season 1 05 January 2020 - 3 comments

2019 science fantasy, 8 episodes, Star Wars tie-in. After the fall of the Empire, there's still work for bounty hunters.

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2019 in film 04 January 2020

In 2018 I watched 5 films; in 2019 I watched 32.

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2019 in boardgames 03 January 2020

2019 was another very boardgame-ful year.

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2019 in Books 02 January 2020

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.

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Roger's 2019 in 50 Words 01 January 2020 - 2 comments

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."

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