threemonkeys | Recent Entries

Three Days to Never by Tim Powers confirms two things for me

1 - Powers is a better novel writer than a short story writer.

2 - A clean clear writing style is not incompatible with a complex twisting convoluted plot. In fact, in this case, very compatible indeed.

Why yes, now that you mention it, I did like it.

This is how I know I'm not an author.

I have a credit card with an issuer that isn't my normal bank. It is the only relationship I have with that company and the amount of personal information I have with them is deliberately minimal. I had to call them yesterday to make a change to the card account. Because of recent "Know Your Customer" legislation, there is a whole bunch of identification authentication that I had to go through with the call centre person - its all about preventing identity theft. It was quite a struggle for the call centre person to find enough questions for me to answer and likewise quite a struggle for me to answer some of them - I don't use this card much and so its been years since I interacted with the issuer.

So I started thinking about identity and how easy it would be to lose your verifiable identity - not have it stolen but just by carelessness lose track of it. It could lead to a new set of people falling into the underclass - still capable of functioning but unable to interact with the mechanisms of infrastructure. Its not a new idea. In fact, re-reading Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere last week probably influenced my thoughts here and there are plenty of other stories set in underclasses of various sort. But offhand I don't recall ever reading the story of the slide into that state - the step by step loss of memory or competence that could reduce a person to lose their way because they couldn't establish their identity.

So here is a story idea that I like and want to see. If I was an author, I'd want to write that story or at least store it away in my ideas bank for possible later use. But I'm not - I just want to read that story. Its like that with any idea I might have. I want to absorb and enjoy what somebody else does with that idea, not write it myself. It also explains why I admire the people who are able to feed that want.

So you are planning to write a series of books with a story arc that goes across them to a big climax. Each volume tells its own story while contributing to the overall big story. You have that big story mapped out before you start and it is a great story, but there is one big question - how many volumes do you spread it across? I wonder if Kage Baker wrestled with that question. Perhaps if she had, the "Company" series might not have been so long. Baker's writing is wonderful and the first few volumes were brilliantly entertaining. But as volume after volume came out they became more and more subverted by the big story which in turn became very convoluted. Perhaps if you read it all in one go it would be more coherent, but with a big time gap between each volume it was hard work to remember everything that was going on. Not to mention that the sparkle and wit diminished as time went on. Each book was still entertaining but the trend was not a good one.

So it was almost with relief that The Sons of Heaven came along. The final volume in the "Company" series had the job of picking up all the strands of all those earlier volumes and weaving them into a credible climax. Readability, style, wit and entertainment all come behind that main aim in priority. Yet to my surprise, they were all there. It pulled all those bits together somehow, although some got a pretty small page count in resolution. It was coherent - despite all those various bits, it was no trouble to work out what was going on and even trigger the memories of reading previous books to fill in the gaps. But most of all it was fun, with all the buzz that the early novels had. It makes you think that Kage Baker had a really good plan all along.

Alternatively, perhaps it was the pop culture references. This book had lots of them - all the "Company" books do, but not as many as in this one. Did I mention that I'm a sucker for pop culture references.

I read Classic Detective Stories - as you expect, a bunch of detective tales from the 30's onwards. Nothing to say specifically about the stories, they were a pretty good bunch of characteristic tales of the genre. They did get me thinking about the detective fiction genre and the parallels that it has with SF though. From the short story based start in the pulp magazines through to the novel and series based genre of today they have broadly the same path. It also struck me, that the detective and broader crime & mystery fiction genre has always been a step ahead of SF. It started earlier and got into novels in a big way earlier.

That got me a little concerned about one aspect. It is pretty hard to see any new crime genre short story collections about these days. At least when you look on the SF shelves there are still a handful of recent anthologies and author collections available. Plus, of course, there are still a few magazines around. I wondered, with some pessimism, whether the state of the crime & mystery shelves was a portent for the SF shelves when short fiction disappears altogether.

I am therefore somewhat relieved to record that a few short fiction crime titles can be found on Amazon. Even better, I am pleased to see that Ellery Queen's Mystery magazine is still being published - even if the covers still look like they come from 1941.

There is another point. Reading these classic tales, I came to the conclusion that I prefer detective fiction in the longer forms. Stripped down to its essentials of setup and solution it seems to lack depth - perhaps it was because I was able to immediately deduce the mysteries as soon as the scenario was developed. Shorter SF can have all kinds of depth and complexity. Perhaps that will let it keep its rather precarious grip on the shelves.

Another one of those cases of reading an author's work in more or less random order. It gives an insight into how their work has changed in a way that is different to reading them chronologically. This time an early Charles De Lint - Moonheart - earlier than any I had read before. It is interesting to see all the familiar elements there - modern fantasy, other realms, folk music, spirit journeys etc. But there are so many other elements in this one. Things harking to more common fantasy and adventure story types. Things to make the story more "exciting" with more "action". Things that aren't really necessary. Words like honing and refining come to mind. Its interesting that I have had the same observation about this author before but not so far back in his work - I'm sure there is a thesis topic in all that somewhere.

Originality is overrated. Most artistic works really don't have anything very original in them - perhaps just the tiniest sliver of it here and there. The majority of what we look for is the skill of execution of the various aspects that go to make up a work. Yet take the case of Principles of Angels by Jaine Fenn. It seems well executed - a well paced, tightly plotted etc piece of science fiction. Well, space opera really - its a kind of gunslinger western set on an orbital city. But it isn't a copy of a particular story - it is more a mixture of elements - a bit from column A, a bit from column B etc. Yet, as I read it, all I got was that sense of familiarity. For all that is is well constructed, it seems to lack some extra spark - it just seems like a collection of familiar components than a new work. Some spark was missing - perhaps that is originality. Or perhaps something else - a cleverness of phrase or a linkage to the common human condition come to mind.

But is it a bad book for that lack? No not really. It is perfectly readable with good pageturnability. I think there is a good junk-food analogy in there somewhere if I could be bothered looking for it.

These days I have cut my alcohol consumption down to a tiny trickle. I have a small wine rack at home which is full of bottles that are well past their "drink by" dates. But even in times past I wasn't a big drinker. Being lucky/unlucky enough to have a ridiculously light head, if I had much more than a couple of drinks my brain would float away. Not being a fan of insensibility, there has never been any point in me drinking more.

This isn't a personal confession or anything. It is just background so that you know the significance of my pleasure at Tuatara Brewery being named Champion Brewer at the recent NZ awards. When the BIG* folks got together at the old Malthouse pub, it was always consistently Tuatara's various brews that gave the greatest pleasure. I'm glad they have got some recognition.

(*BIG - Beer Ingestion Group. Context for that requires a much longer post that

lobelet or

littenz is much better equipped than me to do.)

Over the years I've had quite a bit to do with putting together material about convention running and have read a lot of wise and not so wise words about the subject from many sources. So, believe me when I say that if you are in the process of organising a con, you really must read what

dalekboy has to say on the subject. Not so much a guide as some guiding principles from somebody who has both been there and done that.

I've always avoided books that sought to link the "science of science fiction" with actual science thinking. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it is a subconscious desire to not have my illusions broken by subjecting SF to scrutiny and having its science found wanting. However I don't think so - I have a reasonable grasp of what is and what isn't possible and even the degree of improbability. Perhaps I just don't want to be reminded and thus have suspension of disbelief made more difficult.

But I did read Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku. Why? - because Kaku is the best in the pop science business these days and so I read everything he writes. I should have followed my first instinct - I didn't really enjoy the book all that much. But it wasn't the faultof the book. Kaku has a good enough knowledge of science fiction to find good examples and then to explore in a highly readable way the possible science that might be associated with them. It really is very well done indeed and a good reflection of the state of the art.

Yet it didn't work for me - possibly for the reasons above or possibly from the air of "we know everything" that you get from the book. Even though the author is very careful to point out the difficulties with scientific crystal ball gazing and to point out past failures of prediction, you still get the feeling that he has no expectation of something coming out of left field to surprise the scientific community now. This despite the countless times that it has happened before. Even though I know that a scientist (and Kaku is an active working researcher) has to have confidence that they are following worthwhile lines of research, I still find myself thinking that the focus could have been a bit wider even while not knowing exactly how you would do that.

I tried to tell people about The Middleman the other day but it was a pretty sad attempt. Over here is an example of how to properly pimp a show. Some mild spoilery bits, but nothing serious.

Thanks to

mynxii for providing the lesson.

"It must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays" - Arthur Dent

"Outlook for Thursday, your guess is as good as mine" - Dave Dobbin

"Niwa statistics confirm the outlook for Thursdays is fine - or at least better, as it has proved to be the least likely day for rain." - article in todays DomPost

That article says that it has rained on 84 days so far this year - that is a bit more than a third. It hints at but does not say what I suspect is that most of those days are in the last three months.

Can I just say that with spring starting on Monday, that I am really sick of the rain. I used to defend Wellington's weather. I suppose I still can - the rest of the country is even wetter.

I know talking about the weather is the default when you have nothing else in common. But some days you just need to say something.

OK, I admit it. I'm a total sucker for pop culture references in TV shows. Well references that I get anyway. I've mentioned The Middleman a couple of times before and since its first season is coming to an end, perhaps its time for example of why it hits that particular button for me.

So in the most recent episode there was:
A NASA Tech called Mr Lethbridge-Stewart
A Zygon rated quarantine facility
The Peri Perpugilliam treaty
The line "did your boss just call you on your watch about a pan-galactic gargle blaster?"

These are just examples and I probably missed many more than I caught. Not that I expect you to necessarily catch these. Last week it was Die Hard references.

From

dmw
--------------------
The next Get-Up-and-over Fan Fund is now open for nominations. If you know what this means, are an Australasian fan, and have a desire to attend the sixtieth British Eastercon, LX, then you need to contact me (dmw). You'll need to find three nominators in Australasia, two nominators in Europe, and send me a 100 word platform and an AUD25 bond.

Nominations will close on or around 8 September, and ballots will be immediately distributed. Voting will run until shortly after Novacon.

Please disseminate widely.
--------------------

As some of you know, I was really keen to run for this. However, I'm just not up for it - the occasional weekend across the Tasman is all I'm good for at the moment. So instead, I'd encourage people to think about it - either as a candidate or simply by supporting the fund.

Motivation is a bit of a struggle at the moment but in odd ways. Its as if my priorities have been altered. The upshot is that just recently I'm not writing about as many books as I would normally do. Of course, some that I read go "straight to shelf" but others are sitting there making me feel guilty. So lets try the short sharp shock treatment.

Ellen Datlow's anthology The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy certainly shows the editor's preference for stories where style and atmosphere are emphasised compared to story or character. Although a couple of the writers tried to emphasise everything and ended up with muddled work, the rest of it was top notch. But a warning to editors - re-read your opening blurb notes if you re-order the stories. You may give away an unintended hint about your editorial thinking. (Edit: or not - see comments)

Strange Itineraries by Tim Powers shows two things. That the author is much better at longer works than short stories and that the author is obviously aware of this because he does not write many of them. Or possibly cause and effect are the other way around.

The Dragon Waiting by John M Ford is an alternate history. What it showed me is that I know next to nothing about that period of English or European history - I think 15th century, but that is just a guess which shows how little I now. Even in an alternate universe that is a big drawback when trying to get into the book. Especially when that book is very plot-rich - there was a lot of re-reading to try to keep track of what was going on.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be. Nor was it ever.

I have a smallish number of books on tape - compact cassette that is. I used to listen to them in the car - normal reading and driving being somewhat incompatible for me. But my current vehicle does not have a cassette player and I even took the cassette deck off my sound system to make way for something more useful. At least a few of the tapes are worth another listen or two, so I thought a bit of format shift for them might be in order, what with replacements not being available anywhere. Even the production companies don't exist any more.

People hold nostalgic feeling for various older technologies - vinyl records, steam trains etc. I can't help thinking that the compact cassette is not going to be one of those technologies. You might understand how I arrived at that conclusion if you could see me fishing the tangled mess of ruined tape out of the mechanism of my cassette player.

We just had a fire alarm at work - just a drill. But one of the sirens is really loud - really really loud. Much louder than it needs to be as there are plenty of other sirens around and well beyond the pain threshold - my ears are still ringing. It is in a stairwell that funnels everybody to the designated meeting area, so you cant miss it. People were holding their hands over their ears to block the noise which in a crowded stairwell can't help but increase the chances of an accident because of people not holding onto handrails.

"When safety becomes dangerous" - sounds like the title for a TV show. I don't think irony is a big selling point in shows like that though.

Dymocks Queensgate now have a clearance store. You know the sort of thing - remaindered titles being sold at less than a third of original list price. Talking to the guy running it, a question arose.

What if you spot the work of somebody you know there? Do you mention it next time you are talking to them? I figure that the answer is no - no author like to be reminded that their work has been remaindered. Especially when we are talking about mass market editions here - not trade size editions that have been superseded by a newer release.

But what if the remaindered work is really popular. What if the staff can't keep the books stocked on the shelves because they are selling so fast - selling better than anything else in the shop by a huge margin. Is that now worth mentioning or does the shame of being remaindered outweigh the boost of being popular.

Yes it is somebody I know but no it isn't any of you. I bet none of you ever had your work remaindered.

I was talking with one of the sales staff at Dymocks Queensgate today about a book and the ultimate accolade she could give it was that she couldn't put it down. Skip forward to me looking at the little pile of books I have read recently but not written about here. Which one to write about? It seems obvious - the one I have just read in one sitting - no interruptions allowed. It has got to be the best. Right?

The only problem is that in many ways Rolling Thunder by John Varley looks like complete rubbish. Its an unstructured meandering Heinlein pastiche and not a very subtle one at that - the main character is called Podkayne. The book, the third in a series, is full of Heinlein references and more than a few references to earlier works by the author too. The story manages to be both trite and silly. And yet..."looks like"?

It sparkles. It is an enthralling, over the top fun ride. Just like almost every other Varley story really. It is the literary equivalent of a mind altering substance. Varley is never going to recapture the time of wonders in the '80s but he still has the mojo. Just don't expect, y'know, great literature.

A few pieces of minor oddness from the last 24 hours.

It rained today - that isn't strange as it has been raining every day for the last month. But today it did that odd thing where it came straight down. Vertically with no horizontal deviation. How weird is that.

One of the more staid and seemingly conservative of my work colleagues almost mugged me to borrow my mp3s of the HHGTTG radio series.

Remember how I said that Weeds should have ended at the end of season 3. Well, as I was watching a season 4 episode tonight I realised that it is just as strong as it ever was and tonights episode gave me more laughs than I have had in ages.

Middleman. That is all - it just is oddness.

My "mental Floss" daily calendar informs me that Aladdin from the 1001 Arabian Knights wasn't from the Middle East but was from China. (Actually I knew that but it does contribute to the general oddness).

Last night my doctor ordered me to take a holiday. I took that to mean that I really must go to Conflux and not let any barriers get in the way. Oddly enough I feel better already just with the thought of it.

This is a little coda to the last post about novellas. As

darthsappho put it, "a commercially awkward format" to publish as a stand-alone book. The production cost for a novella is almost the same as a full size novel so the retail price is almost the same as a novel. Yet the market is smaller. For one thing, a great many potential buyers will look at the word count and do a value for money calculation. It never works out well for the novella. Now I suspect that most of you are of the "its the quality not the quantity" school of thought, but I don't think that view prevails generally. As a result, big publishers tend to steer away from publishing stand-alone book form novellas.

I say all this in the light of the fact that after reading the big Dozois collection, I read a stand-alone novella published by a major publisher. It was Plum Lucky by Janet Evanovich. But that value for money calculation is still in the heads of the publisher. Now I estimate the work to be about 30000 words max, but with large print and big margins it has been inflated to the size of a volume with twice that word count or even more. But even with that and the huge popularity that Evanovich's Stephanie Plum stories enjoy, I bet this book didn't sell anywhere near as well as one of the "numbers" volumes. It is a fun book though. What is more, it was clearly never intended as a "numbers" book. It has a different more fantasy like feel than the main sequence. I can't help but wonder what length this particular story was intended to be.

I wonder about novellas/short novels. I know the sf genre is supposed to be almost a last bastion of the form. I'm not entirely sure if that is true, but it is the only place where a real market exists for writers. A few really big names in other genres get theirs published just on the strength of their names, but in sf a work can get published on its merits. In saying "sf" I suspect that I actually mean "science fiction" rather than some broader definition of the genre or at least a subset of the genre covered by the more established magazines.

But the real thing I wonder about is why they get written. Does an author start out thinking "I think I'll write a novella"? See, I think that this is a pretty rare scenario. I'd love to hear from the writers out there whether this is the case, but I suspect that novellas/short novels are either failed novels that couldn't be stretched to the distance or short stories that just got a way from the author. I know that stories do take on a life of their own and this is why something intended for one length ends up at another. But if I'm right, then work of this length always represents a failure of planning. Even if it is an artistic success, and many are, I'm wondering if there is always a tinge of disappointment that the work didn't pan out as intended.

All this is by way of saying that I read Gardner Dozois' Best of the Best Volume 2 which is an elbow destroying collection of short novels from his best of collections. There are lots of great stories here and it is an excellent collection. But like the first volume of short stories there is also a feeing of being let down. It should be superlative. A "best of the best" should be enough to blow the mind. Yet it isn't - it is merely very good - about as good as any given year's "best of" collection. Again, just that tinge of disappointment.

By the way, I don't usually explain my titles, but I should point out that Connie Willis and Ted Chiang have just won the Hugos for best Novella and Novelette. Anything by those two is automatically a best of the best in my book. Congratulations to them and the others.

I read The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds about a week ago and I haven't really been able to think of anything to say about it. Its an in-fill title plugging a gap in a bigger story arc Its perfectly satisfactory for a Reynolds work - neither best nor worst. Just another title.

But then the title triggered a memory. The local high school had a prefect system - senior pupils who were given the title and power that went with that title. It is a tradition that existed ever since the school was established in the 1880s and extends back to English traditions that go back much further. Then one day the student council, a body of elected student representatives, asked the school headmaster to abolish the prefect system. And he did! Just like that.

We are talking about the early 1970s here, a time of great social change. I may be wrong, but I can't see that sort of thing happening these days - schoolkids actually making a difference to the traditional structure of their school. I was rather young at the time and when told that the prefect system was being abolished I just accepted it as the sort of thing that happened. Hindsight gives a different perspective on an old institution going and perhaps it was inevitable that it would go anyway. Interesting that the book title triggered that memory because I'm sure I haven't thought about prefects at any time in the intervening years.

It has been a while since I posted anything. In fact it has been a while since I interacted with the world in more than the minimum work-eat-sleep cycle. A friend even rang me up on the weekend to see if I was OK - so quiet had I been. It isn't a big mystery though. Like so many of you, I have had a dose of the flu or some such virus and it has been quite draining. The debilitating after effects have slowed me down so that I don’t really have the energy for much beyond the minimum to get through a day.

Anyway, I'm not trolling for sympathy here. Why I have summoned up the energy to write is because it seems at times like this the soundtrack of my life becomes more obvious. There are songs which seems to come to mind in certain life circumstances which complement my state of mind. Do any of you do that? Have songs or bits of songs that spring into your mind given certain triggers?

Anyway, the song which has been coming to mind in the last week or two has, of all things, been the theme song to Petticoat Junction. Why? Well it contains the line "...and that's uncle Joe, he's movin' kinda slow ...at the junction". Just think of me as being like old Joe - I'm movin' kinda slow.

I suppose I should be glad that another of those songs isn't coming into play. I know things are really bad when the soundtrack for the day is Magazine’s Song from under the floorboards. It starts "I am angry, I am ill and I'm as ugly as sin. My irritability keeps me alive and kicking".

What is your soundtrack today?

A couple of mysteries...

My internet broadband scheme has a capped data volume. If I exceed it, my access drops down to dialup speeds for the rest of the month. Luckily my ISP provides a status page that lets me see how much I have used. Yesterday it told me I was at 85% of the cap. Today it told me that I was at 70%. It made a backward jump like that last month too. Very strange.

I still feel a hankering for modern fantasy and I don't know why. It pushed me to order a couple of Tim Powers' titles today. It also made me read the third of Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch trilogy. This one, not surprisingly is called The Twilight Watch. It isn't really a trilogy though. Each volume actually has three stories within it. All in the same setting of course with the same characters but each is a distinct piece in its own right. (does that make it a nonology?) I think this is quite to the advantage of the overall series - a series that by the end I have to say I really enjoyed despite a rocky start. Each story is a tight piece without the bloat often associated with with large fantasy trilogies. Why is such a structure so unusual?

Actually a third mystery*. Why can't the local booksellers get Tim Powers books on their shelves. (Actually, I know the answer, but it is as much a puzzle as the question)

(*I'd make a joke about the mystery of not being able to count, but

lobelet owns the rights to that one.)

Funny things alternate history novels. They don't really fit in with other broadly sf stuff, yet they don't fit in anywhere else either. The sf genre more or less fits them because it is dealing with worlds other than our own. I understand though why some booksellers want to put them in a category of their own. That section could easily be called the "Turtledove" section because ol' Harry probably writes most of it.

To me there are a couple of main reasons for going down the alt-history path. The serious literary one is to use the different world to hold up a mirror to our own world. The contrast between what "could have been" and what "is" is where the heart of such a work lies. Conversely you can just use the strange setting to tell a story and run some characters across a landscape. The latter is the usual Turtledove method and when he is on form, it is good diverting fun but you wouldn't mistake it for deep.

Along the way in an alt-history story you can have a bit of fun. Drop in the odd moment of quirky difference between the alternative world and our own. It can be a bit of spice for the story and it gives the pretentious amongst us (including me) a chance to show off our second rate knowledge of history and feel clever when we understand the references to "real" history. Of course it would be crass to actually draw attention in the story to our world - planting an alternate world inside the alternate world is just silly. Not only does The Two Georges by Harry Turtledove and Richard Dreyfuss have a bit of entirely inappropriate alternate-alternate in it but it is just stuffed full to overflowing with those little spice moments. Its all about "spot the allusion". Oh there is a story, but it so clearly isn't the point.

Perhaps its just me. I think I've reached a saturation point. I gave up the big inflated Turtledove novel series a while back. I think its time to give up the one-offs as well. Time to go back to works where "spot the allusion" is about film or music references. I still feel clever when I spot those.

When a restaurant tells you that they have specially commissioned a hunter to go get game for a particular dish, you know they are serious. The result the most wonderful roasted Thar imaginable.

I've been sick again. Seems like half my flist have been sick recently or still are. Anyway, I'm over most of it and almost went to work today. Then I realised I wasn't up to a full day, so I rang my boss and told her I'd work a half day from home. Just like that. Its easy, I have access to my documents and email and people who need to talk to me have access to my cellphone numbers. No big deal right? Its a pretty common thing these days to telecommute. It isn't very long ago that it couldn't really happen though.

This isn't going to descend into a long ramble about how things have changed during this "second industrial revolution". You like that phrase? It used to be quite common, but I haven't heard it for a while. But I like the "revolution" aspect to describing what is happening in the world technology-wise and social-wise.* Instead it is about Terry Pratchett.

Pratchett likes to look at serious social change, even if it is in a rather silly fantasy universe. It isn't always about technology bringing about that change - it usually isn't in fact, but it is one of the mechanisms. The recent Going Postal was one of the most obvious examples about using technology to change the society in Ankh Morepork. It introduced Moist von Lipwig who reappears in Making Money. What was done for the postal system previously is now applied to the banking system. I liked Going Postal quite a lot - I thought it one of the best recent Pratchett novels. Part of that appreciation was enjoying the social change component that was strong in that book. Even though Making Money is a weaker book in many other respects, I again liked the treatment of social change. So with the postal system, banking and industrial engines (golems=steam engines) covered, I wonder what the next step in the Diskworld's own industrial revolution is while hoping that Terry has time to write that next step.

*Sure, we probably need another technological/social revolution to deal with some of the ecological stuff that is happening - strangely enough as a pretty much direct result of the first industrial revolution.

Almost a week since my last post. Probably a good thing. I posted what was supposed to be a short comment on a discussion group today and it turned into a rant. Then I tried to explain myself and another rant started up. Nothing wrong with a good rant, but I like to plan my rants a bit better. Yes, I know the contradictions there but trying to explain myself would be another rant.

So instead I'll rave. If you are at all interested in the Monteiths Wild Food Challenge, I really seriously recommend you have a look at what Dockside is offering. Actually, don't look taste, the description is nothing special but the execution is just stunningly good - Roasted Thar to die for.

Oh and have a look at the menu for the first restaurant on that link - yep the main is half a pig's head. And yes, we tried it too. Pretty much as gross as it sounds, and yet sort of compelling too. Friends of my sister regularly dine at a "nose to tail" restaurant. Strangely she does not join them.

Another new TV season and the usual assortment of previews and pilots to sort through. A few of the new shows seems worth the time to at least give them a shot. The opinions below based on usually on only one show so far.
( Cut coz...y'know )

Half a pigs head. Seriously, that was the dish. Have you any idea how much fat there is in a pigs head. Pretty nice though. But the taro curry that went with it - superb.