From my pigeonhole

From an advance copy of a Booklist review of The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy:

Margo Lanagan’s “The Goosle” combines Australian myth with horror in a gruesome sequel to Hansel and Gretel.

Now how did they ever wring Australian myth out of that story? Oh. Must have looked in the bio - 'Oh look, she's Australian. Well, she wouldn't write about anywhere else, clearly.'

Quite a brew

Because how many times has it happened? You pick up the next book on the To Be Read pile and think, 'But which beer goes with this?'

Jeff VanderMeer has come to our rescue by getting every author under the sun to let us know what to drink with her or his latest offering, over on Omnivoracious. He found so many opinions that he had to split the idea in two, like they do with overlong fantasy novels! Go here and here.

You'll be so up-to-the-minute when you've worked your way through this list. But oh, the headache you'll have.

Starry Rift—you know you want it.

The Strahan-edited The Starry Rift: Tales of NudeNew Tomorrows actually came out yesterday, so now we can say, 'Yes, it's true! The future is nudenew!

If you're one of the few people in the world who haven't read the Table of Contents, crawl out from under your rock and read this:

1. "Repair Kit" by Stephen Baxter
2. "Anda's Game" by Cory Doctorow
3. "Lost Continent" by Greg Egan
4. "The Dismantled Invention of Fate" by Jeffrey Ford
5. "Orange" by Neil Gaiman
6. "Sundiver Day" by Kathleen Ann Goonan
7. "Cheats" by Gwyneth Jones
8. "An Honest Day's Work" by Margo Lanagan
9. "The Surfer" by Kelly Link
10. "Incomers" by Paul McAuley
11. "The Dust Assassin" by Ian McDonald
12. "Infestation" by Garth Nix
13. "The Star Surgeon's Apprentice" by Alastair Reynolds.
14. "Post-Ironic Stress Syndrome" by Tricia Sullivan
15. "Ass-Hat Magic Spider" by Scott Westerfeld
16. "Pinocchio" by Walter Jon Williams

I've read them all, and I tell you, there's not a dud in it.
And there's a website, and everything. Although you've missed the free-copies competition. Now you will have to go out and buy.

Reading

I was going to tell you about the books I've been reading lately, but I see I've already been so snarky tonight that it might be dangerous. This morning I was drafting the beginning of my rant: 'Sturgeon's law says that 99% of the sturgeon you catch are not going to have any caviar in them...' No, I really ought not to go on.

Maybe Wednesday will be better.

Bloody hell

Dazzled by the Knopf Tender Morsels cover, I didn't notice until now how Amazon have got my lovely rich multifaceted novel categorised:

Sometimes you can only shake your head and swear under your breath. This is one of those times.

Yes, well...

another weekend passed, and now we're in a week again.

This morning as I was heading up to the train station I reminded myself how much I got written on the train commute back in 2000: most of Black Juice, reviewed afresh but vair-vair lukewarmly over here.

Anyway, I thought acidly to myself, 'There's no time to even write a haiku between here and Strathfield!' Which led to an outburst of not one but 5 haiku, plus one grabbed on the walk from Strathfield to work. Here is the best of them:

A train passed a train.
Between two full carriages
Glances crossed and slid.

although the apostrophe in this one's hard not to like:

Blue delphiniums.
Against an orange house wall
They practic'lly hum.

Does anyone know, is it okay to make stuff up in a haiku? If I'm not entirely sure they were delphiniums, am I allowed to put them in?

Oh, the weekend.

What a wonderful invention.

I slept in, then spent 6 hours workshopping, averaging a page an hour and eating and laughing a lot in between. Looxury! Six more hours tomorrow. Hmm, I could get used to this.

But I've been gently requested not to write 6000 words tonight, so as not to dispirit fellow workshoppers tomorrow. :)

Current reading: Paul Park, The Tourmaline.