Thanks, I will take a look!

Reading “Interlibrary Loan” (where I used to work, so I couldn’t resist), the last novel by Gene Wolfe, who died last year. The premise is that in the future authors can be borrowed from the library in the form of clones, the way you would borrow a book. It’s a whimsical science-fiction mystery.

Fellow librarian here (I’ve got an action figure of Nancy Pearl!). Re. her advice on choosing a book based on how much conversation there is: this is fine if you’re looking for a quick read, on vacation or on the plane, but when I open a book and see pages of conversation instead of prose it is too often a sign of…

I would welcome an actually adult novel. This may be a pipe dream, as I’ve never read any other the other novels except for the first one (i.e. “Star Wars”). It’s understandable that the powers that be don’t want to disclose all of how he got from there to here. But I would like to learn more of his interior life.…

That’s “naturopathic”.

I agree about The Expanse - Wes Cheatam ought to have been given a nod for his portrayal of Amos, in earlier seasons if not this one. When you consider the entire package of story, presentation, and innovation, they are pretty close, though.

Madame Curie (sic) is an old friend to me — I read a biography of hersome sixty years ago when I was 10, in the Landmark Signature series, followed by the biography by her daughter Eve. It introduced me to Polish history as well as the struggles of starving college students and physics researchers. While reading…

Seconded on language learning. Even with a couple of semesters of Portuguese I found I could understand about half of what people said, which meant I couldn’t understand the other half. Sadly, I found this true with French, which I was far more familiar with. Grammar study is no substitute for aural comprehension.…

I never watched Mythbusters or Glee and so never saw Grant or Naya Rivera, but I am still very saddened by the deaths of these two: by all accounts, lovely people in their prime. As it happens, my son-in-law’s younger brother died last week, presumably by his own hand.

Seriously, though, you can see why ancient people worshipped bears as god-men.

I’ve posted earlier about my own boating disaster, and I want to stress that a life jacket is strictly speaking termed a “personal flotation device” (PFD), because it enables you to float but is not guaranteed to save your life. Since we were canoeing in semi-wilderness I was glad that we had received some training in…

Do we know whether the clones are fertile? Years ago I worked on Star Wars fan fiction in which there was an entirely different world of clones (since these guys hadn’t been portrayed in the films yet), and mine were sterile. There is no reason there couldn’t be another race (?) of female warrior clones.

I used to go canoeing in Quebec with my husband and child. We always wore our life jackets and registered with the Reserve officials so they would know where we were going and what day we expected to return, but it was still so remote that we might travel 5-6 days without seeing anyone else, well outside the range of…

I have no idea whether he actually has a mental illness, I hope not, but it is still very sad when someone hugely successful and talented disintegrates into a mess — viz. Britney Spears, Val Kilmer, the list is longer than my arm. If you don’t want to see him enabled, don’t write about him. That’s what got us into our…

As it was then, so it is now: a difference of opinion, an optical illusion of perspective. A bad decision by two people? Obviously. A bad decision by someone who was supposed to know better? Very obviously. I recall having an instinctive attraction to two of my daughter’s male friends, one sixteen, and a flirtatious yo…

Re. Wonder Woman: there had better be some relationships between lesbians. From Lesbos, of course.

Having been a 17-year-old girl once myself it’s not a hanging offense, but jeez, most successful guys can keep it in their pants, why can’t the rest of them?

The problem with singing “Imagine” is that the music is dreary, the lyrics are trite and obvious, and the tune is terrible. This is coming from a passionate lover of John Lennon (in my own mind).

I could not get through the first episode. Everyone including the title character was nasty to each other, and I didn’t care for the smarmy, jokey atmosphere. Same problem I had with Firefly, though I seem to have been in the minority on that one.

Thanks for reminding readers about the Celts, I was just going to.