dog-days

Thanks! I might try one and pass on the rest. The set-up sounds like it could make for a pretty compelling one-off mystery story even if I don't want to keep going through reiterations of the same book.

For readers of Anne Perry, how do you rate her as a writer? She had name-recognition for me, but nothing more, and it was a surprise to find out about her history in the obituaries.

At least it wasn't Belgian monks. I'd feel personally betrayed if it were Belgian monks. No one should do that to a nice bottle of Westmalle Dubbel.

My mind is boggling pleasantly at the idea of a stop-motion Star Wars short. I'm interested o see whatever Aardman come up with. Cartoon Saloon likewise. What will they focus on? The Sorgan Rising – doomed attempt to oust the Empire from the capital of Sorgan whose brutal suppression ultimately wins support for the rebels, though fourteen of the ringleaders are executed, only one of the main characters being spared due to his connections on Coruscant? Plus a white cat guide through the spirit world of the Force?

Also, have finished The Sinister Booksellers of Bath by Garth Nix. It was pleasant and undemanding; an old-fashioned YA-ish yarn harking back strongly to the Susan Cooper and Diana Wynne Jones school of children's literature. I would have liked more plot, and possibly fewer heavy-handed attempts to tie the book to its eighties setting through frequently referencing brands, types of clothes.

I was by-and-large okay with the dialogue, and the obvious anachronisms didn't jump out at me as wrong – maybe because although Chakraborty has a genuine interest in the period, I mentally slotted the book into the 'fun adventure story' category, one that uses the period for setting, myths and language, rather than one that takes the more faithful and rigorous stance of e.g. the Shardlake books. Though with any historical fiction, modern attitudes, ideas, concerns seep in – in the way that Watership Down isn't about rabbits but really about characters based on WW2 soldiers known by the author, historical fiction is only ever what modern authors think being alive in a certain time might have been like. Added to that the artificialities of telling a story that modern people want to read. Maybe the degree of consciousness makes a difference. I'm pretty sure that in general Chakraborty was going for a chatty. contemporary tone, and if she felt she needed to include 'overpass' (!) to do that, that's okay. I don't struggle with it anymore than with the fantastic elements: the Moon of Saba, the marid, etc. I guess there are different ways of approaching the challenge of writing dialogue that sounds natural and modern but that's true to history. It's late, but I just got thinking about Latin, which did have masses of urban, slangy words, many of which came from Etruscan, and which would have created a vibrant, vulgar soundscape in 1st BC Rome. But translate it and the result might be okay if stilted, but probably wouldn't do for 21st century genre fiction. Okay, some of the 1st century AD graffiti from Pompeii would probably do just fine.

A lot of them are quite similar tonally – maybe try the duology Clockwork Boys/The Wonder Engine if you have a fondness for traditional D&D-esque fantasy adventure, or The Raven and the Reindeer from her books inspired by fairy tales.

Aaand have also just read What Moves the Dead, the T Kingfisher riff on The Fall of the House of Usher with added mushrooms. I enjoyed it, as I tend to enjoy much of what she writes, but I didn't feel she was straining herself overmuch here. I would like someone – a demanding editor or deadly rival author if one can be found or cultivated – to throw down the gauntlet and make her push a bit further. But I guess that while her writing is doing well and has found its market niche, there's no incentive for her to do more than keep creating pleasant, very readable, slightly twee diversions.

Finished And Put Away Childish Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Though a minor novella in his huge and expanding bibliography, I still found plenty to enjoy, not least for the fun of the writing: The story is very meta and could be read as a more general comment on the place of classic English children's literature in the twenty-first century. "We were none of us meant to last this long," one of the fantastical characters grimly asserts. Read it to see if the book is in agreement with their verdict.

Finished The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty and it was indeed very good. Adventure on the Indian Ocean, fights, escapes, banter and secrets from the past – it was all in there. The author's obvious love for the setting – the history, geography and folklore – were what made it stand out above other stories of its kind. Tiny setting spoiler: The book made me want to go and find out more; I really value it when books do that. I also appreciated having an older woman as the protagonist-narrator rather than a young ingénue. She and her pirate crew seem only slightly more ruthless and blood-soaked than the Pirates of Penzance or Stede Bonnet, but that doesn't matter, and in fact is essential to the novel's brand of swashbuckling romance working. I missed the racial politics of the Daevabad books, but it didn't feel like a huge absence. It'll be interesting to see what Muslim commentators/academic responses make of Chakraborty's work. I expect there'll be some accusations of them purveying a kind of 21st century orientalism, but others will come to their defence. Received a gift voucher for by birthday, so have just bought And Put Away Childish Things.

Hope they do it justice. Look forward to hearing more about/seeing the filming locations. Dissolution is set in a snowbound abbey: They'll maybe use a composite of different ones?

That may not read to everyone exactly as they might have thought it would. (e.g. as an assertion of their red-blooded manly vigour or some crap like that.)

That one's next on my list. I've had my eye on it since it first came up on his Amazon profile page.

4.5% to 5% is what I'm typically seeing in the UK. Note to self: look for jobs in Canada.

Good for Sgt. Skinner. I hope he's not made to suffer for it later when the social media attention has gone away.

Oh no. I know him from The Wire and Fringe. Thought he looked like the kind of person who could go on acting into his nineties. I didn't realise he had a musical side as well – was in fact educated primarily as a musician. There are videos of him playing his compositions online.

Vanilla would be a great addition. Makes me think about getting a little genuine vanilla and heating it in the milk...

Almond butter gives me ideas, mostly related to cashew butter which I'd better stay away from. I could easily eat a jar of the stuff in one sitting. But almond butter is a bit safer! Nice but not manna-from-heaven nice. Haven't tried chopped dried peach before BFC, I'll give it a go.

Breakfast suggestions. I have a bowl of supermarket saver's muesli every morning with hot soy milk, a chopped banana and large amounts of cinnamon. Despite having it every day for *cough* three years, I still really like it. But I'm thinking I could experiment a bit more with the flavours. I'd swap out the cinnamon for cardamom, but UK supermarkets rarely sell ground cardamom, just the pods. And though I'm devoted to the cult of breakfast to the point that I shudder with horror when people tell me they skip it, I'm not going to stand in a freezing kitchen every morning grinding cardamom pods into powder. Ideas about what else I could try while still sticking with the muesli + hot alt milk base? And yes, this post is peak Guardian lifestyle pages.

All unhappy organisations are the same, all happy organisations are happy in their own way?

Frustrated at work. Middle and senior managers keep chasing after new projects while avoiding cross-departmental collaboration as if they might catch something nasty from listening to someone else's ideas. Communication is terrible. The work of maintaining our current offering (and often of following through on managerial ideas) falls on the lower orders, but after many structural changes plus staff leaving, any procedures that were in place seem to have been forgotten, and things are constantly being overlooked (because of lousy processes) that wouldn't be if the relevant individuals cared about more than adding the Shiny to their CVs. Competent staff leave or get sick. My boss is a good person, but also much more interested in his own projects than in being a proactive team manager. And he's worn out from the same entrenched organisational nonsense that's been getting to me, and overworked anyway in that he has a dual technical/managerial role. I'm not sure when/if he'll notice that we're all overdue for appraisals. Wouldn't have thought I'd ever miss them, but in the right hands they can create the illusion that you're valued as more than a disposable flesh robot. I've been working at weekends most weekends since November to keep up with the amount of stuff that comes my way. (Context: I am a Grade 4 minion.) And now I'm going to electro-shock mercenaries in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Yesterday to celebrate making it to March I had a takeaway from a Sri Lankan and South Indian place. It's the first time I've tried food from that cooking tradition (it's not well-represented in Britain compared to North Indian cuisine), and it was amazing. I had a dosa with sambar and pickle and a chana masala. The dosa was chewy and savoury, a little reminiscent of a Breton galette though made with fermented lentils and no buckwheat flour. The masala was fragrant and comforting. For budget and waistline reasons, I can't go back every week, but once every few months should be manageable.

"The fourth pig built a house from the skulls of wolves. The house wasn't as strong as the house of bricks, but it sent a powerful message." Ah for a house made of the skulls of Tory MPs who recommend buying houses with savings made from switching avocados for turnips.

I briefly really hoped this would be a prequel to Derry Girls.

Love First Dog on the Moon today. Actually, I always love FDotM.