What I'm Reading
Small Favour by Jim Butcher is the latest Dresden Files book: about wizard-detective Harry Dresden.

Another very good one: action-packed, not too angsty, as Dresden takes on the Denarians again while tracking down a missing person; simultaneously fighting off a nice line in comedy villains: the Gruffs, inspiration for the classic Billy Goat fairytale.

The detective elements have receded into the background a little bit in favour of action and serious plot. The long term plot advances tantalizingly in this one: really want to see how the new Knight of the Cross works out. I would be wishing him to write faster, if it wasn't for the terrible example of Charles Stross' overproduction. Write good, Jim.

Well worth reading if you're following the series, but not really a good place for beginners to start as it's pretty complicated. You're best off starting with Fool Moon (2) or Grave Peril (3) as the series started off a bit weak as Butcher learned his stuff.

Favourite quotes on the fansite.

What I'm Reading 2
Colours in the Steel is the first book in the Fencer trilogy by K.J. Parker. This is the first book she's written (under this name at least). Looks suspiciously professional though: maybe she's had some practice.

Still a certain amount of realistic nastiness. Not as angsty as the Scavenger trilogy though. She's a bit lighter on the details of ironmongery and fencing here too, maybe lacking confidence for the detailed Clancy-esque technical details of the later books.

Plot is quite dramatic, though it relies on coincidence too much, without the excuses of Scavenger. Has some of the same themes.

On accuracy, after going through that TTC course on "Great Battles of the Ancient World" I find it a bit hard to believe that nomadic horsemen could master siege engine warfare so quickly when the ancient Greeks had such problems with it, but even so it's remarkably realistic for a fantasy.

Worth reading.

What I'm Reading 3
Grabbed the second Rebus detective book Hide And Seek. Streets ahead of the first: much more realistic with a homeless addict bumped off with toxic heroin. Mystery elements are there now, though still a little clunky.

According to the author introduction Rebus still isn't really a developed character yet.

Will keep going when I get the chance. Not sure if the later ones will be better.

Coming Soon
Will be going through the next two books of the Fencer trilogy. Also after asking about classics of genre fiction I found The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer (Queen of the Regency Romance) in my local library, so I'll be trying that sometime. Synopsis:

When the redoubtable Sir Horace Stanton-Lacy is ordered to South America on Diplomatic Business he parks his only daughter Sophy on his sister in Berkeley Square. But Sophy's cousins are in a sad tangle. The heartless and tyrannical Charles is betrothed to a pedantic bluestocking almost as tiresome as himself; Cecilia is besotted with a beautiful but quite feather-brained poet; and Hubert has fallen foul of a money-lender. It looks like the Grand Sophy has arrived just in time to save them all.

I was a bit cowardly though: waited till Burly Cockney Male Librarian was on the phone so that Smiley Euro-accented Lady Librarian would check my books out instead.

Web
I wrote this on Metachat.

Magic pen game (MeFi)

Mexican Absolut ad annoys Americans. (mecha)

Theophiles (no relation) the successor site to the departed Christdot is now up and mostly running. Journals don't seem to work yet, but they've had to work hard to get it up at short notice.

A contrarian Kaletsky argues there will be no recession.

Long article on tribalism (via ALdaily).

The vanishing asylum seeker

Across the EU, new asylum applications have fallen dramatically, which some governments attribute to their policy changes. New research shows that tougher policies are indeed deterring asylum seekers, though perhaps less than government ministers would like to claim.

Matthew Parris on new TV satire show

My own experience, as an MP and then as a journalist leaves me ambivalent about the power of satire to change things. Unless a satirist - in print, picture or TV image - goes with the grain of how the public are already beginning to see a political leader, his work is wasted; but what he can do is echo and amplify - and, with humour, give wings to - ideas that are already current...

I'd be more confident of satire's power to hurt (as opposed to embarrass) if I hadn't seen for myself how much most of our political and media class crave the attention, however cruel, of satirists. When Spitting Image decided not to replace their famous puppet of Brian Walden with a puppet of his successor [Parris] on Weekend World I felt desolate.