Raven

^ It's out in April, I believe.

Publication day for The Silver Tide by Jennifer Williams and I now have a copy on my Kindle (my OCD won't let me buy the large format copy - as it doesn't match the two smaller format books I have from the series - and I don't want to wait until July to read it, so Kindle it is for now, the dead tree copy will follow later in the year!).

I've enjoyed all three episodes so far and this weeks had me laughing out loud on several occasions. Yeah, this is how I like my Mulder...

Gone back to cold again, but a very pleasant walk into work this morning.

Possibly lost in the noise of Harper Lee's death, but Umberto Eco has also passed away. I have a copy, and have been meaning to read, The Name of the Rose for a very long time. Now seems appropriate.

Cold tonight, turning mild again tomorrow. Recently, my heating has been up and down more often that Stephen Fry's Twitter account.

I think that is what is driving most people, and I doubt most will care about the difference.

... a small elephant named Clive. Has the surveyors report mentioned anything about screaming wood mites? You don't want that kind of tic infestation, it leads to ...

Thanks for the tip, but that's not quite what I am getting at. I don't know if you have seen the film Fargo, or the TV series it is based on, but both start with a line saying 'Based on a true story' when both are works of fiction. Fargo could be true however, because the events - although outlandish - could have actually happen. What I am getting at here is a fantasy or science fiction story like The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars starting with the line 'Based on a true story', which obviously couldn't have happened because Orcs and Jedi etc. don't exist. I'm just wondering if any fantasy or science fiction author has had the brass to start their story that way.

Pacific Rim Still dumb as a bag of hammers, but Rinko Kikuchi is very watchable.

Saw the first part of Heroes: Reborn on 5 Star last night; more of the same really, but although it wasn't anything that special I quite enjoyed it. If it stays in this gear, however, it will be easy to see what it was dropped.

Norwegian Wood is as good a place to start as any. Its his most main stream novel, though, so it is more "normal" than his other novels, which - as BB said - usually contain some surreal content.

^ Amen. I've heard conflicting things about The Martian, I thought the reviews were generally positive when the film came out, but the reviews for the DVD release seem to be mostly negative.

It's not going any further, either. Season 2 of Reborn has been quietly dropped.

Ker-ching! Ker-ching! Ker-ching! Ker-ching! Ker-ching! Ker-ching! Ker-ching!

Not audio books per say, but the BBC have released a number of audio plays over the years and some of them are very good indeed. I can recommend The Kraken Wakes, The Midwich Cuckoos (with Bill Nighy) and The Day of the Triffids all based on John Wyndham books and The 50's version of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. As well as doing a cracking range of full cast Doctor Who stories, Big Finish have done some great full cast adaptations of a number of other stories (such as Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes and Survivors, to name but a few).

Deadpool Violent, offensive, twisted and full of potty-mouthed swearing. I loved every hilarious minute of it. (Do not go and see this film if you don't like graphic anything . . .).

Ketchup and mayo is basically the Marie Rose sauce you get in old school prawn cocktails.

Of the ones I have read Norwegian Wood is the only one that doesn't have any surreal happenings.

Just had moussaka for the first time. I think I would have preferred it with more aubergine and less potato, but it wasn't bad.

I had pretty low expectations going into this, because of comments such as the above, but I didn't find the first episode as bad as I thought it was going to be. Bit of a ploddy by-the-numbers story, but it felt like the X-Files so fingers crossed for the allegedly better part 2!

I finished Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki in the early hours of yesterday morning. The way the book finished surprised me, so it took a while for me to get my head around what I think Murakami was trying to do, but I really enjoyed it. I agree that the writing isn't as good as his previous novels, I don't know if that is down to the translation or not, but I found the story compelling and I finished it in under a week (which is a rare event for me, recently!).

Angel tears and sherbet. Not an obvious combination, I'll grant you.

That was the worst one for it, because nearly everyone ends up on the floor at some point. I consequently enjoyed the book a lot more the second time around, when I wasn't waiting for the sword to drop.

I thought they did a cracking job with The Lord of the Rings, perfectly capturing the spirit and scope of the books. The Hobbit, not so much. A good example of less can sometimes be more.