Thursday

[louiselux]

A few things of interest as I pootled round LJ this morning:

An LJ photo hosting service! Looks v cool. It's very red.

In hp_britglish, lexin asks for things that give away that the writer isn't British

A charming and funny untitled Good Omens fic by lovelyzelda.

Other things

I've been watching The Long Firm, a 4 part series set in the sixties about a queer, increasingly mentally unbalanced East End gangster with a passion for Judy Garland. It's unremittingly grim. You might the think the Judy Garland thing would be played for a bit of humour, but it isn't - he gets to meet her and she's a wreck, plied with booze and drugs by hangers on. He sees her on stage, where she gets boo'ed off and pelted with bread rolls by the audience.  Despite the grimness, or maybe because of it, it's compulsive viewing. The acting is uniformly wonderful, especially Mark Strong as Harry Starks, the main character. There's something about him that's just ultra masculine. And he has amazingly beautiful hands. I guess this is where the shallow lust creeps in.

I finally found a copy of The Fall of the Kings by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman - in Forbidden Planet in Birmingham. I've been looking forward to reading it so much because I loved Swordspoint. I don't think this one is as good though, from reading the first few chapters.

Also, postcard squee! partly on my own behalf from being organised - I sent of the final batch this morning, and what a fine set they were:) I also got a postcard from daegaer showing the Dali museum and the large shiny eggs that decorate its rooftops.

Comments

[enigel]

that's quite a find! it wasn't in featureannounce or paidmembers*, so where did you find it? ;-)

*there's been a lot of talking about it, and the URL was known, but I don't know when it went more or less live.

does it let you upload, though? I was very keen on testing it...

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Someone on my flist did the detective work!

FYI, she says that there's a comm called lj_userdoc, which has the FAQs in this post.

I think it's going to go live very soon, but it's not quite live yet.

[toscas-kiss.livejournal.com]

Well, do tell us what your final opinion is, I'll be interested to hear. Swordspoint is still one of my 50 favorite books (I decided 10 just wasn't enough [grin]).

And thanks for the GO link!

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I will! Have you read Fall of the Kings yet yourself? It seems to be getting better, but I still have the sense that I'm not really getting into the characters' heads - their motivations for doing things aren't thoroughly enough addressed to make me happy - also the love interest seems a bit paint by numbers, by which I really mean there's little romantic tension. This might just be me though, wanting the story to be something it isn't.

[toscas-kiss.livejournal.com]

No, not yet. I'm a bit behind on all my reading at the moment.

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

I agree with your assessment of The Long Firm, although I managed to miss the second episode, alas. But I'm pretty sure that it will be repeated.

I preferred Swordspoint to The Fall of the Kings. Like you I found the latter to be slow going at first but warmed to it as it sent on. The ending was right for the book, but I much preferred the Swordspoint ending, I must admit.

[cenire.livejournal.com]

I remember reading a really interesting book called Was by Geoff Ryman, a sort of retelling of the writing of the Wizard of Oz that had some fascinating bits on Judy Garland.

I'm having this odd sense of not-quite-deja-vu that I've already told you about Was, but maybe it was someone else. In any case, your description of The Long Firm made me think of the book. :)