Home again, home again... but I'm afraid I didn't bring my jiggedy-jig.
Don't get me wrong, I have a bloody lovely time on holiday — Antwerp was brilliant, the beer was as well, and sometimes I forget what a wonderful thing it is to read for pleasure — but the bad news about Iain Banks' passing broke the day after I got back, almost immediately after I'd finished The Player of Games, and it pretty much knocked me for six.
Kept me busy yesterday as well. In the afternoon, I wrote a long tribute to the dearly departed author for Tor.com — you can read it here right now, but I'm hoping to share it with you all on The Speculative Scotsman tomorrow — then in the evening I had a couple of classes to teach, during which I discussed a particularly fantastic chapter from The Wasp Factory with couple of the older kids I tutor.
For what it's worth, they seemed to enjoy it. And if just one of them went home and ordered a copy, my work here is done.
Or has it just begun?
In any event, I'm going to hold off on publishing the special something I mentioned before I went back to Belgium. Dragons are awesome, obviously, but I need to be happy to introduce this thing with the unbridled delight it deserves, and I'm just not now.
Completely missed E3 as well, which is complete unlike me. I'm still hoping to stay unspoiled, the better to watch a press conference or four later today or tomorrow, but let's face it: this is the internet.
Actually, now that I mention it, this is the internet — fancy that! — so you tell me: what should I watch? Any events I can afford to ignore? Or were they all a wash?
A contemporary novel, the book told the story of a mentally ill murderer and wasp-torturer. With its twist ending, matter-of-fact descriptions of stomach-churning scenes and its thick vein of black humour (best exemplified by the infamous 'psychopathic rabbit on a minefield' scene),
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