Status Update | A Lion King Christmas

I don't know about you, but with Christmas day just a week away, I'm finally feeling festive.

Not least because last night I realised a dream more than a decade in the making, when the entirety of my family got together to attend a performance of The Lion King live. Simba's spotty performance did not ultimately undermine what was a wonderful show overall; a real visual feast that I'm so pleased to have seen.

I've been humming 'Be Prepared' ever since leaving the theatre, and this morning it occurred to me that I could do worse things in life than take Scar's advice.

Which is my way of saying that though I'm usually one of the very first folks to bang on about the year's best books — Top of the Scots has in the past happened in early December — in 2013 my other obligations have regrettably had to take precedence. I've had to stockpile columns, including this morning's edition of the British Genre Fiction Focus, and ready a fair few reviews to run on Tor.com over the holidays. Truth be told, I've been so busy in November and December to date that it only just hit me that Christmas is coming.

And you know what? I want to enjoy it, so instead of spending the few days remaining to me this year putting together Top of the Scots, I'm going to give myself over to the Christmas spirit. To wit, I warrant you won't be hearing a whole lot from me over the holidays, but when I do get back to blogging, it will be worth the wait. Scots honour!

For a sneak peek at a few of my favourites, check out the Tor.com Reviewers' Choice, in which I count down the three best British books I've read in 2013. I've contributed to another end of year feature as well: Strange Horizons has a few hundred words from me about the books I've gotten most lost in this year.

Now to lose myself in festive merriment...

You all have a brilliant Christmas, and a happy New Year, you hear?

We Interrupt This Broadcast | Christmas Wishes

In my introduction to Top of the Scots 2012, I talked about what a year this has been for me. What a fantastic, phenomenal, unforgettable year!

It's also been an exhausting one, loathe as I am to admit it.

To wit, I'm doing the unthinkable: I'm taking some time off.

Beginning today, I'm off work for two weeks, the better to let the kiddies enjoy their Christmas... and it occurred to me that maybe I should, too. So! I'm going to be AFK for approximately a fortnight.

Which isn't to say there won't be awesome content on The Speculative Scotsman to entertain you all in my absence. I already have a good few reviews in the queue, and I may yet appear out of the ether to blog about what Santa brought me or some such thing.

I wouldn't count on it, is all. By and large, I plan to spend my holiday cosy in the company of friends and family, and if the powers that be judge me to have been very, very good this year, I may just take the New Year in on the windswept, snow-strewn Isle of Skye. Unappealing as that must sound to some, know that there's nothing I'd love to do more — so here's hoping!

Before I go, though, let me wish you all a merry Christmas, and a happy New Year. I wouldn't be doing this thing day and night if I didn't love it, and you folks are the reason I do. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for that.

But they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so...

What more is there to say than that?

Actually, hang on — there is one thing. Remember the giveaway I blogged about before Top of the Scots 2012 kicked off? Well, we have a winner!

Congratulations to David Finley from North Carolina. You, sir, shall be hearing from me shortly.

To everyone else who entered... there's always next time, I guess. Would that I had a hundred copies of The Vorrh to give away!

With which, I'm going to go squish the gifts under my Christmas tree. :D

We'll talk again in not too long, I don't doubt, but for the time being... you all have an awesome holiday, you hear?

Dear Everyone | Christmas Wishes

Is it just me, or have the holidays come upon us awfully quickly this year?

I suppose I must just be getting old, because I hear time does that, the more used to it you get. To keep you on your toes, you know?

But no matter how old I am, I love Christmas. I grant you that I may very well seem the type to humbug all over this, the season of giving, and receiving, and wonderful one-off television specials - I'm holding out for the Top Gear team's misadventures in India myself - but appearances can of course be deceiving. And me? I'm all about deceiving. :)

Anyway, from today on, things will - as you'd expect - be a little slower-going here on The Speculative Scotsman than is usual. I'll write a few reviews over the break, I don't doubt, and I'm certainly hoping to get a huge amount of reading done, but in my experience, time is always on the short side around the new year period, so I wouldn't expect a huge amount of anything other than tofurkey talk on Twitter.

Somewhat to my surprise, I gather I'm also going on holiday in early January - to spend a week in bonnie Bratislava - but your regularly scheduled programming should resume on the 16th of the first month of 2012, and it's hardly going to be a wasteland hereabouts between now and then, I pinky swears it!

In fact, I have a certain something I've been working on for altogether too long already; a certain somewhat surprising something that might be the perfect thing to entertain you all in my absence. No spoilers... except to say: Skyrim.

But we'll talk again before then. For the very moment, it's tofurkey time!

It only remains for me to say, to all the publishers and the publicists, and to all the bloggers and authors and the editors who helped me make The Speculative Scotsman what it was in 2011 - and what it will be again in 2012, but better, all things being equal - thank you! From the bottom of my heart, I really do appreciate your efforts.

Most of all, though, to each and every one of you folks - yes, you folks - merry early Christmas!

And a hippity hoppety happy New Year to all of you, and all of yours too. :)

Show and Tell | To Me, From You

The thing of it is, I get so many books in the mail for potential review either here on TSS or elsewhere that, truth be told, I don't need to buy very many myself... which is a shame; I used to love book browsing.

As is, there's almost always something pressing, some buzz-worthy new thing I really should review, and when on rare occasion there isn't, I look to the tower of books To Be Read. Failing even that, there's the library in the spare room. I could comfortably spend the rest of my life reading all the overlooked delights secreted in my seven no-expense-spared Billy bookcases.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know that I need ever buy a book again. But needs are slippery things at the best of times, and wants belong in a whole different department. Make no mistake: I want to go mad on Amazon, on an almost daily basis. In my experience, keeping up with the blogosphere - as I attempt to - will do that to a dude. And try as I might to stop myself, every now and again... I slip.

And sometimes you folks make it real easy for me fall off the wagon.

Take the other day, for instance. Must have been the end of the financial quarter or something, because I woke up one morning to see emails from both Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com alerting me to gift certificates to the value of about £50. Payment for purchases made in the last year through the Amazon Associate links I run under my book reviews - more, in truth, for your convenience than my possible profit.

So these monies came as something of a surprise. And what do you do with surprise money? You spend it! As I did... in all of about a half-hour after realising it existed. :)

I thought the thing to do would be to buy some of the books that I've spent 2011 ogling from afar; books I'd have loved to cover on the blog had review copies of each and every one come, and saved me from the decision to spend pennies on things I really don't need, as established.

From Amazon.com, then, I came home with these pretties:

And from Amazon.co.uk, these beauties were your surprise presents to me:

Plus postage, of course, and part of an awesome Christmas present I couldn't possibly mention here in case the other half sees it.

So I bought some books. That's the long and short of it. But rather than let this little indulgence go unmentioned, I wanted to post something here on the blog, basically to say thanks - sincerely, thank you - to everyone who's ever bought anything from either of the Amazons using the affiliate links I embed here on TSS.

Methinks Aurorarama's first up - it is such a gorgeous book - but hereabouts Guy Gavriel Kay has gotten to be a bit of a festive reading tradition, so the two parts of The Sarantine Mosaic are a sure thing, I should think, come the holidays.


Oh, it is the season to be jolly, isn't it? :)

Thank you all!

One Teapot to Rule Them All

So. Christmas.

I'd love to say it were over, that I could get back to my happy little life of reading and blogging and writing, but no. The big day's come and gone, but what with friends and relatives popping out of the woodwork like Gremlins nibbling after midnight, myself and the other half - mostly herself again (thanks to everyone who asked) - have had to put pen to paper and come up with a sectioned schedule for our plans through to New Year's Day.

As a matter of fact, I'm forestalling one obligation such by taking the time to write this... grandfolks in-law and step-mothers are the order of the day.

But I feel like such a meanie when I don't blog for any length of time, so hey, everyone!

*waves sleepily*

Just wanted to check in, see how you were all keeping, give you a space to boast about who got the best goodies from old Monsieur Claus. When I've got a touch more time to myself I'm hoping put up a post about what The Speculative Scotsman's friends and family saw fit to bequeath me. Alas, there've been no books so far, but lots of other lovely treats, not least a gorgeous and generously proportioned Sterling silver art deco-inspired teapot; I can't complain!

But I want to know: what did you all find under your tree? Do tell!

###

A quick update on the state of play before I nip off to go shopping with the other half's other gran. I'll have a couple of reviews up between now and Hogmanay - a piece on season five of Dexter and another as-yet TBD - and come the first, a certain blog will be celebrating a certain blogiversary. Though I couldn't possibly say which! :)

In the meantime, I've been reading and playing a pair of the notable oversights related - you might recall - in Top of the Scots a wee while ago. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, in those moments I've squirreled away to slip Ezio's invisible blade into the chops of an assortment of Borgia swine, has been easily the best in the franchise entire. Come to that, as satisfying as it's been when I've done the stabbing, thus far I've mostly left it to the old brotherhood. A quick depression of the left bumper and - would you credit it - a gang of fellow assassins shoot out of haystacks and skydive off the roofs of nearby buildings to do my dirtywork for me. Brilliant!

Oh. And as promised, I've finally gotten around to beginning my long-belated read through Under Heaven.

And it. Is. Sublime.

More on which - and lots more, if my mess of notes are anything to judge by - early in the New Year.

Meantime, here's hoping you all had a lovely Christmas. Here's hoping there's a little leftover Turkey for you to pick at while you're brewing your coffee of a morning, and that a couple of distant, momentarily forgotten relatives are yet to visit, with surprise gifts in hand. I hope amongst all the usual festive rubbish there've been a couple of treats under your tree you wonder now how you could ever have gotten by without. If you care to share, I'd love to hear about the very things.

But sure enough... nothing beats my teapot! :)

A Christmas Quandary

Ho ho ho... or humbug?

That's the question of the day. And I don't mean the sweets. It's been on my mind of late because behind the scenes of The Speculative Scotsman, amidst all the anticipatory build-up to the big birthday - you know the one - things took a sudden turn for the worse when my other half took a fall. Slipped on the unrelenting ice while at work, suffered what the folks at the hospital decided after a cursory examination was but a minor concussion; a minor concussion which after a couple of days they reclassified as severe, and only then after she'd fallen again. Good show, guys!

The excitement hereabouts has thus been a Batmite more muted than usual. And I don't mean here on the blog - though that too - but here, in my life, and hers. Truth be told they're pretty much one and the same thing anyway...

So there hasn't been a great deal of Christmas spirit in the air. Understandably, I'm sure you'll all agree. We managed to get the tree et al up before the fall, so there's that. And even with the concussion she's been up to ordering presents for friends and family online.  But with snow everywhere, sleet and sheet ice, the post has been horrendous. Unless something dramatic happens later today, and I sincerely doubt it will, less than half of the gifts we've bought between us will have turned up in time. There are going to be some carefully composed faces at the news come tomorrow, no doubt.

All of which is a bit humbug.

But snarky as I am, cutting as I can often be, I'm not actually given to relentless pessimism. It's taken me a quarter century to figure this out, but I'm a glass half full kind of guy, and though I might bemoan the state of the Royal Mail and the government for resolutely failing to deal with a little wintry weather - at a higher cost than the purely financial (this much I've experienced first hand) - and though the exhaustion of organising meals and shows and sit-downs with every obscure relative within radius of 50 miles and then the decorating, tolerating and entertaining has put something of a dampener on festivities so far... against all the odds, I'm still looking forward to Christmas.

And why is that? My best guess is that it has something to do with the fact that here in the UK, we don't celebrate Thanksgiving. We don't have a holiday dedicated to being grateful for all the things that are good, and right, and true. At least for me, the spirit of that very agreeable celebration gets all wrapped up in Christmas paper. Sure, there's presents and mulled wine and piggies in blankets to devour, and that's all well and good, but none of that's quite the point. The point isn't the gifts, it's the givers; its the folks in your life who care enough to think for a little while what thing might make you happy, who'll lay down a little hard-earned to see a smile on your face. It's the cards from the neighbours you thought hated you, the kiss from an old semi-related lady, the surprise visit from a friend you'd long since lost touch with.

I guess it's a nonsense, Christmas. But it's a nonsense I'm grateful for year in and year out. This year, I'm mostly grateful for Christmas because I get to spend it with the lady I love, whether in sickness or in health - even though she's got me on a leash because I can't be trusted to hear the bells she's taken to ringing for service.

But I certainly haven't forgotten you lovely lot. 2010 has had its ups and its downs, of course, and I'll be writing something of a themed retrospective about that come the new year - till then I fear TSS will be a quieter place than usual - but for the moment let me say that this blog has been one of the best things to have happened to me all year. All the doors it's opened, the friendships it's fostered, the people I've been able to reach - and all it took was words.

So thank you, everyone.

Merry Christmas. Have a hell of a new year; I'll see you then.

Oh, and before I go... ho ho ho! :)