Laurabelle’s Blog

For the past few weeks, Jeff and I have been making our way through Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We have now finished the second season. We have been getting our fix through Netflix, obviously, but after watching I Only Have Eyes for You we knew that we would have to own Buffy at some point. So [...]

My latest movie from Netflix is Peau d’âne (Donkey Skin), a French film from Charles Perrault’s fairy tale of the same name. If it were an American movie, I would have expected a complete adulteration of the story. This version was more or less faithful to Perrault’s story, but I was still a bit disappointed [...]

Last week Jeff and I checked out Total Recall from the Oakland Public Library. Jeff thinks this is one of the few passable movies involving Schwarzenegger (if not the only one); I’m not sure I would be so generous with my praise.
In any case, the point of this post is not to critique Arnie’s acting. [...]

Jeff and I saw MirrorMask yesterday evening, and it was even better than I had expected. I won’t even attempt to describe the movie; nothing I could say would do it justice.
The correct response to the phrase I’ll know X when I see it is now What if it was the chicken?!

Neil Gaiman came to town this evening, promoting Anansi Boys and MirrorMask, and the University Bookstore arranged a reading-plus-signing in the University Temple. Jeff and I went, of course. (It was decidedly odd to have a SF/fantasy reading in a Methodist church.)
Tickets were required for admission, although they weren’t expensive; they were free with the [...]

The first line of my current braille transcription assignment (Colder Than Ice by David Patneaude, chapters 2 and 3):
Two of you? Ms. Murphy, young and dark-haired, met them at the classroom door, wearing a smile.

Is it just me, or does that read more like schoolteacher porn than a kids’ book? Bad choice of phrase, perhaps.

I haven’t been in a comic shop for about twenty years, but James Turner’s new Rex Libris is about to make me break that record.

Just as a tide of ignorance swells up and threatens to engulf the world, out of the ashes of the Great Library of Alexandria arises a hero, an educated fellow with [...]

Wow, some people take Harry Potter way too seriously. (On the other hand, I like the use of Harry Potter to illustrate problems related to trust, since it may help to put abstract concepts into terms more people can understand.)
Personally, it doesn’t surprise me that Rowling’s universe isn’t consistent. She uses magic as a gimmick [...]

The next Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is not due out until June or July (I forget which). KCLS is buying more than 400 copies. There are already more than 1,300 holds. I am number 1,282.

Today I finally finished reading Written in Blood: A History of Forensic Detection by Colin Wilson and Damon Wilson. It's nearly 700 pages long and incredibly fascinating, even more so than I thought when I checked it out. Each section focuses on the development of certain techniques of crime detection, usually centered on a weapon [...]