This installment of the mashup features two movies with no crossover in audience. Margin Call is a fable for grownups, a vain attempt to explain the recent financial crash, and how the vicious inequalities of American life are allowed to endure. Winnie-the-Pooh is a song-and-dance romp, and a wholehearted embrace of nostalgia facilitated by a company whose sole purpose is to breed a new generation of fans so that its intellectual property may continue to be profitable. But in both

the talk is the tale

with minis there for color

a real cliffhanger

I read the YA historical novel Icefall, by Matthew J Kirby, several months ago. It was probably the last galley¹ I wrote a blurb for when I worked at the bookstore. So that’s a sadness. On the other hand, it’s a happiness that my last blurb was for a book I enjoyed so much.

Icefall is well-conceived suspense story that also happens to be a historical novel...with vikings. Somewhere in medieval Scandinavia, a king's children – Solveig

You saw it coming.

But God said race in the rain,

Live fast and die young.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the idea of validation. Namely, who decides if a writer’s work is good? Is it the writer only? The agent who represents it? The publisher who accepts it? The booksellers who select and sell it? The readers who buy it? All these people have a say in the traditional world of publishing. But their weight is not equally distributed, and that imbalance is part of what’s driving the boom in indie publishing

MacLeod’s the one...why?

Plot ass-kicked by the 80s

Fate wins, viewers lose.