Jamal

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. Just finished the first volume. I didn’t like it when I read it 20 years ago, but now I do. Many people go on a...

@"Tate" will be grateful.

King of breakfasts for me: haggis slice, black pudding, Lorne sausage, Ayrshire bacon, potato scone, beans, fried eggs, toast, hold the mushrooms.

Yep, that’s one of those American breakfast dishes I was thinking of. It’s a good one.

If I wanted to start meditating I’d probably be overwhelmed by the diversity of information and advice on the internet, which is why it’s not a bad id...

I'm not a very patient person. Too restless. If I want to relax I'd rather read. Of course, maybe this means I'm exactly the kind of person who should...

Well if you mean eating out, then yes, same everywhere really. Here in Moscow, American style breakfasts have become popular, but mostly it's the usua...

Apparently not. Olive Garden I gather is a much derided and ubiquitous pseudo-Italian restaurant chain in the US.

Even regular cream in pasta is frowned upon by Italians.

At first I thought praxis was talking about a pasta dish and recoiled in horror when coconut cream was mentioned. But just with chicken and asparagus ...

Tasty and satisfying. The idea of outdated food is an odd one to me, but I think I know what you mean. Also I eat anything pretty much any time.

If I did meditate, I wouldn't do it here. I did try meditation twice. I began by concentrating on parts of my body one by one, and then my whole body,...

They were boiled eggs so something along the lines of egg salad. I agree that eating mayo and scrambled eggs together would be doing wrong.

A pretty standard combination, I thought. Egg mayonnaise sandwiches are a big part of my people's history.

Yeah, it was a preemptive strike against T Clark's inevitable accusations of foodie pretentiousness.

Another common one is Buck moon.

The biggest and brightest supermoon of the year, it was.

Ham and egg sandwich with quail's egg mayonnaise. Before you mock me for being fancy with the mayo, I bought it by accident and it wasn't any more exp...

It was actually very interesting and made me want to read the book, especially the bit about ducks. I've seen the coercive sexual behaviour of male du...

That's quite surprising. :up:

Success? Me, I've been sick since the weekend. It might have been the Abkhazian restaurant I went to. I was on my third beer when I began to think it ...

"Video unavailable". I take it it's Porcupine Tree. I noticed there was a new album. I shall listen.

That's quite interesting

"Chile for instance" draws attention to the fact that the author is telling a story of his or her own invention. I guess it's kind of postmodern, but ...

Yep! Great dogs.

I enjoyed reading your pet history but thought it was let down by the last paragraph. 9/10.

I didn't notice any racial specificity to the speech. Just seemed like American to me.

Well, a kiwi can be the bird, the fruit, or the human from New Zealand, so I felt I had to be precise.

/uploads/resized/files/jy/vh9p2tyejozck5ib.jpg This isn't my dog or my son's dog (my son doesn't have a dog and I don't have a son anyway), but it's a...

Sure, I was really just saying the author probably isn’t a psychopath.

Well said, 5 stars.

That's fair.

Many of his short reviews seemed quite balanced, mentioning both good and bad. Now we're reviewing the reviews.

To me it seems that the author is very aware of the narrator's sociopathic nature, lack of empathy, etc., which makes it unlikely that they share in t...

Another thing. I thought the present tense was successful, so I couldn't understand why it switched to past tense in the last sentence.

I take it he gave you a bad review? :grin:

It's a recipe for disaster I tell you.

There was one thing that threw me off, and it's possible this is just me. It seems like the two scribblers are on the same platform, but then they get...

This is good. It's immersive from the first line and weirdly fascinating. I like the unique setting, which feels grim and exotic at the same time. It ...

The bad: this is not a story, nor even yet an idea for a story. It's a weird (in a good way) image that's been half-heartedly built up into a micro-na...

It's pretty common in short stories with very few characters. Why name them? One of the stories names a character who is mentioned only in passing and...

Same here. In my callous teenage years I enjoyed Japanese and Korean horror, but I have become a complete wuss with even the most ordinary on-screen v...

I'm not sure if the author intended the cahoots, but that would be an interesting angle. I agree that this is a potential winner. Like Ballard's Crash...

Built to last though

Everyday life for me has been affected, because I can't use my UK bank card and if I want to travel to the UK or the EU I have to go via Serbia or Tur...

Just found one on ozon.ru for ?1400, about £20.

impatience and irascibility go together. It's all part of the Clarky package.

I didn't know such devices existed.

Seems a bit complicated. I put the eggs in cold water, bring it up to boiling and turn the heat off, then leave them with a lid on for 8 or 9 minutes,...

I think it involved sausages and some plunging.