no more badfic headers

But I did find a backlog of Bad Delicious Comments from last spring. For the most part I didn't click the links, so you're free to imagine yourselves whether or not the stories lived down to the summaries.

• Harry Potter has returned to Hogwarts as assistant Defence teacher after destroying Voldemort in the summer. Severus Snape on the other hand has finally been given the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, albeit with Harry as his ass



• Harry spends the summer at a whorehouse and returns to Hogwarts very different. Draco fancies himself in love with this new effeminate boy.



• Snape and Harry are Americans, living in Illinois. Snape is a Muggle librarian, and Harry is a deaf patron (and adult, for those who dislike cross-gen).



• harry is sold into sexual slavery. snape mentors him. he finds family with the weasleys. some gratuitous insane!hermione as a plot device to avoid mpreg. worth a read through.

Nice.

So, apparently Oliver Stone has made a boring and horribly bad biopic of George W Bush called "W" that everybody hates (kind of a surprise in the subject matter there, but given it's Stone, no surprise that it sucked ass)... but that's not the point! The point is that Thandie Newton was apparently Condoleeza Rice in the movie. And check out her red carpet dress, minus the red carpet. I've never seen her not looking great, but this is stunning even for her.

the chronicles of master li and number ten ox

I was eager to watch more NCIS tonight, but Wax accidentally slept for about 15 hours yesterday and woke up at like 5 pm when she had to get up for work at 3 am, so then she stayed up all evening and only napped a little after midnight. And then she went to bed extremely early today. I picked up a new Heyer in paperback when we were in Helsinki, but I'm reluctant to crack it because after that it's down to re-reads and secondhand book finds I'm less than excited about.

But you know what I am excited about?



A hardcover omnibus of Barry Hughart's Master Li trilogy.

The Master Li books (Bridge of Birds, The Story of the Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen) have been out of print for a good ten years, which is a great pity because they're some of the best fantasy out there. I think "an ancient China that never was" is mentioned in the blurb on one of the editions I have. Let me try to describe them a bit better.

In basic structure they are mysteries. Master Li is an ancient and drunken wise little old man who is very much like Sherlock Holmes - an eccentric genius. His Watson, and the books' narrator, is his muscular and stolid rural-born assistant, Number Ten Ox. The books are set in an ancient China that never was - that is to say, a fantasy ancient China where magic and myths are real. Unforgettable plots, adventure, some of the coolest magic you've ever read, supernatural mystery, and LOL-to-ROFL humour: these books are not to be missed. The hardcover edition is released on Halloween and I must remember diligently what day it is until then so that I can order it at once.