* 85 Authors Protest At The BBC’s Treatment Of Genre Fiction. The Fundy Post's Paul Litterick is not impressed.
* The Dim-Post has discovered the hardboiled, pitch-black noir of Richard Stark's Parker and the unnerving pleasures of Patricia Highsmith.
* George RR. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series makes my wrists ache just looking at the damn things (four stout volumes, a fifth due out on a couple of months), and the anticipation around HBO's big budget, heavily hyped adaptation of the first volume, A Game of Thrones, is intense. (As are Martin's ever so slightly unhinged fans -- as seen in Laura Miller's disturbing New Yorker profile.) But if it's half as much fun as Annalee Newitz's righteous geek girl bitch-slap of a rather odd sexist and genre-snobby review in the New York Times, we have a new classic on our hands.
* Roger Ebert hits the highway to Fogey Town in Does anyone want to be "well-read?"-- but, thankfully, takes the by-pass and ends up with a rather sweet reflection on reading by inclination.
* Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout (and one of my favourite arts bloggers) calls Mike Leigh's Topsy Turvy -- his rather surprising re-telling of the creation of The Mikado -- "the smartest backstage movie ever made." Hard to disagree, but did he have to make me pine for the Criterion Collection's released of this and a studio film of The Mikado made in 1939 by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company?
* How awesome is Aretha Franklin? Awesome enough to make a Doobie Brothers cover, and a kilo block of early 80's disco over-production, sexy.
I'm not going to debate this -- go make sweet sweet love to something. What else do you have to do on a Monday morning?