most of January, mostly.

Forensics: What Bugs, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime by Val McDermid. (363.25)  This was very enjoyable.  It had a nice mix of older, more historical techniques and stories, and then newer developments and their initial cases.  It was not difficult to follow and also managed to avoid the same-old-same-old topics and stories I seem to keep running into.  Highly recommended.

The Thing With Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human by Noah Strycker.  This seemed interesting, and I read a few pages on a lunch break, but then all this other stuff came in and I wasn't adequately engrossed.  There isn't anything wrong with this (that I saw in my short reading). 

The Librarians, season 1, with Rebecca Romijn.  These thoughts are numbered in the order of when they occurred to me.  They don't necessarily correspond to episode numbers.  

1.  Despite his impressive number of degrees, the Librarian is not a librarian.  (I'm pretty sure they didn't list an MLS among his degrees in the first film.  although the Wikipedia entry doesn't give the list, I'm pretty sure I'm right.). Neither do any of the new librarianettes have library science degrees.  It doesn't bother me when people come in and say "that librarian helped me last time" and they may be referring to anyone from a shelver to a clerk.  We all work in the library, the public sees us all as "librarians."  But in cases like this, this is a wonderful opportunity to use terms correctly thus encouraging others to do the same, rather than throw words around willy-nilly and contribute to the confusion.

2.  They collect stuff.  They go out to get the things.  When they use items from their collections, they use things. Stuff.  Realia.  They are curators; they work in a museum, not a library.

3.  This is Warehouse 13.

4.  And Cassandra is a clone of Fred.

5.  It seems like this series is kind of a big deal, although my impression of the size of the fan base may be skewed considering most of my friends.  I kind of can't believe that it would be popular among "regular viewers"-- it's so campy! The special effects are horrible!  In order to guess what's coming up (and feel good about yourself for doing so), you have to have a passing familiarity with historical and cultural references.

All in all, I'm terribly disappointed in the quality of this show.  I can't wait to watch season 2.  I'm disgusted with myself.

Wrinkles by Paco Roca.  This, along with Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, has me thinking about adult graphic novels that are purposefully sad and depressing perhaps to combat the idea that an adult graphic novel is still little more than a comic book.  I don't want to say "purposefully sad and depressing," perhaps; maybe it's more to do with consiously choosing a format that doesn't seem an obvious choice.  

This was a great graphic novel.  I did not enjoy it, but I don't think anyone would find it enjoyable.  Impactful, yes.  Fun, no.

Star Trek: Voyager, season 2, with Kate Mulgrew.  Ok, going into unknown things less frequently.  That's a good step.  It's just as well that I usually knit and really just listen to a show instead of watching it, because there's very little to see here: everything is shot in such dark scenes, mostly to hide the crappy effects, that even watching at night with all the lights off, it's very difficult to tell anything from much of the action.  I just listen for phaser fire and then wait for someone to put oh their Captain Obvious hat.