AO - Men's Final

Dear Dick Enberg: 

There is no long "e" sound in the name Rafael.  Not Raf-ee-yul.  Please to be correcting your pronunciation.

Dear ESPN:

The Bottom Line ticker that runs constantly on ESPN2 is irritating as hell.  Must it run perpetually?

Kthx,
jmc

ETA:  ESPN.com, you FAIL at geography.  Melbourne is not in southwest Australia, but the southeast. 

ETA2:  Apparently someone at ESPN.com has realized the error and fixed it.  Here's a screencap, pre-edit. 
 

 

( Hiding behind the cut )

 

January's reading

January was a really mixed bag for me, in terms of reading.  A couple of excellent books, a few ~meh~ books, but not a lot of reading generally.

1.  Magic to the Bone by Devon Monk.  Urban fantasy.  C.  Not bad, just not engaging. Skimmed on the ride to work, didn't feel compelled to finish. Ended up going looking for something else to read on the ride home; only finished because nothing at the bookstore caught my eye.

2.  Custom Ride by K.A. Mitchell.  Ebook, contemporary, m/m.  C.  Read as part of SB/DA liveblogging. A lot of very violent sex; would've liked more talking, less fucking. Jeff isn't out because of child custody but seems to engage in a lot of incautious public sex for a not out guy. The weakest of the K.A. Mitchell stuff I've read; story not well-served by the short format.  Loved Mitchell's Collision Course, which was published after this short

3.  St. Nacho's by Z.A. Maxfield.  Ebook, contemporary, m/m.  A-.  Reviewed here earlier.  Prompted me to go look for other ebooks by Maxfield. 

4.  One Bite With A Stranger by Christine Warren.  Paranormal.  D.  Complained about this book here.

5.  Wraith by Phaedra Weldon.  Urban fantasy.  C+/B-.  Liked the idea, very original; ultimately became frustrated with the heroine, who made consistently bad choices, verging on TSTL.

6.  Mapping the World of Harry Potter, edited by Mercedes Lackey.  Speculative, nonfiction.  B-.  Mostly interesting and thoughtful. Snape FF essay -- oral sex as kinky or non-vanilla? Srsly? Miss Manners essay was supposed to be funny, but not; humor is so hard. Last essay on why killing Harry would be bad really didn't fit. All other essays were scholarly, but the last one read like fanfiction. Harry dead, Hermione becomes heroine, and the author creates an alternate book #7. Blech.

7.  The Viscount Claims His Bride by Bronwyn Scott.  Regency-set historical.  DNF:  Reading "It was for her own good" as the hero's motivation for breaking the heroine's heart killed any interest I had in the book.

8.  The Pride You Trampled by Juliet Armstrong.  Category.  B.  An old, old category, reviewed here.

9.  Thunder Mountain by Rachel Lee.  Category, suspensy & paranormalish.  C/C-.  Read as part of Avid Reader's TBR Challenge and briefly discussed here.

10.  Dark of Night by Suzanne Brockmann.  Contemporary, romantic suspense/action.  Haven't made up my mind about this one yet, expect to write about it in the coming week. 

11.  The Sharing Knife: Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold.  Romantic fantasy, historical-ish.  A.  I'm trying to figure out how to write a review or opinion about this book without just squeeing like a fangirl.  Everything that has come out thus far is all "Me likey" without any reasoning or logic.