Musing

Website of the Year - The Wertzone Adam runs a great sci-fi and fantasy-centric blog that reviews both new releases and releases that are new to him. He's fairly even-keeled, which is really saying something for a Random Reviewer Dude With A Blog. It's always interesting to compare and contrast his reviews with Pat's over at the Hotlist . Book of the Year - Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Prisoner of Heaven Although a little lighter than its predecessors, this third volume in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet finally starts bringing pieces together and giving us some direction for the fourth and presumably final book in the series. This lightness has been widely criticized, but personally at the point in the story, I'm not sure that an extra 100 pages of exposition would have added any value to the story. We know our players. We know the scene. We think we know the plot...but when your narrator is crazy, how far can you trust him? Maybe this boo...

Norah Jones' Little Broken Hearts Editor's Note: This is the 9th in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2012. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published within the next week. Stay tuned! Three albums in a row, Norah has disappointed me more and more. Not Too Late was a pale imitation of Come Away With Me , her outstanding debut. Feels Like Home was pleasant but unremarkable. And The Fall ...well, best not to mention The Fall . I've never lost respect for her talent, but I was afraid that she was drifting out into uninteresting territory over the last few years, so the new album was quite a shock. In fact I'd be so bold as to say this may, in time, eclipse CAWM . This album is very clearly a break-up album - "Little Broken Hearts," "4 Broken Hearts," and "Miriam" all make that very, very clear: I know he said it's n...