Posts Tagged ‘Thursday Thirteen’

1. Robert A Heinlein – Particularly for the Past Through Tomorrow stories but also his novels (which I’ve read most of)
2. Harry Harrison – For The Stainless Steel Rat novels, Make Room! Make Room! and pretty much everything else except the Bill the Galactic Hero stories that I just can’t get into
3. Frank Herbert – Dragon in the Sea, the Dune series and many of his other works
4. JRR Tolkien – For The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit but I’m not bothered about the rest

5. Bernard Cornwall – The Sharpe novels which are easy to read

6. Raymond Chandler – The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye but mostly for his style of prose

7. C.S. Forester – For the Horatio Hornblower novels, The African Queen, The Gun and all his other novels I’ve read (which is most of them)

8. Wilfred Owen – The only poet to make the list. His work is still so moving almost 100 years after his tragic death

9. Dumas – For the swash and buckle of D’Artagnan Romances and The Count of Monte Cristo

10. Alistair MacLean – For all his thrillers and adventure novels

11. Terry Pratchett – For being funny, clever and prolific

12. Ian Fleming – For Bond but particularly the short stories and novella which tell you more about Bond than many of the novels

13. Nevil Shute – For Slide Rule and A Town Like Alice

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1. Black Peppercorns
2. Mild Madras
3. Birdseye Red Chillies
4. Turmeric
5. Cinnamon
6. Green Cardamom
7. Ground Nutmeg
8. Tandoori Massala
9. Ground Ginger
10. Garam Masala
11. Celery Salt
12. Ground Coriander
13. Crystallised Ginger

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1. Architecture – The waterfront, the cathedrals and William Brown Street are often mentioned but there are many more distinctive buildings throughout the city
2. Music – From the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra to a band you may have heard of called the Beatles
3. Sport – Notably Liverpool and Everton football clubs and the Grand National at Aintree
4. Visual Arts – From the varied collections in the city galleries to the SuperLambBanana and Turning the Place Over
5. The night life – Although I’ve not been out clubbing in years
6. Education – There are the three Universities (the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University and Liverpool Hope University), the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and an assortment of schools and colleges.
7. The people
8. Poetry – including famous poets like Roger McGough and Adrian Henri
9. Eating out – the choice of types of food to eat in Liverpool is excellent and so wide I can’t list even a fraction here
10. Museums – Liverpool has Merseyside Maritime Museum, World Museum Liverpool, the International Slavery Museum, National Conservation Centre and Sudley House
11. FACT – A great little cinema
12. Festivals and Events – from the 800 celebration this year to the capital of culture next year and the various regular festivals there is usually something happening
13. Did I mention the people?

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I’ve not pulled my Thursday Thirteen together in time for this week so if you stopped by looking for it sorry. I’ll post it next week when I’ll hopefully have over come my ideas shortage or renamed this blog to "Where did all my ideas go?"

Elsewhere on the wibbly wobbly web my friend, Kim, has a new book, To Summon a Demon, out.

1. Mint
2. Thyme
3. Marjoram
4. Parsley
5. Tarragon
6. Sage
7. Dried Rosemary
8. Coriander Leaf
9. Oregano
10. Basil
11. Ground Cumin
12. Chilli Powder
13. Mustard Powder

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

My short story, The Electron Jockey, has been accepted for Astonishing Adventures Magazine issue #1 here are some of the character’s who appear in The Electron Jockey or the sequels I’m writing at the moment. For a bit of fun most of their names were taken straight from the names on the 600-1200 messages in my google mail spam folder.

1. Dale Hoover: A small time operator who thinks he’s a big fish
2. Wu Xiong: Warlord’s Steward
3. Raul Harrison : An ex-boxer
4. Mot: A secretive hero in the pulp tradition
5. Dusty Sellers: An antiquarian book seller and former racing driver
6. Roxie Ryan: A down on her luck night club singer
7. Jonathan Ruffin: The inevitable British Butler
8. Ferdinand Largent: A safe cracker who doesn’t use explosives
9. Tanya V Coffman: A Bureau of Internal Revenue accountant
10. Enigme: A famous illusionist, hypnotist, stage magician and film star
11. Ayumi: A mysterious Japanese woman – is she an innocent bystander or a deadly assassin?
12. Everett Diggs: A journalist and writer
13. Cesar Brown: The Syndicates man on the West coast

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1. A Police Box (Doctor Who)
2. A Wardrobe (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis)
3. A direct strike from a Nuclear warhead (Farnham’s Freehold, Robert A Heinlein)
4. A DeLorean (Back to the Future)
5. Visiting with fairies (Mythology)
6. Thinking hard (Heroes)
7. A Quantum Accelerator (Quantum Leap)
8. Cryogenics (The Door into Summer, Robert A Heinlein)
9. Being a Miser (A Christmas Carol, Dickens)
10. A Lame Demon (Paris avant les homes, Pierre Boitard)
11. A Time Machine (The Time Machine, H.G. Wells)
12. Just about any method you can think of covered above and a few that aren’t including travelling very fast and stepping through a portal (Star Trek)
13. Dreaming
14. Reading a good book
15. Setting your clocks to the wrong time
16. Living in an earlier time zone
17. Using the button at the bottom of the blogger panel to change the time or date

If you could travel in time when would you go to?

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1. You’ve Got To Laugh – Nik Kershaw. Arrived this week from Short House Records and in my CD player a lot since then. Includes a warning that it may include traces of irony. Traces? Some might say that alone is ironic. The tunes could be mistaken for pop. The lyrics are a little more complex than that.
2. The West Wing (Season 1). If there is one show I find my way back to over and over it’s the West Wing.
3. Bat Out of Hell 2 – Meat Loaf. Because Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are.
4. The Very Best of Incantation. I’m not a big listener to pan pipe music but Incantation are far too good to pigeonhole and ignore.
5. Mr Benn. It was research for something I was writing, honest.
6. The Way It Is – Bruce Hornsby and the Range. Have you noticed I like my lyrics complicated yet?
7. Set Me Free – Marion Raven. Nik’s knocked Marion out of my CD player but she’ll be back soon I’m sure.
8. Battle Star Galactica (Season 2). The only reason I’m not on The West Wing’s second season. Really enjoying this despite still thinking they should have kept the original shows theme.
9. A Cock and Bull Story. Not sure what to make of this. It was either brilliant or utter rubbish. I think I’ll lean towards the first of the two.
10. Local Hero Music by Mark Knopfler.
11. The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War – Thaddeus Holt. A heavy weight and slightly very dull history book but between the bickering over who commanded what when it does actually include some interesting history.
12. Sharpe’s Escape by Bernard Cornwell. I’ve barely started this yet because The Deceivers is taking a lot longer to read than I expected.
13. Carrotblanca – Bugs Bunny and Friends do Casablanca. Somehow it works. Don’t ask me how. It would be quicker to just watch it for yourself and see.

So what are you listening to / reading / watching at the moment?

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1. Old computing books for versions of languages and software that are long gone.
2. Video tapes of films that I’ve got the DVD or that I’ll never want to watch again.
3. A paper lamp shade with a hole in one side.
4. Jeans with a zip that was bust.
5. Glass jars to be recycled.
6. An old kitchen waste bin from when I was a student and needed a bin for five or more peoples rubbish.
7. Free software CDs for ISPs that are long gone and software I don’t want anymore.
8. Old work shirts because I had too many that I didn’t fit anymore
9. Magazines to be recycled.
10. Dust, dirt and cobwebs from places it’s hard to clean. I’ve evicted a few spiders this week.
11. Random books I’ll never want to read again or in an odd rare case read any more of in particular a history of the design of London that looked interesting but when I started reading it turned out to be written by someone with an unhealthy belief that if you draw circles from one place to another and find a third place on the same circle it must have been planned and that coincidence never happens.
12. Old washing up bowl and drainer that were scratched and wouldn’t come clean despite lots of washing with hot water and detergent. And spraying with cleaning solutions. And soaking. And scrubing.
13. Odd socks.

So what have you or should you be clearing out?

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1. It’s 3AM and I really need to go to bed.
2. You’ve turned the comment link off or I can’t find the link to leave a comment because it’s been cunningly disguised as something else.
3. You’ve posted something that I’d be embarrassed if someone came
   across my comment on or I wouldn’t want a potential employer at some
   unspecified future time to see I’d commented on.
4. I got distracted by something shiny on your blog and forgot to leave a comment.
5. You’ve so many comments that the comments page crashed my web browser and then my PC locked up and my broadband connections maxed out for the rest of the month.
6. Your kids/sister/mother/brother/third cousin twice removed look swell and sounds really great but my comment has a 25% chance of making me sound like a stalker so I’ll just move along
7. Your Captcha image or other anti spam device has proved I’m a machine and not a person because I can’t crack it.
8. About 1000 people have already left the comment I was going to leave and I can’t think of anything to say, I really want to leave something meaningful not just the blogging equivalent of “good luck in your new job” on a leaving card.
9. I’m can tell your opinion is strongly held and I support your right to say what you have to say but I just don’t agree with you and I don’t want to get into a fight about it.
10. Ooops Sorry I Erm Forgot.
11. I can’t find your Thursday Thirteen or Wordless Wednesday blog post because you left a link to something else and I can’t see how to get to your blog from it. In fact I spent 10 minutes looking and I’m pretty convinced your spamming TT or WW to get hits which is pretty sad because your not going to get that many but hey its your life so if that’s how you want to spend it.
12. I’m having a snit with the world and I don’t want to dump my bad mood on you.
13. The dog ate my comment.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!