I've read Robert B. Parker's Appaloosa, Resolution, and I'm in the middle of Brimstone. Do any of his other novels have a similar dynamic to the laconic life partners Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch?

Even if they don't, I'd welcome recommendations from the rest of his oeuvre.

Oh, and Moonlighting did a Shrew parody. In which Bruce Willis sang and played the harmonica.

Loved that. "Until we meet again, sometime in Act Five."

Have any of you guys seen the BBC's Shakespeare Retold series they did a few years ago? There was a very cute version of Taming of the Shrew with Shirley Henderson (one of my favorites) and Rufus Sewell (always hot).

The BBC series was excellent. I used their updated Much Ado with my students who were studying the play.

Much Ado is my favorite. Damian Lewis! Sarah Parrish!

Much Ado was great. I especially loved Damian Lewis at the start.

[link]

A literary detective who claims to have found evidence of a ‘lost play’ by William Shakespeare has won the backing of the acclaimed Shakespeare publishers, Arden, with the publication of his new book, Double Falsehood, or the Distressed Lovers.

I finished another audiobook on my commute. This one was 'Killing Floor' by Lee Child. It held my interest and I thought the writing was good enough, though I thought more could be chopped out. There were a couple of scenes I just couldn't buy. There were also a couple of improbable coincidences that would have been cool if they weren't really coincidences, but they were. Overall, a good enough read, but I'm not going to rush out (well get online) to the Library to get another one of his books. It did make me think I need to check if there are any Rex Stout audiobooks available I haven't already listened to.

My new audiobook from the library is 'Dragonspell' by somebody. It's classified as YA and the beginning is making me think it might be too Y for my taste. The Golden Compass was YA and I liked it a lot, but it was more on the A side.

I think the majority (though it's a simple majority) of books I've read recently are YA. I'm currently reading Carrie Ryan's newest book, called The Dead-Tossed Waves, which isn't a sequel to The Forest of Hands and Teeth, but is a companion book (set in the same world, some of the same characters, but not a true sequel). Zombies abound.

I also have Justine Larbalestier's Liar waiting to be read.

One non-YA book I recently finished was The Magicians, which was...okay. It owes a lot to Harry Potter and Narnia, in that those series and the concepts/worlds they established are so well-known that, for instance, The Magicians can just compress 6 years of a school of magic into 300 pages, and it more or less works, because thanks to Harry Potter, the reader already has the idea of what a school of magic is like.

It felt kind of rushed, but it's not bad.

I liked The Magicians quite a bit. To me it was a more realist mash-up of HP and Narnia, with a more adult, contemporary feeling to it. I love that it actually references HP directly.

Speaking of YA, I just started Hunger Games and recently read Thirteen Reasons Why (a mystery thriller about suicide if that makes any sense), which I highly recommend.

I also have The Book Thief on hold at the library.