Lo, the eternal question

Are Roombas worth it? Or would my gift card be better spent on a more traditional vaccum, or perhaps a carpet steamer-thingy?

The Roomba calls me seductively. But that may be mostly because I can picture, with great glee, how much it would upset the cats.

Yuletide Recs

This is my first Yuletide, as I've mentioned, and also the first year that I've really wallowed in the archives to any real extent. So far, the bulk of the stories I've read have been really well done, which is great to see.

As an interesting note to my reading habits, the vast majority of these are all gen or at least G-rated, with the two James Bond stories being the exceptions. I don't think this says as much about me as it does about Daniel Craig.

I don't think I ever thought I'd read an Aladdin fic that made me sniffle, but A Whole New World is absolutely lovely and bittersweet. What does a Genie without a master do with his freedom?

Lots of good Sayers stuff out there. 10 x 100 is a set of drabbles that chronicle the relationship between Peter and Parker from Parker's perspective, and I love it very much. Tea and Tannenbaum, which is Peter and Harriet at Christmas just before The Nine Tailors made me giddy with delight because I adore telegrams and I love how they were used to close this story.

That Which Binds is a lovely mostly-post-book-but-a-few-bits-pre-book story about Sunshine (Robin McKinley). I really enjoyed the glimpses we get here of Mel and Con, and especially of Sunshine and her fondness for Ikea *g* I also really liked Gyre, which gets the closest to Sunshine's voice that I have seen managed, and tells a story that might have been a coda to the book.

I wasn't sure about reading fic set in Guy Gavriel Kay's works, but have found two I loved: In the Colours of All Countries (I particularly like the resolution she's found for Sharra) and No Man of Fionovar, which is Dave, and his bonds with a particular goddess of Fionovar. Pure love.

Entartete Kunst is a Company story that could have come right out of Kage Baker's short story collections. And I cried unabashedly while reading it. Van Drouten and the Netherlands and WWII, and the children she saves.

They Say the Nile Used to Run From East To West was written for me. It's Bourne, written from Nicky's perspective, and is very beautifully melancholic and I love it muchly.

Two Life fics that I adored: Lloyd's Still Got Them Polaroids and Three-Card Monte. The first is Tidwell, and it just captures his character and why I like him so much. It also does a good job of showing Charlie and Dani's relationship and personalities while it's showing Tidwell's. The second story is Charlie taking Ted and Dani to Vegas, and is from Ted's viewpoint. Again, I have no words for the brilliant characterization here. Just so well done.

I am not, by and large, a slasher by nature, but there are stories out there that will make a believer out of me, even if only for as long as the story lasts. No Omen but His Country's Cause is a fantastic James Bond/Felix Leiter pairing that reads like old-school spy fiction, and is just fantastic. On the other hand is a pairing that I am secretly very fond of, Bond/M. Better Days is a conversation in the dark, and I can hear M speaking these words in my head very easily.

The Mentalist is all about the team for me - Patrick Jane at the center, but all the other characters bouncing off him in various ways (because honestly, they need to sharpen up the police portion of the show a whole bunch). So I was very happy to discover Palm, Switch, Steal, a fic that satisfies my lust for a fic focused on these relationships.

Odyssesus has been one of my favorite characters long before I ever thought that people might take these stories and write more about them. Add in a plentiful helping of his special connection to Athena, another favorite, and you have a fantastic story, Little Victories. And also from Greek Mythology, but in an entirely different tone, there's This is Not A Chick Flick, which is Hades and Persephone and hysterically funny.

I got all squeeful when I read Thomas the Rhymer, which is Pamela Dean's Tam Lin and how Thomas got to where he was when Janet met him. Most eerie are the conversations between Thomas and his brother, Kit.