It snowed today, the first time this season, and supposedly the snowiest October on record in New York. We had no real accumulation, just a heavy white dusting on the lawn and disgusting and cold slush in the streets. It really did turn brutishly nasty almost overnight, right from very early fall — or even late summer; most of the trees still have green leaves on them — straight into winter.
I spent the day almost entirely inside. I finished reading Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, which was okay, I guess, although I don’t think it’s her best work. Maybe her best character development; she spends an awful long time introducing us to people before anything really nefarious gets underway. But as a fun whodunit? I guessed who the killer was relatively early — well, as early as you can when the murder doesn’t happen until halfway through the book — but I didn’t do so on any evidence in the book. And, in the end, it seemed like that’s how Hercule Poirot solved the mystery too, unfortunately. Still, it was entertaining enough.
I also re-watched The Silence of the Lambs, which a recent episode of Judge John Hodgman (and last night’s brief capping of it) made me want to see again. It really holds up remarkably well for a twenty-year-old thriller I’ve seen more than once. (The book’s not terrible either, although Red Dragon is better. I never made it more than a couple of chapters into Hannibal.)
I watched a few episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise and the most recent episode of The Walking Dead.
I updated the Kaleidotrope website. Check it out: the cover art for the new fall issue, the last one in print, is up now, along with a quick taste of each of the twenty — count ’em, twenty! — stories contained within.
And this evening, I watched the 1972 horror anthology Asylum. It’s got a great cast, that includes such stars as Peter Cushing, Charlotte Rampling, and Britt Ekland. And some of the stories — written by horror legend Robert Bloch — aren’t bad. But ultimately the movie’s more than a little silly. Some good fun, but not remotely scary.
Well, that more or less was my Saturday, such as it was.
