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Further to this post on Miles, how young were Meriol and Jonathan when they first went to the Tun?

Six Billion Worlds

How Frank Sinatra's My Way can get you killed in the Philippines.

The "inner-tube taxi" that sneaks Burmese migrants illegally into Thailand.

A murder uncovers the world of Japan's wakaresaseya, professional marriage-wreckers.

2010 books

10) Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One, 1948
This was described by Anna Haycraft (better known as Alice Thomas Ellis) as "One of the funniest and most significant books of the century", and it also came highly recommended by my father who once had a complete collection of all Waugh's first editions, but what really piqued my interest was that this book was the inspiration behind the 1985 Doctor Who story 'Revelation of the Daleks'. The friction that drives it is the awkwardness of British cultural attitudes in post-war Los Angeles, set mostly in the Whispering Glades Memorial Park – a kind of Disneyland for the dead – and involving a young British poet who falls for a young American corpse beautician while he himself works secretly as a mortician at a pet cemetery. Waugh is funniest when he lets his characters' veneer of civility slip to reveal something far more feral underneath, and I can almost sense how he filled in some laugh-free zones with just that kind of unexpected viciousness to keep the humour levels up. Some mocking characterisation and a few very memorable turns of phrase make this a wickedly funny book.

I've also been reading Waugh's granddaughter Daisy's new column 'Waugh Zone' in The Times since December. Not bad, but I often struggle to find her point.

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Over on Facebook, Jim Burns, the science fiction artist I interviewed for the BSFA last week, has been posting paintings by the late Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński (also Wikipedia here, Belvedere Gallery here).

I'd never seen this artist before, but... wow, he is inspirational.

( 4 images, SFW... )