I'm reading Smilla's Sense of Snow, by Peter Hoeg, and it's very good indeed. There's something about Scandanavian literature that appeals to me deeply. One of my favorite fantasy novels is Charles Whitmore's Winter's Daughter, a story of the far future populated by the descendents of Scandanavians and Africans. The combination of passionate, tumultuous events told without a barrage of emotional language is soothing yet intriguing. I love Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter for the same reasons. Intensity filtered through clarity. Fire and ice. A very northern way of seeing things.
When not losing myself in snowy fantasies, I've been browsing around for amateur photos of celebrities. I'm looking for the quintessential Jack Lord photo, actually. I haven't run across one yet, but I found a current photograph of an old favorite taken by Sarah Heiner, and with her permission I'm reprinting it here. If you can identify this celebrity, I'll create a special graphic just for you. (Those who recognise this from the event at which it was taken are disqualified, sorry. That'd just be too easy.)
