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In trying to learn more about the genre I've chosen to pursue as a specialty in writing -- magical realism and the attendant light fantasy and urban fantasy that link up to it -- I've been slowly working my way through a list of authors. My latest attempt is Isabele Allende's "The House Of The Spirits", which is a sweeping epic novel of generations of a South American family rooted in the mystical by their matriarch, Clara del Valle, a woman who never grew out of the clairvoyance and telekinesis she possessed as a child.

And it's such bummer.

( The House Of The Spirits, by Isabel Allende )

Final Verdict: It's a good book, just not a book for me. It's definitely not beach reading, but if you're a fan of the denser Russian literature of the 19th century, or if you've ever made it all the way through a Michener novel (I didn't survive Hawaii) then you'll probably enjoy it more than I did.

ONWARDS! TO GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ!

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SUITS IS BACK. Which means it's time for Sam's Three Things About Suits!

Spoilers for Episode 2.01, ( She Knows )

3a. Sometimes it takes a show a while to find its feet, and while I enjoyed Suits in the first season I think this episode shows it coming into its own. The writing was a lot more confident and specific: we're starting to get concrete backstories where before we got only emotional cues, which are easy to fabricate and hard to support. There are some really nice parallel plots that are going to arc longer than a single episode, and a lot of the somewhat flimsy tension devices in the first season are getting concluded or reinforced, in a believable way within the world of the show. I really hope this level of writing continues, because it's truly enjoyable to watch.