How to see ghosts or surely bring them to you

 I listen to podcasts several times a week, usually while running, and grade them by how much I forget that I'm running. I'm not that fit, and running hurts. If I'm lucky one podcast will distract me for the whole thirty or forty minutes. If I'm not, my mind constantly wanders and my legs ache twice as much. Occasionally, I'll hit a story that makes me wish my run was longer. This is one of those stories.  

Now it's no secret that I'm a sucker for well-told tales of the Islamic Golden Age in general and Saladin Ahmed's writing in particular. This story's basically a deconstruction of several characters in Spencer's Faerie Queen. It's a blast, and you should go check it out.

"Without Faith, Without Law, Without Joy" by Saladin Ahmed, on podcastle.org

 It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person who has seen the Hobbit must be in want of Thorin Oakenshield fan fictions. Has anyone got any recommendations? I'd love to read something gen about Thorin and the dwarves wandering Middle-Earth before the events of the Hobbit. Most of the stuff I've read seems to be Bilbo/Thorin which is all very well but you know ADVENTURES! Also, Richard Armitage in full dwarf drag and shirtsleeves doing manly things with metal and hammers.   

yet another fic rec: John Scalzi's 'Shadow War of the Night Dragons Volume One: The Dead City', found here on tor.com. An April Fool's parody of traditional fantasy tropes, which I would totally buy. If only it wasn't fictional.

The best part is the debate about ripping-off of titles on the comments. Unsurprisingly, as an Amazon search for fantasy books with 'shadow' in the title  yielded 1,354 results, 'night' 1,073 and 'dragon' 4,369.

I have masseffect secret santa fic from doomhobbit , whose wonderful Xmas gift included mixes for my ME fics Cities In Dust and The Importance of Names, as well as the epic fic Diary of a Space Hamster. 

Go read the fic here!
Music mixes for those who are interested are here.

 If any of you are into Japanese literature, you should go and read the awesome fic On the Moonlit Road of Dreams by the extremely talented mithen. It's a fantastic Heian-era mystery story where Sei Shonagon, author of the Pillow Book, and Murasaki Shikibu, author of the Tales of Murasaki, solve a crime by, among other things, identifying the manufacturer of a particular brand of perfume.Happy reading!