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Category: Misc.

You know what? Candlewick Press!

Hi, everyone! I am back from my hiatus and have missed you awfully. For the first few weeks I was like, Yeah! Freedom! No blog posts to write!, but then pretty soon I felt forlorn at not hearing from you, and I have this new Nook where you can highlight passages, which means I don’t have to constantly be at war with myself about whether this one passage is entirely awesome enough to be worth dogearing a poor little book what never did me any harm. I can just press highlight. Er, but anyway, so, I have missed you, and…

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It’s too hard to say au revoir, so let’s just say hors d’oeuvres

Lovely people, I am bowing at last to the inevitable and going on an Official Blogging Hiatus. I have not been a reliable blogger for ages, pretty much since I moved to New York, and I’ve realized that — for the time being at least — the idea of blogging makes me tired and stressed, instead of excited and energized as in days of yore. I feel guilty when I skive off blogging to do fun New York things, and I feel guilty when I skive off social outings to do blogging. So I’m taking a break for the summer,…

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Dream-casting the Chaos Walking books

I’ve been meaning to post about this for ages and I kept on forgetting. Now we have discovered that Charlie Kaufman is writing The Knife of Never Letting Go movie, it feels timely for me to talk about my dream cast for these movies. This is going to be a little indulgent, but you know how there are some days when you are an unstoppable good idea machine, and your ideas please you so much that no amount of praise for your genius can ever be enough? Well, that’s what happened to me when my adjunct sister Lil Splotch posted…

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WordPress being a jerk; and, give me books to read!

WordPress is being a jerk, and everyone is having commenting problems. Teresa from Shelf Love has a post about what’s going on. Feel free to contact WordPress (not this minute; tomorrow) and express your displeasure. I am displeased. More importantly, my mumsy is displeased. Knock it off, WordPress! Cease at once to displease my mama! Secondly, I don’t know what to read. A while ago, I begged you to tell me something Awesome to read, and the lovely trapunto told me to read Kage Baker’s Company series, and it was all awesome all the time. (Well, almost all the time.)…

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Acquisitions

I’ve been thinking about acquiring books lately. On Tuesday my coworker said that what she really wanted was a really well-written book, Lit’rature she said, with a compelling plot and interesting characters. I thought about it for a while, threw out a couple of ideas, and ultimately said, “Stop, stop, call off the hounds. It’s Fingersmith. Read Fingersmith.” And that evening she went and bought Fingersmith. This is an example of something I would almost never do, buy a book because someone I knew said it was good. I especially would not do it if, as in her case, I…

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Books I don’t remember well enough to speak intelligently about them

Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World, by Roger Atwood, was a very interesting book all about looters and what gets lost when ancient sites are torn up and their contents sold off to wealthy collectors around the world. It used Peru as a focus to discuss the global problems of looting and collecting, but my main takeaway from it is that the Met is a big jerk about repatriating local artifacts. And now when I go to the Met and don’t pay full price, which I’m entitled to do because the admission fee is…

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Giving up

Okay, I can’t do it, I’ve read too many books and not reviewed them and then I can’t remember anything about them. So whatever. I’m doing little bitty ones here. I’m declaring bloggy bankruptcy and giving myself a clean slate. Have to. Here are a series of cranky little reviewlets. Mr. Fox, Helen Oyeyemi Liked it a lot! I went to see Helen Oyeyemi talk at McNally Jackson, and she said that writing Mr. Fox was just fun, that she was just enjoying every minute of writing it. It shows when you’re reading the book. Mr. Fox plays with ideas…

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What’s making me happy

1. The Christmas gifts I bought for everyone. I don’t know if y’all know this about me, but one of my best skills is buying gifts. I am good at buying gifts and it is also one of my favorite things to do in all the world. I feel happy whenever I think about the gifts I have bought for everybody (except Mumsy; I don’t feel good about my Mumsy gift this year) and how pleased they will all be to receive them. And just Christmas gifts in general. Legal Sister is (probably) receiving a particularly excellent gift, and I…

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Onomatopoeia representation of a cry of anguish!

Basically there have been two longstanding reasons that I want to go to Paris and they are these: 1. The Louvre. 2. Slathering on dramatic lipstick and going to Pere Lachaise and smooching Oscar Wilde’s grave. And you know, I’ve heard the Louvre is real great and all but when I imagine me in Paris, I imagine being at Oscar Wilde’s grave with a compact mirror applying dark red lipstick as I prepare to smooch his grave. People go to Oscar Wilde’s grave and they smooch it, and you know how when someone you love a very lot does something…

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Amy was right

This Amy here. She was right all along. And so were all the other people who have been saying that The Vampire Diaries (wait, don’t leave yet! Hear me out!) is awesome. As it turns out? It is pretty awesome.  I started watching it right after the CW signed a deal with Netflix — thanks, CW! — because I thought it would be a fun show to semi-watch, semi-ignore while cross-stitching a Christmas stocking for my little cousin. I am much more watching, much less ignoring now. Kinda worried about the progress of this Christmas stocking, but I will keep…

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