It fascinates me that Hunger Games is such a huge hit, since it's such a blunt denunciation of so much of American culture. How many millions of kids have read this and are now looking thoughtfully at reality TV? Or interview shows? Or politicians?

I just read the "Mark Reads" thing on Hunger Games, and I also finished the first book myself.

I think I may be the exact opposite of Mark in every way. First, I knew the basic plot before reading, and can't imagine it any other way. Second, I am all about the romance-- poor Peeta! I know next to nothing about the next 2 books, however.

Dickens Walk podcast from the Guardian.

Be sure to download the cool map from the illustrator Baudade too.

I am reading The Serpent Sea, the second of Martha Wells' tales of the Raksura (the first is The Cloud Roads). It's set in a fabulously fantastic world, with floating islands and a multiplicity of sapient races, all of which have widely varying biologies and social structures. And it's about identity and family: both the ones you're born with and the ones you make. It has adventures and mysteries, sex and fighting, beauty and horror.

SGA Fans please note: if you have a fondness for the competent loner who doesn't know he needs a family, and isn't quite sure what to do with it when he gets one; or, by contrast, the researcher and theorist who is forced to become a soldier through no choice of his own; or the woman leading her people through strength, force of personality, and a bit of guile--well, I suspect you might like these novels a great deal.

I'm just saying.

You can find links to the books on her site--and as of last week, there was a promo sale ongoing, with Cloud Roads free and Baen's ebook of The Serpent Sea going for $6.

Found on Tumblr, posted by a YA author:

if you use coupon code F3Y9V4J at BN.com, you’ll get 50% off your entire purchase of teen books! and teen books are awesome, no? :D

(p.s. orders of $25 or more qualify for free shipping, and this coupon is valid until 1/12/12.

Kindle deal of the day:

3 books by Dava Sobel @ excellent prices - Longitude for 99 cents, A More Perfect Heaven for $1.99 and Galileo's Daughter for 99 cents.

Link.

So I am 20 pages into To the Lighthouse and, man, I don't know if I can make it through this whole book. I'm so fucking lost. I know this book is in English, but words are going right in my head and out the other without comprehension occurring in the middle. I have read Faulkner! WHY CAN'T I DO THIS.

...or the woman leading her people through strength, force of personality, and a bit of guile

I love Martha Wells. And characters with "a bit of guile" are one of her specialties. Or a lot of guile.

WHY CAN'T I DO THIS.

Because the minutiae of life are not very interesting?

t Not a Virginia Woolf fan

I guess this is why Pix suggested getting the annotated edition?