I suppose I could see the development arising from an abused child's reaction to recent horrifying trauma, but no way in hell should it be empowering to Bev or an uplifting, healing experience for all concerned . Like others, that was my "What the hell is King smoking?" moment that threw me out of the narrative. (About a malevolent child-eating clown monster that can alter reality, so it's not like the bar for my suspension of disbelief had been set to gritty and naturalistic!)

Don't know the timing of this. Was this scene written during King's battle with drugs?

The Pulitzer board dissed fiction [link] It's been 35 years since it last declined to name a fiction winner.

The Pulitzer board dissed fiction [link].

Wasn't Franzen's book eligible? Or was that last year?

Freedom came out in 2010, so it wasn't eligible. I'm having a hard time coming up with a book that I think should have won, but it is pretty shocking that they didn't pick anything.

I just read a book that I think other Buffistas might like: Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan. It's about a band of German and American jazz musicians in Berlin and Paris in 1939/40, and about the fallout in 1992 when one of them, who was captured by the Gestapo in Paris, is the subject of a documentary and festival in Berlin. It's written in the distinctive voice of one of the surviving musicians, which I thought was done very well -- colloquial and slangy but easy to understand -- and gives a glimpse at the world of jazz in Europe between the wars, a subculture I knew very little about. Anyone who's interested in the music, the time period, or the experiences of black people (both German and American) in Europe during the rise of the Nazis should give it a look.

Hey, I got a question for the group:

When someone includes the phrase, "and, of course, we also want him to get the girl" in their book review, how would you describe your reaction?

And by someone you mean me, as I just posted my reviews of Feed (by M.T. Anderson, not Mira Grant) and Ready Player One. As for the phrase in question, I had issues with using it myself, but I was tired and it's a common phrase.

When someone includes the phrase, "and, of course, we also want him to get the girl" in their book review, how would you describe your reaction?

My reaction is pretty much "That is a sentence in this review, expressing the reviewer's opinion."

Seriously, even if I didn't know who wrote it, my reaction would still be a non-reaction. I'm not sure what you're even driving at with that question. I assume you don't like something about the sentence (dislike the assumption implicit in "we," dislike use of the word "girl"), but I don't know what, since you didn't say. A discussion might be easier if you said what *your* reaction was.

Oh, that's why you didn't mention zombies.

I've been sitting here trying to figure out why I'm having such a strong negative reaction. Part of it is definitely other stuff, like that stupid porn-schoolgirl cover on Discount Armageddon. But - at the end of your review all we know about how Art3mis relates to the main character and his story is, "Obvious love interest is The Girl to be gotten." (Which, to be fair, is twice as many sentences as Parzifal's best buddy got. But false equivalence is false.) And it hit me as just one more case of women being talked about as objects instead of people.

Part of it is definitely other stuff, like that stupid porn-schoolgirl cover on Discount Armageddon.

I'm not a huge fan of it either, but Seanan is quite happy with it, as it is accurate for the character, who works at a strip joint (as a waitress).

But - at the end of your review all we know about how Art3mis relates to the main character and his story is, "Obvious love interest is The Girl to be gotten." (Which, to be fair, is twice as many sentences as Parzifal's best buddy got. But false equivalence is false.)

Well, honestly, that is basically her role in the story. I liked her as a character, but that...is her role in the story. And Aech deserved to be written more about too, but I can't touch on everything in a review.

And it hit me as just one more case of women being talked about as objects instead of people.

Okay. I would have preferred it if you'd either commented on my post or at the very least addressed me here directly rather than talking about "someone" as if I weren't going to see it.