Woah. Amazon just put Harry Potter in the Kindle lending library. [link]

According to Elsie, Mormons were dangerous, were certainly not Christian, and were tricking innocent young girls into entering polygamous marriages. There was one book where some of Elsie's kids and grandkids went out west to visit a mine or something that one of them had inherited, and they saved some girl from the Mormons.

The part about everybody being white in heaven was just one thing in a mostly unremarkable list of ways that heaven would be wonderful. Like, nobody's hungry, and there's no sickness, and everybody's white, and the angels sing all day. It was even odder for the way it was just thrown in there, like of course, everybody would see this as a good thing.

It was even odder for the way it was just thrown in there, like of course, everybody would see this as a good thing.

What's the point of having white privilege if it doesn't extend into the afterlife?

I wonder if, since everyone's white, white privilege would still be valid. Or would it come down to white, whiter, whitest? (sorry ... my brain's fried from answering stupid questions)

I wonder if, since everyone's white, white privilege would still be valid.

More like in Heaven everybody's privileged to be white.

Now we look at something like Jacob's fixation on Bella's baby and go, ewwww. Or at least some of us do...

My unfortunate mental association with Jacob and that absurdly-named baby is Angelica Bell, because her father's lover looked on her as a baby and swore he'd marry her one day. And then he did.

I was looking through the recently acquired e-books on my library web-site, and there are TWENTY people on the waiting list for 50 shades of gray. I have never seen more than 2 people on a waiting list for any book, ever.

I want to tell all these people about fanfiction..

wrod. Also buzz vs. hype.

I want to LIVE in that book. I want more stories in that world, and am a little sad that the author has said she's not going to write a sequel.

I just finished Night Circus. Oh man. I thought it was lovely and compelling. And the ending! Kinda beyond perfect.

Outside of the beautiful descriptions of both magic and the circus itself, there are two things that are sitting with me. The first is the idea that there is this conflict between magic from the outside in vs. magic from the inside out. It's actually a very yogic argument in some ways -- some people believe that the practice should be an outside your body thing. That the meditation itself is with the creation of the poses, that it is moving prayer. Others argue that a yoga practice should start within your energy or your prana and the poses themselves are outer reflections of that.

Of course, both are a piece of the same thing, which must be true in magic of this world too. The origins of the energy is a false dichotomy. Rather they are intractably linked.

I also love the idea that one form believes that magic is teachable and anyone can learn it and the other believes that you must have divine talent.

Also, I ADORE the very end, where Widget meets with the man in the grey suit. I love what the man in the grey suit says about the power of story. I'd like to put that, along with a John Green quotation about stories, on posters in my room. I'd love to have Pete do up a poster with the quote and display it. In my ideal world. Maybe I can get a student of mine to do it instead?

Anyhow, LOVED the book. Agreed that I'd love to wallow in this world a bit more.

Now on to the Wolf Hall sequel