Amanda will kill you if you try anything.

Amanda will kill you if you try anything.

Ha! Amanda would probably elbow Neil out of the way so she could make out with ita.

I'm in love with _Blackout_. And so very thrilled about the film rights!!! Ever since seeing those photos with Jason Dohring as Shaun, gotta admit that reading this last book I was totally seeing him delivering Logan Echolls-esque line readings. I know there are plenty of talented actors who could rock that role, but his image is firmly Shaun in my mind. While reading the first book I couldn't stop visualizing Buffy as Penelope Garcia from Criminal Minds, in spite of the age difference.

I just read a really great book...it's called "The Year The Music Changed" and it's about this girl with a lonely life and a cleft palate who strikes up a correspondence with Elvis Presley just as he's about to break out and be huge. It was surprisingly touching and heartfelt. Even though I thought I knew what there was to know about Elvis, down to Freudian analysis and such, I liked this character very much. Just a simple country boy with sandy hair and a talent he didn't know how to handle.

The gaming company Games Workshop does several books, and one series from quite a while back was a cyberpunk/Old Ones au, and one of those books was called Comeback Tour. Elvis Aron Presley was offered a deal he couldn't refuse, but he refused it. Instead of going on to superstardom, he re-joined the army, rose to the rank of Colonel, and eventually became a mercenary for the good guys. But the music is still in him.

It's not a great book, but it's a good book, with rock n roll and genetic manipulation and the end of the space program and all sorts of stuff.

Question re: flat vs. apartment.

I'm reading Half Blood Blues and it is narrated by a black jazz musician from Baltimore. It alternates between Paris 1940, Berlin 1939, and Baltimore/Berlin/Poland in 1992. The whole book is told in a very deliberate street dialect. In general, Edugyan, who is Canadian, is very consistent with the speech; however, in the first few pages, the narrator repeatedly uses the word flat, which threw me out of the story completely. Even today the word is pretty rare on the East Coast, but maybe it was used back then. Anyone know?

I tried Google Ngrams for rented flat vs rented apartment in American English and they don't diverge too significantly until after the war: [link]

(Can't use flat vs. apartment because of course flat means a lot of things.)

That graph is fascinating.

If I had to guess, I would have thought the war would increase usage of flat, since I feel like I only use it because of living in Europe. Although I think people use it more out here than on the East Coast.

For some reason, I feel like "cold water flat" is an American usage, but that other than that I associate t with Europe.

Although I think people use it more out here than on the East Coast.

Interesting. Flat seems common on the East coast of Canada. In Vancouver, everyone called all apartments "suites."