I'm trying to get back into reading so I check out some light fare from the library. Meg Cabot, whom I have never read, Big Boned. Which I read super fast. It was fine, predictable in many ways, but enjoyable.

Now I am reading Jenny Colgan - Sweetshop of Dreams. Not going nearly as fast as the Cabot, but I am enjoying it.

well ... this is one way to drive book sales.

I love that video. And the Wonky Donkey reminds me of the (fancy, antsy, prancy, dancy) Nancy Ann Cianci game.

I replaced my lost copy of Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October with a hard cover. Given the prices I saw online, this book is getting hard to find--at least in the original cover--and it's such a glorious book.

I think Big Boned is the third or fourth in a series, msbelle. The conceit was definitely getting a bit stale by then, but the original, Size 12 is Not Fat, is among my favorite in that genre of light fun Meg Cabot fare.

I basically like everything Meg Cabot writes for both children or adults in exactly the way you described, but if you decide to dive in again I think Boy Next Door is probably my favorite. E-mail epistolary style, which isn't everybody's cup of tea, but it works for me.

thanks.

I (once again) read through the new Anne Rice book in one day. And was ready to flip every table in the world over a plot line, but she fixed it. This means I don't have to sulk in a nest of grief made from my velvet frock coats.

I just finished The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry, and I really enjoyed it. The prose was beautiful, and I enjoyed the character development.

Posting in here and in literary. I volunteer at my local library putting out donated books and discarded library books for sale. We are kinda over run with juvie and teen books and so if anyone has favorite authors and will cover 50cent pb or $1 hc, I am happy to look through and send you all you want. Also if anyone just in general has a book or books they are looking for, I am happy to keep and eye out.

I'm still volunteering at my local library bookstore too (which carries a bit of everything), and am happy to look around for people.

Can the hivemind help me track down a Halloween-themed short story? I read it a few years ago in an anthology of horror or generally scary stories. It's about a children's scary book author (female, middle aged or elderly) who gives a Halloween reading at a library and then seems to be ambiguously haunted by the unseen fictional mischievous boy character she's famous for. It's told in first person, had a feel that vaguely reminded me of Thomas Ligotti's work. Sadly I cannot recall title, author, or any of the proper names in the story.

I'd thought it might be in one of Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Horror collections, but I haven't been able to turn it up in any of the ones at my library and it would have to be in some book I ran across there at one point.