Seconding Susan W: the fourth Temeraire was better than the middle two. She takes great strides away from "our" history in that one, and really (I think) opens up the universe.

Undead!Darcy, Juliana? Hee! That play sounds like a kick.

Aaaaugh!

Just found out that Janet Kagan died back in March. [link]

Lyme disease (and emphysema) has robbed us of a great storyteller.

R. I. P.

Huh. Powell's just sent me a review of a really interesting-looking book: Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano. Has anyone read it?

That sounds really interesting; I'm going to check the library for it. It sounds, in some ways, like the flip side of Norah Vincent's Self-Made Man, which I liked a lot.

Tangentially related (okay, in that it's about a woman), I'm in the middle of Woman's World, which is amazing in a meta way because of how the book was literally created; the author spent 5 years clipping out text and images from vintage women's fashion/household magazines and then pasting them into layout form to tell the story. It's all clippings.

It purportedly has a "twist," which I'm pretty sure I guessed by page 8 or so, although if it's what I think it is, I'm kind of by default more attuned to such things, so it was perhaps more obvious to me that early in the book than it might be to other readers.

But surely by 40 or 50 pages in, it's got to be obvious. I'm going to be curious to read reviews when I'm finished, to see at what point other readers twigged to the reveal.

wow that looks really interesting.

I'm looking for a recommendation for my dad. He likes Will Cuppy and Mister Dooley(Finley Peter Dunne), Lewis Grizzard, Carl Hiaasen and PJ O'Rourke. He's interested in the US civil war and he likes jazz, especially Dave Brubeck and Stan Kenton. For his birthday I got him a book about The Everleigh Club called Sin in the Second City. Any ideas?

Oh! You guys, I met Candy Tan from Smart Bitches yesterday at a wedding. She's pretty cool. Her nametag read, "Your Resident D-List Internet Celebrity."

They made you wear name tags at a wedding? What did yours say?

I met Candy Tan from Smart Bitches yesterday at a wedding. She's pretty cool. Her nametag read, "Your Resident D-List Internet Celebrity."

What the heck kind of wedding was this??? I'm jealous, it sounds very cool! Also, jealous cause I'd love to meet her, I love the Smart Bitches!

And, I love the Seattle Library, because I was able to just put both "Whipping Girl" adn "Woman's World" on hold, with about thirty seconds worth of searchign and three clicks. And in just a few weeks (or less--one I'm second in line, one I'm #8), they will be delivered to the library three blocks away, and I will get an email telling me they're waiting.

Which is what I did for "Farthing", which was also discussed here, and I read last night. It was really good, but I didn't realize it was quite so depressing. Eep.

While waiting for a bus to Safeco Field Friday night, I saw a fellow Metro passenger just finishing Kushiel's Mercy. I'm currently 29 of 56 on the hold list, since I wasn't paying enough attention to release dates to request it when I should have, and it's still listed as "On Order" as opposed to "Just Received" at the library website.

Because of that, I toyed with offering the woman the $30 cash I had in my wallet for her copy, but ultimately decided it wouldn't kill me to wait a month or so. Which is just as well, because one of my CPs just sent me her full manuscript and needs me to read it within the week because she's had an editor request the full and promised to send it by July 1.

ION, I just finished Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. I enjoyed it, but I found it a little too didactic--almost like the Afterschool Special for resisting government tyranny. None of the reviews I've read had the same problem, though, so it could be just me.

It used to be that it was worth it to into big book stores like B&N or Borders -- because they were big enough to carry somethings that weren't necessarily popular. Now you can find every title out there with a vampire in the book -- but they couldn't identify woman's world, or at least not the book Steph is reading.It is on the website, but not in the local stores. and even though I found it on the web site , they didn't in the store so I have to bring in the ISBN to order it. I wasn't even 100% sure I wanted to buy it ( can't get it at the library) . They didn't have Knut's book either. Of course , they did have the buffy comic book -- but like I said Vampires.