A couple of people recommended Love is a Mix Tape to me and I'm almost done with it. It's a sad, true story and, yes, there is a lot of my 90s indie rock in there (Pavement, Bettie Serveert, Grenadine, etc.). However, the guy completely pissed me off with this line, which I read last night:

Like all girl bands, they spent all their time thinking up cool band names and cool song titles and cool ideas for matching outfits, with only occasional efforts to actually play songs.

Fuck you, buddy! Keep in mind that this guy is a fucking music critic. Pissed me off so much I may not finish the damned book and I'm almost done.

Wow. I'm not a big 90s indie rock fan at all...but that line made my blood pressure spike.

I can forgive a lot of stupidity from Sheffield (he is a writer for Rolling Stone, after all, which means that his rock IQ is professionally limited). I liked that book, though. My son's best friend Ruby is the niece of Sheffield's late wife, and it was neat seeing echoes of the aunt she never knew.

I can see how it would be great to have as a family member, and I do feel for the guy and his wife and the friends/family. Tragic. But I picked up on lots of subtle sexism, aside from the actual sexist line I quoted previously. Hard to take from someone who professes his love for Sleater-Kinney. I'm sure those "girls" spent a lot of time thinking about their outfits and song titles. Grrr.

I'm sure those "girls" spent a lot of time thinking about their outfits and song titles. Grrr.

I'm pretty sure Mick Jagger and Keith Richards do spend a lot of time thinking about their outfits, and I know the Minutemen used to write their songs by coming up with cool song titles first.

In light of the schools discussion going on in Natter, I thought this article was really interesting and would love to hear what our Buffista teachers and librarians think.

Jessica, I read that article yesterday. I was intrigued because when I taught middle school that IS how I taught. More important to love to read than to read what I am teaching. I taught very similarly down to the idea that you can teach most literary stuff through poetry. I also had a really lovely relationship with my school librarian who helped me sell kids on specific books.

I think it's important to have a balance now that I teach AP. With AP, there are different requirements -- they need to have a number of canon level books under their belt for the open ended questions. I teach 8 novels or plays and then they have limited choice around other novels or plays that deal with similar themes -- 3 or 4 choices per text I teach.

For me, I hated AP in high school, though I excelled, because I hated the shit that we had to read. I'm sure that is true of my students too. But culturally, it's important to know the story of Lear or of Dorian Gray or Handmaid's Tale.

I'm coordinating a LibraryThing Flash Mob (for the 4-5000 volume collection the classics department has at my work). I'm scared; hold me.

From Publisher's Marketplace:

Fiction: Sci-Fi/Fantasy DANCING WITH WEREWOLVES author Carole Nelson Douglas's VAMPIRE SUNRISE, in which a Las Vegas paranormal investigator battles a Frankenstein monster for the werewolf mob while rescuing her dead-dowsing partner-lover from a hidden empire of ancient Egyptian vampires, again to Paula Guran at Juno, for publication in November 2009

::waits for Jilli's head to 'splode::

I don't why, but reading that makes me think I have absolutely no chance of getting published. At least I'll have accomplished writing a book.