But having a little text note alongside the page number - good idea? bad idea?

I like explanatory extra stuff. Gimme the pie chart and the footnote that says what chapter I'm in. I also like page decorations and initial caps, so maybe I just like clutter and verbiage...

I have a copy of Longitude in paperback and took it with me when I visited Cleveland. It seemed appropriate for a travel book and was appealingly tiny and packable.

Pelecanos "Right As Rain" Because he likes urban carrots. I recommend them to everyone, but probably especially men(If he ever reads mysteries)

After browsing B&N, I ended up getting him two magazines (a college football preview and Popular Science) and two books (HHGTTG and Sharpe's Rifles, in a very slim trade paper edition). Tomorrow I'll go to the post office, and we'll find out if my memory of the dimensions of the flat rate envelopes is accurate. With that selection, I figured odds are high he'll like at least one (if nothing else, I know he likes football), and he could easily find takers for anything he doesn't.

if you want to discuss, I'm more than game.

Go ahead-- there can always be whitefont.

I'm most fascinated by the idea of building your whole entire life not only around someone else, but in a deeply pre-destined way. And whether or not it's fair's not the right word, but, desirable. Basically, how much would you want to know before-hand.

On a purely technical note, I'm not sure it'd be possible for there to be any more of them, as Alba would surely loose any baby she was carrying. And it seems kinda selfish to have her, knowing what her life was likely to be like.

Those are the two biggest things that stuck with me. There are other things, but they require more digging though my impressions.

I read the new LKH at B&N last night.

Everyone's right. The sex is pretty boring. And that's all it is is sex, sex, sex. And if the point of all this sex is for Merry to get pregnant ASAP, why doesn't she have some fucking ovulation thermomaters, et., hanging around? And yo, maybe someone could clue the "most modern" of the sidhe into the fact that there a short window in which a woman can get preggers, and it's nail-downable?

And if the Goddess is using her as her avatar, why doesn't she just do a fertility ritual on herself. She is dscended from doodly-squat fertility goddesses.

It's silly. And there's fucking typos EVERYWHERE.

And if the Goddess is using her as her avatar

Oh, blessed, again? The last Anita Blake I bothered to read was hinting that Anita was specially chosen to face off against the queen of the vampires or whoever that was in that vision.

Sigh.

Merry and Anita are pretty interchangable at this point.

It's all just supernatural fuckery.

And if the point of all this sex is for Merry to get pregnant ASAP, why doesn't she have some fucking ovulation thermomaters, et., hanging around?

Maybe sidhe aren't like humans on that point?

(Does Merry *ever* have her period?)

Maybe sidhe aren't like humans on that point?

Yeah, I thought of that, but I think the natural cycle should at least be addressed, if it's that big of a plot point.

And no, heroines don't bleed, unless it's from a gunshot wound or stabby thing, which is always gotten in Saving the World or The Hero.

Although it seems LKH would have written some gory 8-some mentrual were-vamp-arduer thing. But apparently Anita AND Merry just come at the thought of giving head, and never receive it.

That's another thing that bugs me: this rhapsodic attention to giving head and swallowing. I mean, we don't need a 12 page ode to the joys of oral in EVERY fucking book now.

We know they love, love, love sucking dick. Shut UP about it, already, LKH.