Teen girl angst, wanting
the boy, the in crowd, not her
destined werewolf king.
btw Don't read the book because you liked the movie, or vice-versa. They are nothing alike, having in common only character names.
This is the first book in a trilogy about Joanne Baldwin, who has the power to control the weather. It's a completely absorbing book with a lusty heroine and an ending that genuinely surprised me. She's a little too into cars for my taste, but most people are.
It's time once again to close some tabs, so here are some lovely links. They are in anti-chronological order to when I saved them.
For anyone else out there who has a television, but not cable and is trying to figure out the whole deal with the February 17th revocation of the public airwaves...
(I'm making a wild accusation with the "revocation of the public airways" statement, btw. I don't actually have information or even a strong conspiracy theory about this; I'm just assuming it's nefarious because it came out of the government during the Bush administration.)
Reclaim the Media has a bunch of information on their site about it. (Thanks, Hilary.) And Josh Breitbart, bless him, chronicled his experience on his People's Production House blog.
This book about a geeky toy company "creative" has a lot going for it: likeable protagonist, good politics, code making and breaking, and a British sense of humor. I liked it quite a bit, but didn't quite love it as much as I wanted to. I'll definitely read it again though, in a year or two.
"I reckon we all invent our own Supreme Beings. It's the point of life. You invent your own religion complete with an afterlife, a Supreme Being if you want one and anything else you want, and then you pretty much get whatever you expect after you die. People who don't believe in anything or who don't bother to come up with their own belief system really don't go anywhere after they die. People who believe in some complex system of reincarnation and cycles of life get that. People who belong to organised religions get whatever that offers, although it usually isn't very good..." spoken by a friend of the narrator. p.409 (This was my afterlife philosophy when I was 13. It might still be if I thought about it.)
I second Sandy Berman's December 17, 2008 letter to the Cataloging Policy & Support Office suggesting LIBRARY CATS as a subject heading. He cites an AP review of Dewey, the Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron and Bret Witter (which I notice, btw is available in Polish!) as warrant.
I can't remember what I did this year, but since I track my reading, I'll share some highlights from my year in books. This goes from December 1, 2007 to November 30, 2008. (November has 30, right?)
I read, or at least got most of the way through 98 books.
82 of them were written or edited by women.
20 were by people of color.
12 were by queer authors or had strong queer characters.
10 were non-biography non-fiction.
19 were biographies or autobiographies.
17 were children's or young adult books.
Highly recommended (in the order I read them)...
Earlier this week I read a memoir by a 35-year-old, and a friend was like "Can someone in their 30s really write an autobiography?" So next up, I grabbed one by a 34-year-old. Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father was commissioned by Random House after Obama was made the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. As I've said here before, I'm not drinking the Obama Kool-Aid, but I do kind of wish I was. I want to believe. I want things to be different with him as the U.S. president.
You may have noticed that I've added book and zine reviews to this site. And the occasional event. If you're really only in it for the blog posts, you can use this feed instead of the main one. Of course I'm only talking to RSS users.
Six fabulous New York-based zines (and one from Pennsylvania!) provide a delicious evening of readings.
January 7th, 2009
7pm at Bluestockings
172 Allen St (between Stanton & Rivington)
New York, NY