I. Television.

A. Numb3rs
i. I am going to miss Megan so much!
a. I wonder if Larry is going to move out east with her.
b. Figures the one female character who never put up with any of Don's crap is leaving. I mean, I know Diane Farr is pregnant again and leaving the show and really, who could blame her? But I'll miss her.
ii. I threw up in my mouth a little at the idea of Charlie and Amita getting married
iii. Colby is NOT to start dating Liz under ANY circumstance.
iv. I really, really miss the Don&Charlie interaction this season. There's been less of it in season 4 than in any of the others. I'm sure some of it is because of on-set strife, but isn't that why it's called ACTING?
v. For next season: Even less interaction? Charlie and Amita getting married? New cast member. Who?

B. Supernatural
i. It's so obvious they're short on episodes this season. I do like the episodes I've seen but there aren't enough of them and I feel like the important storylines are rushed.
ii. Dean HAS to die and go to Hell. He's going to be dead all summer and I'm going to cry. I think the reality of this is just starting to hit me. I know he's coming back because the show is going into a fourth season, but WAH!
iii. I do like Bela but I'm pretty over Ruby.
iv. In the meantime, I've signed up for spn_summergen. Because I don't have enough to do!

C. America's Next Top Model
i. Order of elimination for finale: Anya, Fatima, Whitney
ii. I still miss Lauren
iii. Tyra's megalomania is SO GRATING.

II. Books
A. Books I've read lately and liked/am liking
i. A Little Friendly Advice by Siobhan Vivian
ii. All We Know of Heaven by Jacquelyn Mitchard
iii. Adios to my Old Life by Caridad Ferrer
iv. the Sorority 101 series by Kate Harmon
v. Paper Towns by John Green
vi. This is What I Did by Ann Dee Ellis
B. Books I've read lately that didn't really do it for me/are not doing it for me
i. Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne
ii. Generation Dead by Daniel Waters...but as this one goes on it's getting better.
C. Reading list for after ALA Annual
i. Black Hole by Charles Burns
ii. Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
iii. Mac OSX Leopard: The Missing Manual by David Pogue
iv. Whatever else from the adult fiction section looks interesting, because I have to read adult fiction while I still can.

III. Other life things!
A. I freakin LOVE my new MacBook Pro. Lily the iBook had to go to the big hard drive in the sky, so now I have a new 15.4" MBP. I'm probably going to get a skin for it from SkinIt, because everyone and their grandmother has a MacBook and although I love my Lenore sticker, I'm going to need something a little classier if I'm going to be taking the laptop to conferences. They have skins with fleur-de-lis on them, w00t!
B. Running is going pretty well. I've decided that when I can run from my apartment to the town high school and back (3.7 miles), I get a pink 8GB iPod Nano.
C. Lots of writing and speaking engagements coming up, so yay for that. Maybe a few of them will pay.

Tags: books, spn

I have been BURIED. Not literally, thought sometimes it feels like it. The corner of my office is full of carts and boxes and stacks of books. I'm always behind on one review or the other. March and April are always terrible months at work, and this year is no exception. So, shortly:

1. I still owe a rant on why adult writers who write YA need to really not bite the hands that feed.

2. I can run TWO miles at a time now. praetorianguard was doing this by her first birthday, but I'm not so much one with the running so 2 miles is a major accomplishment for me.

3. I wrote a fic for remixredux08 and it was GOOD and I will post it here eventually.

3a. crooked remixed my fic Writ, and her Remix was amazing. She rocked da house. Or da prison, as da case may be.

4. I have been reading a lot of really good YA books, including but not limited to The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks by E. Lockhart, The Missing Girl by Norma Fox Mazer, Wake by Lisa McMann, Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway, and Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. I have also attended some great programs, including the NYPL Books for the Teen Age extravaganza, an Inside the Author's Studio with Walter Dean Myers, and various publishers' previews.

4a. I am waiting to hear on what will become a major YA project in the upcoming year. If I get the go-ahead, this... well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

5. I bought a new computer! My 15" MacBook Pro will be arriving this week. I love Lily the iBook and she has served me well, but all good computers must come to an end. Four years is a pretty good life for an iBook, ithink.

6. Henry and Beezus are still incredibly cute.

7. Thing 2 will win Flavor of Love 3 and Anya will win ANTM (although I'd be happy if Katarzyna won, too). Also, I still think Dean is going to die and go to Hell. Also, an open note to the direction/production team of Numb3rs: IT'S REALLY OBVIOUS THAT ROB MORROW AND DAVID KRUMHOLTZ HATE EACH OTHER IRL, AND IT'S AFFECTING THEIR CHEMISTRY ON SCREEN. PLEASE TELL THEM TO FIX THIS.

I have missed you all so much, you have no idea, but it was either meet my deadlines and keep my job(s) or be involved on LJ. What have you all been up to?

The Darkness - Love on the Rocks With No Ice

126: guilty

Greetings, o writer who is remixing me for remixredux08! Here's a note that I couldn't put in my application form that may be useful to you:

Although I have only one qualifying fandom for Remix (Harry Potter), please feel free to remix either my Harry Potter fics (save for An Ancient Magic and The Edge of the River, of course) or my Numb3rs fics. But. If you can stand to wait to start writing your remix, I should have a Supernatural fic or two and at least one more fic in both Numb3rs and Harry Potter up before April 1. And if you REALLY like to procrastinate, I'll have two more HP fics up by April 6.

If you're not sure about what I like to see in fics, or questions about any terminology or characterization I love/feel meh about/abhor, please contact heidi8. She knows what I like and she's very good at keeping secrets.

I have no doubt you'll turn out something I'll love.

126: chipper

I am on quite the rampage lately.

This just makes me boggle. Yes, I know it's old for a blog post, but I just saw it so here I am. It damn near made my head explode.

You know, I don't even write original fiction, and I know that most of it requires some degree of research. If I write a book that's set in a hospital, I'm going to visit hospitals. If I'm writing a novel in which the main character extols the virtues of In-N-Out Burger, I'm not going to set it in New Jersey. And one would think that if I wanted to write an urban fantasy novel, I'd read some urban fantasy and get a picture of the genre. Regarding this blogger's recent reading of YA, I'm shocked by the "I'm shocked" factor, too. Maybe that's my emotionally disconnected librarian talking, but the stuff of YA novels does not faze me. It all stems from SOME reality. Yes, it's easy to make smaller truths into huge issues in a book, or on TV, or in a movie, but I really think that's okay. That's the point of art, isn't it, to make us think differently?

This passage: Now, I was not expecting Nancy Drew. But... surely this sort of behavior isn't very common? Is it something you'd want your ten-year-old reading? (YA is supposedly for 12-15-year-olds, but in fact younger kids who are good readers consume most of it.)

just shows ignorance.

1. No, if it were common behavior the book would be really boring. Who wants to read books where common behavior happens?

2. I've never met anyone who recommended Valiant to a ten-year-old. If you have, please send them my way so I can smack them one.

3. Younger kids who are good readers consume most YA? First, define "younger." Second, where did this statistic come from? It's not like Nielsen Bookscan asks you for your age when you buy a book. I can only speak for the libraries I've worked in, of course, but I found that most of the people checking out books from the YA section are, um, teens.

4. YA is supposedly for 12-15-year-olds? Geez, you better tell YALSA, then, because their "Ages 12-18" service plan is all wrong and most of the books on BBYA are too old. Also, please send that memo to John Green, M.T. Anderson, Nancy Werlin, Robert Lipsyte, Chris Lynch, Sonya Hartnett, and all those other authors that write YA for the 14-and-over age range. Clearly, no one is reading their books and they need to quit writing.

So my question overall is: Why on earth is this writer talking about putting together a proposal for a YA novel when she doesn't read YA and hasn't kept up on the genre in years? How could you even think about writing YA fantasy and not know blackholly's work? The number of adult authors writing YA is climbing every day. In some ways this is good: We got Sherman Alexie, Carl Hiaasen, Alice Hoffman, Nick Hornby, Benjamin Alire Saenz, and other authors who have remarkable talent and wrote terrific teenage voices. But on the other hand, we get people like James Patterson, who I'll discuss in Part II: Stop Biting the Hand That Feeds.

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In other news, this is just wrong. Way to ruin my childhood. Sometimes movies are best left alone. You know one thing about Hollywood I never could stomach? All the damn sequels.

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Today in a meeting, someone's cell phone went off. Instead of silencing the phone immediately, she picked it up, answered it, and proceeded to have a short conversation. In front of a very crowded room. Those of us with manners damn near had heart attacks.

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ANTM: I know this makes me unpopular, but TEAM LAUREN! (Not opposed to teams Katarzyna, Claire, or Aimee either.)

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Who wants to beta the SPN fic I'm writing for heidi8's belated birthday? gwendolyngrace? titti? emmademarais? Anyone? Bueller?

Tags: i work with crazy people, rants, ya
126: cranky

Reading the Google blog today (look! I'm behind on reading my feeds! surprise!), I noticed this message about an open house of sorts tonight at their new Pittsburgh offices.

The funny comes in the location of said office. They've mapped it here. Their offices are maybe a 5-minute walk from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Look at the map. See the yellow line to the left marked "Bellefield Ave.," and see where it intersects with Forbes Ave.? Yeah, that'd be the library. Keep going north on Bellefield, past 5th but before you cross Bayard, and that's the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences.

So then I have to wonder: If there's a question Google can't answer, will they do the logical thing and walk down the street to the library? Also, am I a bad librarian for thinking, "Cool, more job opportunities for librarians in Pittsburgh?" I miss living there so much.

126: curious

Instead of writing booktalks, I'm blogging. Yay!

While reading this review of Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr, I thought, "Yes, yes, okay, I agree..." and then it all came to a screeching halt.

Let it be known that I did not like Ink Exchange by any stretch of the imagination. While the ideas might have been strong, a lot of things about that book annoyed me: poor writing, tattoos always make you cool and interesting, dialogue that was funny when it shouldn't have been, too many adjectives, etc. But I thought that the Smart Bitches had really good insight to the themes of the book until I read the final line: Henderson’s assertions that 12 year old girls ought not read this book because of her mistaken perception as to the sexuality within the story are infuriating in light of the manner in which this book explores profoundly important issues. I can think of few books that should be required reading for teenage girls, but this is certainly one of them. It’s painful, and it’s important.

And then I almost took Smart Bitches off my RSS reader. (I didn't though, because I like what they say.) Why?

No one book should be required reading for teenage girls, or anyone else, and people who say things like that in a review irk me. (Call me a prude, too, but 99 times out of 100 I would not recommend Ink Exchange to a twelve-year-old. Message is one thing, execution of it is quite another.) No one book can speak to all people. To think otherwise is ridiculous. I also think a lot of readers would get so bogged down in the poor mechanics of this particular book that they'd miss the message the reviewer thinks is so important. I was talking about this with lizzb over IM, and here are some other phrases we think all reviewers, whether they review for professional journals or blogs or whatever, should never never never never use:

• "Well-written" (And that means what, exactly?)


• "Everyone must read this" (Everyone? Really?)


• "A must-have for all libraries" (Sorry, not unless it's guaranteed to circulate)


• "Has an important message" (Why is this always such an issue with children's books? We never require adult books to have a message!)


• "The next Harry Potter/Twilight/Percy Jackson/Elsewhere." (I should clarify this: I have absolutely no problem with reviewers who say something like "Harry Potter fans will like this" IF they can specify why. Most of the time, they don't/can't.)


• "For your sophisticated readers" (Who is "sophisticated?" And how insulting!)


• I gave this to my son/daughter/niece/nephew and he/she loved it! (No one cares.)

The thing that amazes me most? That reviewers for professional journals use these useless phrases at all. In a blog you can make your review as long or short as you like, but in a journal you're limited to 200 words, 250 if you're lucky. In 200 words I don't have the space to use "well-written," a phrase that means nothing and doesn't fulfill the purpose of a review. I have to tell the reader if the characterization is good, if the writing style works, if it'll circulate (which is not an easy answer to give), and say what generally makes it special or not, plus a quick plot summary.

Writing this entry didn't make my booktalks go away. Back to work.

Tags: books, reviewing
126: cranky
780: it's hard to leave when you can't find the door