You know you read too much YA literature when you're watching tonight's episode of Monk and the first thing you think is, "OMG, they totally lifted that plotline from Love Curse of the Rumbaughs! (Which is getting THE BEST cover on its reprint later this year.) It's almost as scandalous as the time when all the YA lit world saw The Village and said, "OMG, they totally lifted that plotline from Running out of Time.

In other news, I seem to have caught my boss's nasty cold. Ugh.

Tags: books, tv
126: amused

The good: Mr. Cedar and I did not have water in our apartment yesterday. We're fine. The cats are fine. My coworkers are fine, except for two who had water in their basements.

The bad: I got back from my run last night (I forgot gloves. How do I do these things? I was so freakin' cold.) to find that I had no heat or hot water. It's 48F degrees out. Temperatures here will not reach 60F until Saturday, which is about when we expect to have our heat and hot water back. So I smell and I'm shivering because I don't have a shower at work, nor do I belong to a gym. Sorry. The story from the apartment office is that fuel lines are backed up all over the town, and our entire complex is out, and I did see workers in a spot where I usually don't see them this morning.

More bad: Many libraries in my system had to close yesterday due to flooded parking lots. One library had a flood in its children's section and that library is closed. I don't know what the damage is like, but I do know that that particular library's children's section is in the basement, so it can't be good. Another library's children's section flooded, but even though they had much damage to their carpeting, 98% of their books are still intact. My coworker took pictures of his neighborhood, which also flooded, but since they're not public I'll leave you with this picture of Bound Brook and this one of New Milford. Part of the road I have to take to get to a meeting this afternoon is flooded.

Currently reading: Does my Head Look Big in This by Randa Abdel-Fattah. Pakistani-Australian Muslim private school student Amal has been inspired by Jennifer Aniston to wear the hijab full time. It's a decision she makes confidently and with the support of her closest friends and family. She's also the only Muslim girl at her school, and is met with opposition from mean girls and less-than-tolerant faculty. It is funny and witty if a little heavy-handed at times, and definitely worth a read. Randa Abdel-Fattah, if you ever read this, THANK YOU for writing this book. Not only is it something we desperately need in the YA world, but you handled it so beautifully, with a warm, charming main character who will inspire readers to be not only tolerant, but confident.

Currently watching: Flavor of Love Charm School. Pure comedy gold, but it works best if you've seen both seasons of Flavor of Love. You just KNOW that the person who said, "Hey, we should totally get Flavor Flav to do The Surreal Life" that fateful day at a conference table now has the corner office and his/her own personal secretary, and probably lunch delivered from Spago every day. I'm not sure who to put money on just yet, but I'm leaning towards Toasteee and Goldie. Scuse me. Jennifer and Courtney.

Currently annoyed by: Reviewers, writers, publishers, librarians, readers, etc. who cite every dogdamn children's and YA fantasy book or series as "The next Harry Potter" or "The ______ Harry Potter." I'm SICK of it. CAPSLOCK SICK OF IT. I don't want to hear about your dragon rider!Harry Potter or your black!Harry Potter or your green!Harry Potter or your time-and-space-travel!Harry Potter or your girl!Harry Potter. Yes, yes, readalikes, blah blah blah, but none of this "It's the next Harry Potter" actually tells me anything about the quality or content of the book. I don't want to hear how your book is leikomg So Much Better than Harry Potter, because in some ways it might be and in some ways it might not. Eragon certainly wasn't. Stephen King said it best: Harry Potter is Harry Potter, you dolts. Believe me, I appreciate what Harry Potter has done for the publishing industry, plus I love the books. But calling so much fantasy "the next Harry Potter" is akin to calling every chick lit YA book "the next Gossip Girl" or every GLBTQ book "the next Boy Meets Boy." Some of the stories are similar, yes. Pendragon and Harry Potter both use elements of the hero's journey and both have megalomaniac, melodramatic villains. But comparing D.J. MacHale's writing style to J.K. Rowling's is comparing apples and pineapples. She writes better emotions, and he writes better action sequences. Where she has maybe 3 multidimensional peripheral recurring characters, he's got about 7 or 8, and that's on a much smaller scale. Bobby Pendragon is not "the next Harry Potter," he's just Bobby Pendragon. And I like that on its own. So reviewers, writers, publishers, librarians, readers, etc., please do tell me about your really cool upcoming fantasy series about Native American time-traveling gnome hunters. I want to at least take a look at it. But please don't tell me it's the next Harry Potter, because it probably isn't.

Tags: 2007, books, rants, tv
126: thirsty
780: everybody's talking all this stuff about me, why don't they just let me live

1. I am not signing up for this year's percy_ficathon because I am still writing the fic I was supposed to turn in for last year's percy_ficathon. I also did not tell the mods I needed someone to pinch-hit for me. This, my friends, is how NOT to be a good member of the fandom. That is, in fact, a really good way to make people hate you and if the ficathon mods ban me forever, I deserve it. I still feel horrendously guilty about it. That's the only ficathon fic I've ever signed up to finish and didn't, even though I thought I would. Someday I'll finish the fic I owe. loupnoir even did a really terrific beta for it. Lately I've just had a hard time facing fandom. I feel like I've come to a standstill. I don't feel like working on my fics, and I can't work on Morality... until after Phoenix Rising anyway. And anyway, I promised myself I would only sign up for two fic fests this year: Remix and Smutmas. I think fandom is fun. I think fandomers are a great group of people. But I'm feeling burned out.

Some of this, I'm sure, has to do with my job. The job I took last year has about ten times the responsibility and demands of the job I had for three years before that, three years in which I produced some pretty good fic but couldn't get that far in my career. Now I have an amazingly cool job and am making a little progress, career-wise, but fandom has taken a far back seat. I don't want to leave. I've been here nearly 5 years and it's important to me. I LIKE writing fanfic. It's fun and for the most part relaxing. Most of what I know about writing and reading I've learned in fandom. Because of fandom, I'm a better book reviewer. Right now, however, it feels like One More Thing To Do. My burnout is leading me to fade away.

2. Speaking of Job, if you've been IMing me during the day for the past few weeks and I haven't responded, it's because Job has eaten my brain. I have a huge presentation to do on Thursday, and I had only about a month to get all the prep work done and the handouts printed. I haven't seen the surface of my desk since January. So most of what I've been reading for the past month have been the books on the summer reading program. I have, however, read Devilish by Maureen Johnson (fun read, delightful concept, fabulous characters, but took much too long to get to the point) and Beastly by Alex Flinn (urban retelling of Beauty and the Beast, with just the right use of melodramatic fairy tale language against the New York backdrop). Now that I'm done with Big Project #1, I have to work on Big Project #2 and then do a reading sprint to get everything read that I need to have read by June.

3. I continue to run according to my training program but I don't seem to continue to get any better at it. I continue to eat less and exercise more, but my scale does not move (although I do have more muscle definition and look a little better than I have). As Georgia Nicolson would say, it is Vair Vair Frustrating. If I had shower facilities at work or a gym closer than six miles from said work, I would start working out on my lunch break, too.

4. Henry chipped one of his front teeth. His adult teeth are in but his head is still kitten-size, so he looks like a little gray-and-white spotted vampire. He's going to the vet on Monday.

5. I saw Blades of Glory because Mr. Cedar wanted to and, well, it was better than The Phantom Menace. It was not as good as the Spider-Man and Pirates of the Caribbean trailers that came before it.

6. Team Brittany! (Also teams Natasha and Jael.) Team Anyone-But-Renee.

7. Are praetorianguard and I the only ones watching the Pussycat Dolls: Search for the Next Doll? Have the idiot judges complaining about Anastascia's "weight gain" noticed that she's about five inches taller than all the other girls? That aside, I want a pink feather boa.

8. If I wanted to get someone a custom-lettered t-shirt, what's a good website to purchase it from?

9. All my reading enthusiasm are belong to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. SOMEONE has the latest Gossip Girl book AND a preview of the upcoming prequel, plus some other books that look pretty fantastic. But someone DOES NOT have an advance of Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer and there will be a separate post on that.

10. I have these in green and I now want them in brown and black. Because you know what they say: If the shoe fits, buy it in three colors.

Tags: 2007, books, fandom, tv