Gwenda

For the Record (updated)

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And since I’m sure it won’t last long, I’m currently in second place in the Tourney of Books Book Bloggers’ Office Pool; this notable, since for most of the competition I’ve been proudly sporting the lanterne rouge.

This is based purely on my love of The Road, and thus The Sci-Fi comes through yet again. (I kid.) (But it is.) I suspect that Brockman, Condalmo or Max is going to end up with the big win, so I’m choosing to seize a little moment of baskery in which I do not feel guilty for completely letting Catherine Schneider of Austin down down down.

Updated: Wow, I never thought Oprah would co-opt my love of The Road. I guess this means everyone has to stop referring to her book club picks as "middle brow." I rub my hands together evilly in anticipation of discussion day.

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Tuesday Hangovers

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Playing Favorites

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Cloudscome over at A Wrung Sponge tagged me for the five favorite non-book blogs meme, in which I happily participate. There are a few, you know, non-book blogs out there. Or so I’ve heard. And I read some of them, mostly of the science and musical persuasion, but this is actually hard because even the blogs I read that don’t deal with the fictional arts very often are mostly written by writers and thus ineligible. Still, I’m actually going to cheat and do six. So, in no particular order:

  • Aetiology by epidemiologist Tara C. Smith – This is one of my favorite science blogs. As its tagline says, it focuses on "discussing causes, origins, evolution, and implications of disease and other phenomena." Yeah, I’m a big nerd. Like you didn’t know that.
  • About Last Night by Terry Teachout and Our Girl in Chicago – So, yeah, this one’s kind of a cheat, but they talk about so much other stuff it hardly seems like it. Terry was one of the very first people I ever "met" online in the litblog worldiverse, way back when I discovered it existed (several years ago now), and he was as erudite and welcoming and NICE as anyone could have been. I love both these guys and reading about their whirlwind interests is never, ever dull. Now if only they had a full post RSS feed, I could keep up with them every day rather than once a week…
  • Homo Sum by Chris McLaren – Well, Chris is my favorite big-headed Canadian whiskey man in the world entire, so of course he’s on the list. Yes, he also posts about books and reads a lot, but he posts about life and politics and etcetera just as frequently. And he’s high-larious some days, lyrical and nostalgic others, and sometimes both at once.
  • Lux Lotus by Lauren Cerand –   Yes, yes, Lauren’s also a book person and compiles the fabulous Smart Set for Maud, BUT her blog is a lovely beacon of style in a style-challenged world. I love it for her links to beautiful things and unusual things, for pointers to the art and music she’s enjoying. Basically, I love Lux Lotus; the Windowlicker is my favorite.
  • Pullquote by the Cinetrix – My favorite movie blog, which also features enough miscellaneous posts to keep you on your toes. You never know exactly what you’ll get, but you know it will be good. Trixie always has the best mix of sass and smarts, class and cacophony.
  • Said the Gramophone by various – Somehow the tracks I find here are always the ones I fall most in love with. And I really do think this blog has some of the best music writing out there.

And a posthumous shout-out to Dana’s deceased Number One Hit Song, which was my favorite non-books-all-the-time blog ever. It’s worth losing your day to the archives.

(Um, I don’t consider this to really be a blog, it’s just pictures of puppies, but yeah, it’s one of the first stops in the morning. I’m also a big ole puppy softie.)

I tag any and all y’all, because I’m always curious to see what people are reading outside of blogs about books.

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Monday Hangovers

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Thursday Hangovers, or Almost Posts

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  • My apologies for the general level of suck around here this week. My Devil Bug of Doom has been a persistent foe, striking at will for the past several days, all while I try to make it to work, write new novel pages, make sure our familial houseguests are taken care of, and enjoy Puck and Emma playing with each other (and keep Puck from chasing the cat, until he’s ready to be chased), etcetera. No e-mail catch-up as planned, but if you’re waiting for a response I’ll get to it this weekend. Promiso. Right now, I’m going to curl up on le couch and watch last night’s Bones. This is less of a hangovers post and more a bunch of mini-posts slammed together sort of thing. Fair warning.
  • If you’re a writer-type (or a discerning reader-type) and you don’t read J.L. Bell’s Oz and Ends, you’re really missing out. I just realized I have four of his posts starred to link and it’s gotten to the point where I’m intending to link everything he posts. So just read the blog entire.
  • The indefatigable Cynthia Leitich Smith interviews the Readergirlz.
  • Colleen Mondor asks where the YA science fiction is and notes that recent examples she can name aren’t labeled as such by their publishers; agent Barry Goldblatt responds in the comments that "Unfortunately, "science fiction" is still basically a curse word in YA publishing. While fantasy has overcome the geek/nerd association, science fiction is still firmly saddled with it." His entire response is well worth your time. Ever since I’ve been paying attention to this issue, I’ve heard various editors and agents say they would love to get more good science fiction submissions, but just don’t see much. I have to say that I really have less of a problem with fear of the label, as long as stuff is getting published–BUT I will also say that I’ve run into some puzzling attitudes lately that only regard as SF things that are called such by publishers. That includes works of both science fiction and fantasy, so perhaps the shyness to call an alien an alien (or whatever) may hurt in the overall "let’s stop pretending realism is all there is or somehow innately superior and SF is for nerds only" wars. It also says to me that beneath the fear of the term there is an underlying realization these are excellent books that deserve wide audiences, and it’s hard to quarrel with that.
  • Any Brotherhood 2.0 that includes urban exploration is automatically THE BEST INSTALLMENT ever. This is why YA is the awesomest: NBA winner Tobin Anderson committing crimes on tape. I ask, will you see Richard Powers doing this? I think not. Also, I want to see the post office with the forest inside.
  • Justine asks: Great editing or great publicity from your publisher (assuming you can only choose one)? I’d have to go with editing, because I think a really fabulous editor is worth their weight in gold and also can be an advocate on the inside. A really, really fabulous editor will even care about your career and not just the book in question. And that’s what sending boxes of champagne to the PR staff is for, right? Or, you know, hiring a freelance publicist and working your butt off. That said, I realize this is more complicated than that and also that if you really do only have one of these things, you probably obsess over how you wish you had the other one too. I dream of puppies, kittens, publicity teams and editrons. In the end, it’s about the work and, paraphrasing the immortal words of John Banville, time is the best judge.
  • Andy Duncan: Does he work for WD-40? Somehow I’ve lived my adult life without ever needing this stuff. (Jinx!)

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Pet Food Jeopardy (Updated)

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Max Adams (who loves animule kind) reminds me to post a link to the Menu Foods pet food recall stuff on the off chance you haven’t heard. It turns out, a lot of dog and cat food — the wet stuff, in this case — comes from the same place and it may be contaminated with something that causes kidney failure. We don’t use the stuff because we don’t reliably brush the animules’ teeth (plus, the cat wouldn’t let us if we tried). But if you do use it, it’s worth making sure you don’t have any of the contaminated stuff.

Updated: Max has lots of excellent links with more info.

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Tuesday Hangovers

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  • Chris McLaren on the hard-won Rules of Drinking, tossed out the window on another continent on a birthday.
  • The Twelth Carnival of Children’s Literature is up.
  • Susan Beth Pfeffer gets interviewed by the Slush God about Life as We Knew It: Pfeffer got the idea for the novel after watching the 1979 movie Meteor, she said. "It got me thinking about how the people who have the most to lose if the world comes to an end are kids, and the next thing I knew, I was working out all the details," she said. She also reveals that she just finished a companion book called The Dead and the Gone, about a "lower-middle-class teenage boy in New York City" and how the same meteor changes things for him.
  • For everyone who thinks those irritating, look-down-your-nose opinions of SF don’t exist anymore, two links: Sam Jordison’s post that starts with the declaration "At the risk of sounding like a nerd, I’m beginning to think science fiction’s actually quite good" and Andrew Wheeler taking the NYT to task for its note about Jonathan Lethem that "some may recall that early in his career, Lethem was often pegged as a sci-fi writer himself." I like George at Bookninja’s take on Jordison best: It’s a stretch for him to consider Vonnegut, Ballard and Pynchon SF. I guess that’s the key here. He’s heard of “sci-fi”, but hasn’t quite grasped “SF”.
  • Please, let’s all stop now.Tbscalziposter3
  • The one and only Theo Black made up some posters for the Scalzi campaign.
  • You can win one of 15 copies of Liz Hand’s new novel Generation Loss at the Great American Book Giveaway. I haven’t gotten a chance to finish it yet, despite my best efforts (it’s the next on my Books for Adults list For Sure), but what I have read of it is AMAZING. And I may go crazy if I don’t get a chance to finish it soonest.
  • Lisa Yee meets Carol Burnett and Burnett looks so very cool.
  • More cute puppy pictures. After taking these, C handed me the camera and said, "That it, no more cute pictures of dogs." I had to explain that you can’t just go cold turkey on something like that.

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