Gwenda

• Fusenumber8 has all the relevant links for looking in on the awarding of the Caldecott, Newbery, Coretta Scott King and Printz awards on Monday.
• The divine and hardcore-hockey-playing Cecil Castellucci has started a new blog where she’ll be posting different people’s top 10 punk lists in honor of her most excellent new novel Beige, due out this summer.
• New Young Pony Club tracks.
• Carl Zimmer relates a Mark Twain anecdote: Mark Twain once discovered to his horror that his story "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" had been hideously translated into French. He went so far as to publish the original story, the translation, and his own retranslation of the French back to English to show just how badly it had been abused. "I claim that I never put together such an odious mixture of bad grammar and delirium tremens in my life," he declared. Apparently not as bad as being translated by Creationists.

• And now I officially know how cold is TOO cold. Brrrr. Sore throat miserably hanging on, cough cough cough, as am I — tonight’s my last night here, then one in a hotel, then HOME HOME HOME. (Yes, Carrie, I’m taking the echinacea/goldenseal/usnea/vitamin C cocktail at least twice a day — it may be keeping me going.)
• Scholar’s Blog is a new one to me — an independent English scholar focusing on fantasy books, including lots of ones for children. See also: her excellent children’s and YA book meme, which I’ll do as soon as I have time. (Via Big A little a.)
• Daniel Handler reviews kids’ etiquette books for the NYT.
• Bizarro World: 1949 Time piece that touches on the fad of SF. (Via Matt.)
• Chicken Spaghetti compiles a list of all the formal Best ofs for children’s books in 2006. Particularly handy if you are deciding what to read this semester.
• Jenny D posts an amazing little excerpt from The Invention of Telepathy.
• Maud on Jesus Camp.

Sore throat’s back, with a cough. (And I never get coughs!) But I’m rethinking my novel and taking in as much as I can and some nice person gave me cough drops, so everything will be okay. Assuming I get some sleep tonight.

• Matthew Cheney has all the goods on how you can help indie publishers being hurt by the AMS/PGW debacle.
• Jeff VanderMeer on what he’s seeing while reading for Best American Fantasy.
• Peter Matthiessen admits that establishing The Paris Review was part of his CIA cover story. (Via Maud.)
• John Crowley on books that critics, reviewers, and even readers love, but which the writers may consider failures, jumping off a Zadie Smith comment. (Girl can give an interview.)
• An oldish Terri Windling article on Gypsies. Fabulous!
• Lauren Cerand on poetry over at Callie’s place.
• This Book is For You on Glamour magazine (pro). I know I’m always happy the years that’s the women’s magazine that my dad accidentally subscribes to.

Not that I’m really taking in any of the information I look at online, but the colors are pretty and the scrolling comforts me — and I have a sore throat now (!) and an hour-long break before tonight’s faculty reading by Sharon Darrow, Margaret Bechard, Kathi Appelt and Jane Kurtz, which should be a lot of fun. Then, I plan to go into a coma until at least 10 a.m. tomorrow, when my sore throat is miraculously gone. Yesterday, I went to a great lecture by poet Julie Larios on critical reading for writers, and today an excellent one by Uma Krishnaswami on dialogue and another by a graduating student on the shapeshifter in fiction. I can’t believe it’s only Thursday. Everyone here is so smart.

But, anyway, here’s a few linkies in the meanwhile:

• Skip Moles’s younger brother Dave kicks off a discussion on characterization with some assertions. Make sure to check out the comments; I like Maureen McHugh’s: "All people might be interesting (although I have met some who hid it really really well) but there are no people in books.  There are only words.  Characters in a story aren’t people.  C’est nest pas un pipe.  So I still think there’s an obligation there…"
• Bookburger has a fabulous interview with the divine Miss Cecil Castellucci (whose new book is going to knock all your socks right off), in which she plugs Walter Tevis (and James Tiptree, Jr.!), something that always makes me happy.
• Billy Sothern remembers Helen Hill in the NYT. Have you sent your fax yet? It’s not too late. (Via Jenny D.)
• Eos is looking for twenty early readers to check out Vicki Pettersson’s debut novel The Scent of Shadows; go here for the details on how to volunteer.
• Frank O’Hara rejects Harold Ross’s rejection, January 1939. This sentence cracks me up: "As a matter of fact when a writer writes in spurts, as I do, there is just as good a chance that everything he produces in a spurt will be good." (Via Maud.)
• John Crowley has posted the drool-worthy nonfiction book list on strange and unusual humans, and that sort of thing.
• Strange Horizons has a podcast and Susan has the goods on how to subscribe.

Did I mention I have a sore throat and am exhausted? Bye now.