In spite of her being my editor and really doing a bang-up job with my work, my editor and I have totally opposite taste in almost everything. She hates New York, I passionately love it. She thinks books for kids and teens should have hope, I think hope in a book about, for example, sexual slavery is false. She’s petite and lovely, and I am a ( Read more... )

So my ALA ended yesterday. Thank God. Yes, it was fun. It was also appalling, illuminating, horrifying, exhilarating and exciting. Too many -ing words make me want to quit the premises. My best moment came when sdn let me brush her hair. My worst was meeting Lois Lowry. Not once, but twice, I referred to her prize winning novel THE GIVER as ( Read more... )

So, next week is not just ALA, but YALSA’s 50th anniversary celebration and I have been invited. I am absurdly excited -- this is my first time at ALA. The year My Heartbeat received a Printz honor, ALA was in SARS-ridden Toronto and my doctor took one look at my allergy-ridden medical records and said NO. This year, it will be in D.C., and I’ ( Read more... )

I saw a fox this morning, as I rounded the corner into my backyard, bucket in hand, prepared to pick up debris from yesterday’s hail storm. There he sat, by the back juniper bush, all red, with black markings. He was big, and oddly beautiful. As my city girl brain tried to process what I was seeing (not a dog or a raccoon, oh my god, a fox!), I ( Read more... )

My birthday was over the weekend. Not a big one or anything -- let’s leave it that I’m no longer 35, and haven’t been for a few years now. We went to the Kennedy Center to watch The Suzanne Farrell Ballet dance Mozartiana into a deep sleep, but breathe life into both a scene from Béjart’s Romeo and Juliet and Balanchine’s “Slaughter on Tenth ( Read more... )

I finally finished reading Northanger Abbey and now I know that I don’t love all of Jane Austen. I feel particularly let down because the novel is one of Ian McEwan’s favorites. I guess that the enemy of your friend is your enemy, but the beloved novel of a beloved writer is not always your particular favorite. Bummer. This slim novel by ( Read more... )

Friday, June 1 ( Read more... )

I have not see the film 300, probably because I am not, even slightly, a member of its target audience. But this clip of it set to the 1982 song by the Weather Girls, has made me happy everytime I’ve looked at it. What silly thing makes you happy?

When Out of Africa came out, I had a lot of friends who were forever imitating Meryl Streep’s heavily accented voiceover, “I had a farm in Africa once,” but the line that always stuck with me was her saying, “I am a mental traveler.”

Although I was just in New York (where I met alg, whose smell is only rivaled by her force of nature self, and ( Read more... )

Although I have several stacks of books lying around my study, all clamoring for attention, right now I am rereading A Room With A View. I will, no doubt have more to post about it, as it is the sort of novel that lends itself to a variety of thoughts. I returned to this novel after my father said, No, I was wrong, Somerset Maugham was not as ( Read more... )