The Shipping News totally seems like a book club kind of book (I believe the proper term is "literary fiction.") I am not in a book club and it's not the kind of book I'm normally drawn to, but it's good to expand one's horizons. It's about a guy named Quoyle who moves to Middle-of-Nowhere, Newfoundland, where his family are legendary lunatics, and ( Read more... )

Yes, you can turn right on a red light.

No, you cannot freely run over any pedestrians crossing the street at the time.

Really, this is not so hard to understand.

Yeah, I've fallen off the pace a bit what with moving and all, but Book #3 for the 1% Well Read Challenge is Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. I'm trying to think of what I can tell you about it without Giving Things Away. It starts off in Victorian London where Sue gets recruited by a conman acquaintance to help him marry an heiress. The plan (or so it ( Read more... )

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I thought I had enough cough drops to last till the Second Coming.

I was wrong. Or else I missed the Second Coming.

In other news, I have finished Kissing in Manhattan by David Schickler and I am kind of at a loss for words. It's a collection of loosely linked short stories and I guess if you kind of squint you might say they're creepy and ( Read more... )

I have a shiny new library card.


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After considering the list of things I would need to buy to make real muffins (flour, spices, measuring spoons), I bought muffin mix instead.

They turned out better than I expected.

I am writing this at a Starbucks because as yet I have no internet at home (Thursday cannot come soon enough.) That's right kids, I'm one of those people hunched over a laptop in a coffee shop trying to look like I am writing a novel or something similarly cool. (Admittedly, not trying very hard ( Read more... )

Well, I've been meaning to read The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides for a good long while and I finally got around to it. The best part was that my library copy had this post-it note stuck on the front page:


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So, I kept thinking to myself "The Internet seems kind of different today. What's up with that?"

Yeah, somehow I didn't notice that I had opened Internet Explorer instead of Firefox.