by Liza Dalby. This is one of the finest books I’ve read in years.  My tastes don’t run toward the literary and fine, but this was worth stepping out of the genres to read. It’s the “discovered” story of the author of The Tale of Genji, that is, the world’s first novel (debatable, but pretty […]

by Stephen Brust. Stuff is starting to fall into place.  If you’re a Stephen Brust fan, you should read this book. And maybe that’s all I need to say. For anybody who doesn’t know who Stephen Brust is or what he writes, he writes high fantasy that might be SF, if you look at it

by Tom Ang. I’m at the point with digital photography that I have two concerns:  how to make the camera do something even remotely resembling what I want, and what, exactly, am I looking for when it comes to good pictures. I read one of the Dummies books on digital photography and learned a lot

We went over to Dave and Margie’s for Twelfth Night on Saturday – not exactly the twelfth night after Christmas, but not March, either. Mary, Jackie, Stan, Doyce, Kate, and Randy were all over, too.  Margie did something I’ve never heard of before – as each guest came through the door, they had to take

Watch me bounce off the walls. "What do you think about Choose Your Own Adventure Books?" [Insert evil laugh here.] # @elizawhat Your high school boy-on-boy plot sounds like MANGA! # Semantic Saturation – a repeated word losing meaning. RT @BarelyKnit http://tumblr.com/xcq5i9mi8 # @bookoven Re: book soul mates. That's like having a library filled only

I went to my good-bye party for my old group at work, a month and a half after I actually left.  I guess I was kind of lucky; if we’d had it any earlier, the people I’d been working with the most wouldn’t have been able to go, and I would have been too broken

by Kiyohiko Azuma. This is a graphic novel about a little girl named Yotsuba who has green hair ponytailed into a four-leaf clover style. What can I say?  All of this series runs about the same, that is, brilliant.  This is the series that reminds me of Ray when she was younger. In this volume,

Welcome to the PPW January Write Brain, in which you will speed-date your most precious ideas to the audience!  You have 30 seconds to pitch your story!  And then an audience of thousands of jeering skeptics will mock your ideas by rating them on a scale of one to five, with one being absolute sucktitude

I’ve been reading Fox in Sox to Rachael since she was a baby.  I’ve been getting pretty good at it, too, as in being able to just make it through the damned thing without stumbling.  I’ve even been working on speed. The trick, I’ve found, is to not think of the words as words at

@ChuaoChocoholic Sweet! I want to be head Oompa Loompa when I grow up, too 🙂 in reply to ChuaoChocoholic # Hey! The Julie/Julia party is 20 Feb. Drop me a line if you're near Colo Spgs and want an invite, or just want to know WTF. # I WANT TRUFFLES! I've never had them. I