My favorite books ever are Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.* Actually, I don’t remember whether I liked them when I was a kid–I think, vaguely, I thought they were just too weird. But maybe that’s just apocryphal memory-making. In high school, a friend of mine reintroduced me to them, and to The Annotated […]

The story of endless rejections (okay, 11) is getting published! “Fragile” is going to Parade of Phantoms. I will, of course, do the happy dance and announce when I know it’s going to go public.

So, in the spirit of the previous post, here are my recommendations for books for cookbook lovers: The Art of Eating, by MFK Fisher. This book collects four of Fisher’s essay collections. There are a few recipes, but the book is more about the author’s love of everything and how it ties into food than

Barbara Fisher talks about cookbooks and the cooks who love them over at Tigers & Strawberries: No–I think it is more fun to give the bookish cook a real live book, and see their eyes light up with joy upon unwrapping it. You can just tell that he or she wants to just open the

by Michael Dibdin. Okay, I admit it. The last Harry Potter book was my most-anticipated-book-of-2007. The Mysterious Benedict Society was my favorite new book of 2007. Kare Kano and Fruits Basket are tied for tops in my “Manga that made me laugh out loud, manga that made me cry” category for 2007. Ratking is my

Aside from a small, immobile golem, the front of my monitor contains the following items: Busted lei with shells Artificial daisy, yellow Seven apple seeds Eight purple plastic gems One turquoise plastic gem One polished piece of quartz One small clear plastic gem Artificial rose, purple All in all, it looks like an altar to

…Or just weightless in the back of an airplane. Please click the link if you need to laugh so hard you cry 🙂 (via Neatorama.)

At my parents’ house, we used to make homemade pizza every Saturday night. (This was before Uncle Howard died of a heart attack in his forties and Dad’s cholesterol was afterwards discovered to be terrifyingly high.) My mom does most of the cooking, but (like grilling in most households), pizza is Dad’s domain. If I’m

50K words + has been achieved. Many, many words still left to go. It occurred to my yesterday that I’ve now written 4.5 novels: Gods of Grey HillAlien BlueThe Magic ThreadWFH Novel (which shall not be named)…And 1/2 of Iron Road. I’m not counting the one chapter of The Black Notebook. I liked the characters,

I’m less than 200 words from 50K and about halfway done. This is tempered by the rejection e-mail I got yesterday. Stupid, ill-timed rejection letters. “All right, folks,” Gil said. “Let’s start unloading this stuff!” Cochran went back into the ship. When Nancy came out with an armload of big hinges, she saw him sitting