Some People Think It's Okay

Junot Diaz on becoming a writer:

One night in August, unable to sleep, sickened that I was giving up, but even more frightened by the thought of having to return to the writing, I dug out the manuscript. I figured if I could find one good thing in the pages I would go back to it. Just one good thing.

(via Gwenda)

Alexander Chee on studying with Annie Dillard at Wes:

In my clearest memory of her, it’s spring, and she is walking towards me, smiling, her lipstick looking neatly cut around her smile. I never ask her why she’s smiling—for all I know, she’s laughing at me as I stand smoking in front of the building where we’ll have class. She’s Annie Dillard, and I am her writing student, a 21-year-old cliché—black clothes, deliberately mussed hair, cigarettes, dark but poppy music on my Walkman. I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m funny.

(Via Maud Newton on Twitter)

Jonathan Lethem interviewed in the Paris Review in 2003

I’d challenged myself to tell all I knew, to tell where I’d been in the world, and what I knew about class and culture as a result.

(Via Anthony Ha via Alice)

Lorrie Moore interviewed in the Believer in 2005

Oh, the precarious position of fiction in our world: that over the last several decades the novel has continually been declared dead, and the short story is in constant resurrection, which means half-dead or post-dead or heaven-bound. But one continues writing anyway—as has been said by many—because one must.

(Via everywhere when her new book came out)

Love,
Meghan

is the only Lou Reed song I ever learned to play or perform, though I could probably sing a decent number for you, given the right reason.  And it's Friday night.  And the song in my head right now is "New York I Love You (But You're Bringing Me Down)."  Or it was until _stranger_here made a post about the PS22 Chorus and then I listened to their Lady GaGa cover.  Lady GaGa is not on my radar, or so I thought, but I recognized the song and I like a woman who wears glasses like these.

******

I keep meaning to make blog posts.  Informative ones, like "Kids Books for Cute Overload Lovers." (Hint: this one.)  Thoughtful ones like, "So I Read This Book About Music And It Was Interesting but Sexist I Know You're Shocked." (Hint: this one.)  Blah blah ones like, "I Eat a Gluten Free Diet Now That Shit Is Crazy."  Or just pictures of my new pants.  I got new pants.  Seven years too late, I bought some black jeans, but I still think I look cute.

****

But I am too rambly for the internet, even!  I like Twitter, though there are a lot of peppy people on there.  They're peppy because their twitter accounts exist primarily for publicity and/or networking.  But this pep seems to bleed into everyone else, like we are all out their promoting ourselves.  And, really.  Just ourselves.  I feel like I shouldn't be cursing.  Also, Twitter sure as hell encourages the cute.  I cop to this completely.

****

The post I really keep meaning to make is "I Have Lived In New York for a Year!"  Except that was back in August.  "I Have Lived In New York for About Fourteen Months!" feels less like a blogging occassion.  It is October and it's getting cold and New York is totally about to become shitty.  I can see where they grey snow will gather in clumps, and therefore I really, really shouldn't be blogging about the city!  But I am. 

New York is the only civilized place to live.  You can go see all the movies, you can eat all the food, you can take in all the "culture," and you can get there on a subway car.  If you are really fancy you will go in a cab, because all the suckers/pleebs are in the subway!  For my first nine months here, I was a New York maximizer, or at least an attempt at being one.  There were so many things to do, and I did a tiny portion of them.  Then I quit my secondary, pocket-lining but straw-camel-back job, and there were no more bucks for NYC bonanza.  Plus, my stomach being so illimatic took some of the fun out of the food eating.  So now I go out a couple times a week, like, when someone calls me, I do not chose my own adventure, and otherwise hang with my dog and talk on the phone to my girlfriend.  Talking to my girlfriend on the phone is pretty awesome, and I am not just saying that because she is reading this.  But I'm not sure I'm making the most of living at the height of civilization.

Honestly, what I want is some time.  Some focus.  I am still writing -- oh yes!  I have a crazy plan, which sometimes happens, of getting up super early -- before I take the dog to the park, before I make my crazy hippie doctor breakfast, before my hour commute -- and writing something down.  I feel so good when I do this.  But even when I do do this, I feel like I'm chip chip chipping away at a ginormous block, and someday it will be a statue, but it is going to take so goddamn long I'm probably going to keep losing track of what kind of statue it is and surely I will hack off the wrong parts and then I'll have to change my mind, and by the time I get to the end I will be a completely different person/statue-maker -- etc.  I want to go to town on that block.  I want to make a crazy fucking statue and go right to work on another.  At the very least, I want to stop throwing mental tantrums about the interesting, people-seeing parts of my life because I can't seem to fit solitary, crazy writing around them.

So, New York.  Good for being interesting.  And for people.  Bad for creative ambition.  Or, not ambition.  I have been working at a bookstore, after all, and I have been reading like a mofo, and it has stoked ambitions.  Though this copious reading and learning has been offset by the realization that very few people give a shit about 80% - 90% of books.  Actually, yeah, overall I would not recommend working in a bookstore to writers, especially not a tiny independent that can only keep the cream of the crop, and even then only the most recent cream that sells, on its shelves.  It seems that the key to selling is write something exciting, comforting, or extraordinary, and those qualities are alchemical.  That said, I have also become strangely addicted to bookselling -- I can't imagine doing much else. 

But, anyway.  New York: good for being in New York.  Bad for creative focus.  On that note, I should go to bed.  So i can get up and get some writing done tomorrow.

Love,
Meghan

I took part in an interview up at Clarkesworld with many other really awesome writers (glvalentine ,  N.K. Jemisin, al.)  You can find it here. 

After reading it over, I have to say I'm disappointed in one aspect of my answers, and I'd like to clear it up here.  When asked about community, and how I felt about my place in the genre, I was ovewhelmingly positive, very rah-rah.  I didn't add that I have been fantastically lucky, and that I have been fantastically dismayed by the behavior of people in the genre around race, gender, and sexuality over the past year.  But the thing is?  When those ridiculous assholes show up, and they do, the response from the allies and activists is SO AMAZING, that then I feel love for the genre again.  Because here's the thing about the assholes -- their narrow-mindedness is reflected in their work.  We're here because of the writing, and I (stupidly optimistically) believe that the stories that will come to define what science fiction and fantasy are, that will define our community, are the ones with big visions and incredible insights and fantastic prose, not the flat, cramped imaginings of privileged people too afraid to look around. 

So, as a result, my definition of "genre community" is "people whose work I'm excited by," which is totally incorrect, and I'm showing my priviledge by believing we can just outwrite them (and that those already doing amazing work have created enough of a safe space).  The wider SF genre is not living up to its promise of being forward-looking.  Of exploring possibilities.  And that causes amazing people to feel like they have no place here.  Instead of ignoring that, I'd like to formally call bullshit. 

Edited to add:  I dashed off a little closing line here right before I ran off, late for work about how the genre belongs to people who are outside of the societal norm of whiteness, heteroness, and maleness.  Of course, I forgot to add that it's doesn't only belong to them -- it doesn't belong to any type of person, besides, one hopes, generous people who love SFF.  But also?  People with priviledge never question whether there is a place for them -- that's what priviledge means -- and when you look at anthos and award ballots, you can see the priviledged are not exactly hurting.  The genre needs to state that there is a place for those people who do NOT fit that norm, actively.  Because what set me off was reading those interviews, and realizing that my fellow emergers did not feel as welcome, or optimistic, as I did.

I recently re-read Alison Bechdel's knockout, I mean, OMG, graphic memoir Fun Home, which deals with, amongst many other things, the way we use literature to discover ourselves.  Bechdel's coming out process is portrayed as a frenzied process of reading, where she uses the gay and lesbian section of the bookstore as a roadmap for becoming, and understanding, the person she really is.  The memoir ends with a meditation on finding one's "erotic truth," a process that at first glance you'd expect to be profoundly private.  But that's not it at all -- all of us, but especially those of us who are queer, are offered erotic lies, in a loud, slamming clamor designed to drown out whatever we actually want.  Bechdel's frantic reading touches on the fact that often, to hearing our own truth involves finding someone else who has been able to speak it, and hearing an echo in ourselves.

That's one reason I am so excited to have discovered, and promptly joined, The Outer Alliance.  They are having their first (annual?) pride day, and people all over the SF blogoverse are posting the following in support, which is so fucking cool:
Another big reason why I'm so excited about this is more personal.  I've been feeling pretty conflicted about the breakdown between the personal and the internet lately, which is one of the reasons my blog has been so unblogged.  But if I'm going to complain about queer invisibility in the genre (wait for it), might as well start with myself.

My experience coming out as a writer and as a lesbian have always felt like two sides of the same coin.  I have always written stories.  I have always desired women.  For most of my life, these two things seemed unremarkable, barely worth addressing, at least until they seemed in danger of being noticed.  Then I was quick to stash my notebooks and avert my eyes, like what I had been writing, or looking at, was on fire.  I really did believe that both my writing and my attractions were just a cries for attention, or a phase.  As a result, I ran around like a crazy person, trying to find what I was "really" about.  I would be a lawyer, a linguist, a songwriter, a filmmaker.  I would go with this guy, or that guy, or maybe that one over there, because surely I would want one of them eventually, right?

By the end of college, this was starting to break down.  I had showed friends stories; I had kissed some girls.  Slowly but surely, I had to admit that the reading and the writing and the women felt so right, so correct, while all of my hair-brained solutions to the problem of "what do I want?", while occasionally interesting, ultimately led to misery.  Not that this was some sort of clean, movie epiphany.  The same realizations came, over and over, and over and over I ignored them, or came up with a new excuse.  I tried being a screenwriter & a bisexual at, basically, the exact same time.  (I should note I have infinite respect for both these disciplines, but they are not for me.  So much outlining!)  When I was finally ready to pay attention, the epiphanies came together, paired.  Oh, I like fiction.  Oh, I like girls.  And even then, the experience was hardly neat and tidy.  But man, did it feel good.

Since the SF community has been so important to both my writerness and gayness, I sometimes find myself disappointed in, well, how straight it can be.  Or, that's not right.  Some of the best writing about gender and sexuality and desire, period, has happened, and continues to happen, in the SF field.  Science fiction and fantasy occupy an unique place in literature because they offer the opportunity to explore possibilities, and I believe we continue to support things like the Tiptree Award because so much fascinating work is being done within the genre.  But while that exploration is out there, queer people don't exist in much of the fiction that's published, and that's not unique, or an accident.  Lately there's been more gay men and bisexuals showing up, but the lack of lesbians and transfolk and other flavors of queer is starting to glare.   So, hey.  Let's voice all different sorts of erotic truths.

Actually, today has been awesome in bringing to light how much queer writing IS going on.  Let me add myself to the fray: all of my fiction online features someone non-hetero -- you can find links here.

"The Magician's House" is on the Million Writer's notable story list for 2008!  Lots of other great stuff on there -- We Love Deena by my dearest Alice Kim, for instance, and a great reprint from M. Richard Butner.  Oh, and ditto Richard Larson on having mad enjoyed "Pittsburgh" by Meghan Austin.

In other news: have some cute dog pictures.  The little white one looking somewhat RCA-doggish is Sadie.  My downstairs neighbor is the photographer, and she got to model for free. 

Love,
Meghan

A propos of my last entry, I should add that I keep up kinda-sorta well with this Twitter business.  Oh, I was so suspicious.  But oh, it really is kinda fun.  Je tweet, tu tweets, on tweet, etc.

Love,
Meghan

It seems my last blog entry was... three weeks ago?  Allow me to confess I'm not entirely sure how that happened.  I mean, I only figured out on, say, Thursday, that I actually did have to do my taxes this weekend because there were no more weekends after that.  April 13th wha?

Oh man, but doing those taxes helped to remind me how the internet works.  Namely: you have to sit in front of a computer all day.  You must do this because you have some sort of unpleasant obligation on this computer.  But -- oh my! -- there all sorts of other pleasant things to see on this same computer.  Hell, not even pleasant, but at least informative.  Or even angry-making.  So, in between bouts of required unpleasantness, you roam far and wide and become angry and informed and... pleasant-ified?

Anyway.  I no longer sit in front of a computer all day, or for even a few hours a day.  In fact, I don't sit.  And, because New York is fantastic and/or crazy, after work I end up going out four or five nights a week.  I'm not saying I don't read the internet.  I have been a devotee of the internet since I was 12 and am hardly stopping now.  But since I'm catching it in large, strangely-timed gulps, I feel much less a part of the conversation, if that makes a lick of sense.  So I listen, but have less to say.

(I have less to say in writing in general.  I've spent the past few months revising and re-revising a 2,500 word story.  Clearly, I am not in a lively blogging kind of place.)

This weekend I met someone I've known for a couple years online.  It's this specific, awkward-yet-delicious experience, putting together pictures and pieces of texts and emailed secrets with the voice and mannerisms and funny stories you are now encountering.  Personal connections made on the internet have a specific quality that I'm extremely fond of, and I hope my silence doesn't cause those to dry up.  I suppose what I'm trying to say is I still love y'all; I'm just going to be a terrible correspondent for awhile. 

Love,
Meghan

I have been avidly following this year's Tournament of Books.  First of all,  I love me a good competition.  Also, due to this whole "working in a bookstore" thing, most of the books were already on my radar, and it's totally fun to see them matched up in random, sometimes absurd ways.  Plus, the randomness has lead to some fascinating discussions.  A huge amount of discussion has focused on a book I read and thoroughly enjoyed last year, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.  Its initial dismissal was textbook how to suppress women's writing, but that dishonor has lead to a lot of great discussion since.  I just weighed in with my (lengthy) thoughts.  Now I wish we'd made a bracket for this tourney at work -- I have no idea how my basketball bracket is doing.

Love,
Meghan

Seeking Avalon sums it up beautifully, and damningly:

RaceFail 09 started because I dared to point out to a White Author that she didn't have it all right when it came to race and representation in her own books and that the words she was giving to new writers and her current readers were blind and filled with holes that would lead to stereotypes (examples given) and set back communication.

And then things exploded and various PoC online learned that professional SF&F was not ready to have people who are not white, telling them where they're messing up.

*******

Also: Don't call it drama.  Don't call it a flamewar.  Don't say "both sides are wrong, we need to communicate, blah blah."  This is serious shit, and marginalizing POC in order to defend your privilege is wrong.  Despite all odds, good things are coming out of this.  Start here: verb_noire .

I read a lot of articles like this one.*  (Why?  Perhaps I enjoy misery.)  I don't like blogging about work, and I don't name where I work because we have very little web presence.  Having my rambling and occasional swearing become the number six google result would not help anybody.  But all of these doom articles assume outright that Amazon & Barnes and Noble have the superior business model, end of story, and that is dead wrong.  In fact, before I started working at my tiny bookstore, I had no idea how dead wrong these articles were, and got all frowny-faced with everyone else.

An independent bookstore requires a community.  More specifically, it requires a neighborhood or a town with lots of independent businesses.  Affordable rents also help.  If you don't live in such a place, you probably don't have an indepdent bookstore already.  I grew up in the suburbs and just spent two years living in rural New Hampshire.  I get it. 

The things a good independent does well are no-brainers: 
1. Indie stores look nice.  Good design, good layout, neat shelves.  (It makes a difference.  I wandered into a Borders in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philly last weekend and couldn't believe what a disaster area it had become.) 
2. Indie stores have a knoweldgeable staff who work there because they love reading.  So if you need a beach book, a sad book, a book for a 3-year-old or an 83-year-old, or just something awesome to read next, they will help you find it.
3. Indie stores cater to their community.  More interesting features, specialized stock, readings, newsletters, book clubs, house accounts, dog treats, etc etc.

The things independents do AS WELL as a chain or Amazon are less well-documented.  They can:
1. Can get in any book for you, very often the next day, for free.  Let me repeat that: next day shipping, free. 
2. Many will do things like wrap, ship, deliver, take phone orders, take email orders, import, etc etc.
3. If they use house accounts, any order can be added right on -- like one-click, but on index cards.  To be cute about it.

The things independents don't do as well as Amazon or a chain are:
1. Search.  Amazon is the most useful way to track down a book online, for now.
2. Discount.  Though we do not charge shipping, which cuts into Amazon's discount quite a bit.
3. Ubiquity.  Obviously.

What I'm trying to say is, bookstores are businesses, not charities to be supported out of the goodness of your heart.  They actually do want to sell you things, and work hard to determine the best way to do so.  The only element of consumer responsibility is to decide that you would rather call up the neighborhood store or take the ten minute drive instead of defaulting to what is corporate and known.  But, again, that decision will end up being a rewarding one not because you will feel like you are on the right side of a battle, but because you will have a better experience. 

Love,
Meghan

*Also, as a footnote, I am of this "online only" generation and, really?  We are not aliens whose internet-addled brains causes us to hate old men with framed letters by Dorothy Parker.  We grew up in a heavily homogenized, corporate consumer culture, and for many of us the first crack in that facade was discovered on the internet, not at the mall or the Union Square Barnes and Noble.   Can you blame us for continuing to check there first?

PPS: article via Gwenda.

Guys, I wrote a book.  It's all about dating.  No, seriously.  Like, life seems really complicated?  But it's actually really simple and covered by blanket statements.  Here's the table of contents:


1. He's Just An Asshole If He's Not Asking You Out......... 3

2. He's Just An Asshole If He's Not Calling You......... 17

3. He's Just An Asshole If He's Not Dating You....... 23

4. He's Just An Asshole If He's Not Having Sex With You......... 25

5. He's Just An Asshole If He's Having Sex With Someone Else........77

6. He's Just An Asshole If He Only Wants To See You When He's Drunk......... 56

7. He's Just An Asshole If He Doesn't Want To Marry You............ 108

8. He's Just An Asshole If He's Breaking Up With You............117

9. He's Just An Asshole If He's Disappeared On You.......... 128

10. He's Just An Asshole If He's Married (Or Other Insane Variations of Being Unavailable)......... 139

11. He's Just An Asshole If He's A Selfish Jerk, A Bully, or a Really Big Freak........407

12. Haha, J/K Ladies, You Are Worthless And It's All Your Fault..............756

13. Afterword To The New Edition: Being a Lesbo Is No Excuse............815

Love,
Meghan

This week I discovered two more words I'd been spelling wrong all these years.  I was totally convinced it was "moustache" and "omlette."  OK, so "omlette" didn't really look right, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to fix it.

*******

For the past three years, I've managed to find a different way to scam advance review copies.  Method number one was live within walking distance of Matt Cheney.  When that fell through, method number two was serve on the Tiptree jury.  That only lasted so long, however, so I had to move to the city and get a job at a bookstore.  Now I can actually call up a publishing representative and ask for my OWN advance review copies.  That's right.

Last week, without even asking, we got the review copy for blackholly  and castellucci 's anthology Geektastic.  The anthology doesn't come out until the summer, so I'm not sure how useful it is for me to say so, but guys, it's a huge amount of fun.  It's also weirdly comforting to read stories set at internet meetups and superhero conventions and quiz bowls.

But I am mostly making this post now because one of the stories contained an extremely useful phrase.  David Levithan's story is the one set at a quiz bowl tournament, and the main character, a guy, has a crush a fellow teammate, also a guy.  Except the main character is not even aware he has a crush, exactly.  He just really wants to be hang out with his teammate.  Be near him.  Make him laugh.  This is, as far as I can tell, a pretty classic coming-out thing, but not something particularly visible in the larger culture.  Levithan called it an "unarticulated crush." Which is funny, because as far as I knew the phenomenon had no name.  I.e -- it was unarticulated.

Love,
Meghan

So I glanced at the Locus Recommended Reading List a few days ago, noted many good things on it, and moved on.  I only thought to look for anything I wrote in the short story section, however.  Apparently, I actually wrote a novelette?  So, anyway, it turns out The Magician's House is on the recommended list.  Huzzah!  (edited to add: and you can vote for it in the Locus Reader's Poll.  No need to subscribe, etc.)

Also, Clarkesworld is running a poll asking readers to name their favorite short story.  My story Tetris Dooms Itself is on there, as well as many fine others.  If you dug something, go vote!

I just made a bunch of lentils with coconut milk.  It's good, but I mean, really.  A lot of lentils.  And a lot of couscous.  At least I know what I'll be eating for the next week?

Love,
Meghan

Hey SF people -- y'all know all about this, right? (Edited to add: I mean, of course you do, but.)  I don't have much to say about it that hasn't been said much better by others.  But let me chime in to add that if someone said, "Write me a textbook example of how liberal, intellectual posturing can be used to entrench white privilege," I could not have done better.  I'm disgusted, and embarrassed for a community that claims to define itself by friendliness and inclusion.

I'm screening comments, because I have to go out into the world and can't patrol my blog, which apparently is a consideration (Hi Haddayr!).  But those with smart things to say, do say them, and I'll unscreen when I can.

Love,
Meghan

I walked to work today in my work shoes.  The sidewalks were snow-covered and slushy.  The gutters were gray, half-frozen swamps.  My feet were very wet.  I was very angry.  I walked back in my snow boots, which I had accidentally left at work the last time it snowed.  A lot of the slush had melted away, diminishing my triumph, but I marched through what remained.  My feet were warm.  I was happy.

I live in a Gossip Girl house, which is great because I fucking love Gossip Girl.  Three roommates + one visitor sat down to watch it on Monday, as per usual.  Except this time our disco ball, leftover from Saturday's dance party, was still installed, so we watched with the lights half-dimmed and the disco ball spinning above us.  It weirdly made up for the fact that it was a rerun. 

Love,
Meghan

Today is my birthday!  I will celebrate by drinking flavored vodka and eating red velvet cake and selling someone my favorite book in the world.*  I am 26!  This is serious business.

Love,
Meghan

*not all at the same time

Lately I had been feeling like I didn't really "live" in New York.  This week has solved that problem.

Monday: Slumdog Millionaire at BAM.  (lame movie, great theater)
Tuesday: park hang with Sadie
Wednesday: Free Los Campesinos Show at Sound Fix + delish polish food
Thursday: Fake blood sparkle dance party
Friday: missing a lecture at Cabinet, befriending fellow late arrivers, and taking them to watch bocce at Union Hall
Saturday: absinthe at The Black Rabbit
Sunday: two playoff games and one gigantic meatloaf chez my friend in Crown Heights
Monday: walking with Sadie to Choice, procuring scones, and proceeding to spend the day lazing about in bliss

The only thing that could have improved this is if the Eagles had gotten their shit together.  The Cardinals?  Really?

Love,
Meghan

Guys, I'm not going to lie: I think 2009 is going to have some rough moments.  But I'm going to put on a hot dress and cook some fancy food and make French 75's and celebrate the good moments coming our way, too.  See you on the other side, loved ones & internet buddies.

Love,
Meghan

This year I started keeping track of the books I read.  Nothing fancy, just a running list on my desktop with dates. I thought I was pretty good at keeping track of what I read, but in reality I recall a few books that burn brightly, and lose track of the rest.  (Sorry books.)  This list-making made me much more aware of patterns in my reading, as well as my pace, in a way that was both useful and maddening.  For a few months towards the end of the year I also instituted a regimen that went like this: contemporary adult fiction --> contemporary kids lit --> classic --> nonfiction (lather, rinse, repeat).  This broadened my reading; it also may or may not have exacerbated the madness.  Usually I read by following obsessions, and switching to a system that encouraged me to jump between wildly different books was, um, disorienting. 

In August, I started working in a bookstore.  So instead of reading like it was my job, reading was my job.  (Yes, English teachers need to read, but, honestly?  Not this much.)  Plus I started spending hours in a room full of books, sandwiched by an hours on the subway.  This does not quite equal the focused awesomeness of last winter, where  I finished teaching at 12:30 and had no internet in my apartment and was reading for the Tiptree, but it's pretty damn motivating.  

Anyway.  Here's my full list.  My favorite run, I think, is #'s 43-45. 

( BOOKZ )

I've post about some of my most favorite books on that list (Strange Toys what!).  A quick list about a few I missed:

-- I have sold a large number of Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao.  It is on the counter, which helps.  It also helps that the book is really fucking good.
-- If I were still a teacher, I would teach The Disrepuatable History of Frankie-Landau Banks in a hot second, if only to get a large number of kids to read it and talk about it at once.  I have some issues with it, but they'd also be fun to discuss.  I have contented myself with selling it to anyone I can.
-- Holy crap Octavian Nothing.  Holy fucking crap.  I cried on the subway.
-- While we're on a YA beat, my favorite thing about Pretty Monsters (besides turning people in Brooklyn AND the UES on to it) was reading the secondary-world fantasy stories.  I'd missed them in anthologies, and I love their richness.
-- The Tiptree bio was an absolute knockout.  My college roommate agrees!
-- I do this stupid thing where, if everyone loves something and raves about it, I avoid it until the hubub dies down (see: the wire).  This is my way of saying I finally ready Kavalier and Clay after asking a friend for a book that was "engrossing."  I was engrossed, but moreover I was moved.  No one told me this was a beautiful book.
-- Great Expectations?  So great!
-- In Search of the Blues & Blues People come at the same subject -- the evolution and construction of African-American music from its roots in the rural blues -- from wildly different perspectives.   Both are fascinating, and Blues People is downright essential.
-- The Hunger Games is an extremely smart book.  It uses the setting (a reality television show) to engineer a plot so punishing it would be absurd except for the fact that that is the very logic of reality television itself.
-- 13 Clocks reissue!  Read that shit.
-- Personal Days is another extremely smart book.  I can't recommend it highly enough if you've had a terrible office job.  Park use two different tricky POV's to construct a story full of delicious digressions that never lags for a second.  The POV choices also capture the weird hazy timelessness of office life in a way I didn't totally think was possible.

I should note that none of the picture books I read this year are on this list, since I read them all at work, where there was no list-making to be made.  I summed up my favorites here.  Also, I've been reading A Public Space, One Story, and Tin House pretty consistently.  They are great. 

Love,
Meghan

Last night, I was lying in my stiff king-sized bed at a Motel 6  (dog friendly!) when my phone rang.  I am on vacation with my mother, sister, and aunt in Charleston, SC, visiting my cousin who goes to school down here.  We've had about eleven storms this winter so far.  I found this article fascinating -- and a bit close to home.  I have video to export, so I finally gave in and spent time surfing around LJ reading about this whole Open Source Titty Grab thing.  Man, I wish I were just a little bit either nerdier or badassier so I could actually use that phrase with aplomb.  I spend the winter fantasizing about vegetables.  Andy kidnaps me at 11:12 PM.  Via a great illustration blog with a great name, Sci-Fi-O-Rama, I found a site with every F&SF cover ever.  Over the past week and change, I have finally applied myself to the task of "getting settled" aka "unpacking shit."  A week ago.  Just got word that "The Magician's House" will be appearing in Rich Horton's Fantasy: Best of the Year.

That adds up nicely, I think.

-----

In other news, I've had this blog for about four years now.  Nice job, blog.  Though it seems that somehow my last entry was at least two weeks ago. What have I been doing?  Recommending books for a 4,5,6, and/or 25 year old, wrapping them Christmas and/or Hannukah paper, drinking fine champagne, recovering from karaoke-induced hangovers -- um.  Perhaps I saw a movie in there?  Yes.  I saw the new print of Amarcord at Film Forum.  Man.  Now I am guarding a batch of these cookies, which seem like they will never actually congeal, from my dog.  Merry has returned from Paris, and we celebrated by baking.  Except we screwed it up either by using hippie sugar or hippie peanut-butter, so they are still wet and squishy.  Lesson: if the recipe comes from the Depression, don't use granulated all natural $5 sugar.  Don't worry: I am still eating them.  They are still delicious.

Love,
Meghan