I Drink Two Gallons of Haterade Every Morning

I had planned to kick off this week with a photo essay about the DC book festival, but unfortunately, the DC Book festival sucked.  There.  I said it.  Because it did.
It sucked on the Metro when apparently everyone in the suburbs had exactly the same idea and crammed their babies and their babies’ strollers onto [...]

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The Ruby in the Smoke

Phillip Pullman, The Ruby in the Smoke
Many moons ago, when I was but a wee girl, my mother handed me her ancient copy of The Ruby in the Smoke and commanded me to read it.  On the surface, I ought to have liked it:  it has a strong main female character, it’s set in Victorian [...]

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Have You Found Her

Janice Erlbaum, Have You Found Her 
The premise is simple:  now in her mid-thirties, Erlbaum begins volunteering at the homeless shelter where she’d lived as a teenager.  She meets and connects with a good number of girls, but all of those friendships pale in comparison to the connection she forms with Samantha, an HIV-positive junkie.  Sam’s [...]

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Why My Entire Immediate Family Stopped Going to Church in 1992

Taken in Ocean City, Maryland a few weeks before Easter 2008.  Not pictured:  the crazed Jesus freaks who were singing, dancing, and playing the tamborine in front of His Sacred Sandiness.

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Beneath A Silent Moon

So Booksfree coughed up Tracy Grant’s Beneath A Silent Moon, and I devoured it whole.  It’s a prequel to Secrets of a Lady , which I reviewed here.  It stars the same spymaster couple, Charles and Melanie Fraser, but takes place about three years earlier.  Charles’ father has just gotten engaged to a young woman widely [...]

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Two Thoughts…

In no particular order:

Everyone hates this new Riley character on The Sarah Connor Chronicles because she’s “the generically quirky girl,” but I kind of dig her.  Because the actress who plays her totally starred on All My Children last summer.  She had two parts:  as an autistic girl, and as the autistic girl’s mysteriously identical, wild-child half-sister.  Man, [...]

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I Hate You, You Hipster Assholes

Okay, isn’t this just the cutest concept ever?
…maybe I need to work on learning the actual definition of “cute,” but still.  Isn’t it neat?  Unfortunately, the execution leaves something to be desired.  I’m seeing a few problems, here:

In order for someone to actually get this joke, they’d either have to A.) come read the website, [...]

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Bones

I have an unpleasant confession to make:  I’m totally a fan of the television series Bones.
Bones is about forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, who works with FBI Agent Seeley Booth to solve often bizarre crimes.  Brennan (nicknamed “Bones” by Booth because she analyzes skeletons), works at the Jeffersonian Institute, and is aided by a rag-tag team [...]

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Un Lun Dun

China Meiveille, Un Lun Dun
Zanna and her friend Deeba wind up in London’s mirror image, the “abcity” called unLondon (Un Lun Dun, geddit?).  Zanna is the “shwazzy,” the chosen one (based on the French verb choisir), and it’s been foretold that she will save unLondon from the life-sucking Smog.  But then things go terribly wrong, [...]

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About Asheville

For Labor Day, I decided that I would go to Asheville, the small city in North Carolina where I went to college for four years.
Now, Asheville is like, the gayest city on the East Coast.  I’m not saying that as some sort of idiotic, homophobic slam–there are a LOT of gay people there.  Also all [...]

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