(Links are to the Goodreads site.)

Stay by Nicola Griffith

Third in a series of books featuring Aud Torvingen, who started out seeming like a sort of lesbian James Bond, but is evolving more complexity by this book. This is a well-crafted novel with two intertwined plots -- a "stay up too late to finish it" sort of novel.

The Shadow of the Wind Bestseller's Choice Audio by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The story was engaging -- several stories within a story, in a sort of historical Gothic romance genre. Several of the male characters are well drawn.

I was disappointed by the treatment of female characters. The women in the novel are, with one partial exception, mythical beings rather than real people, who exist solely to elicit strong emotions in the male characters.

The narrator did a good job, although he fell into certain modern American speech patterns more often than I would have preferred, given that it is a historical novel set in Barcelona.

Piano music appears behind key scenes. The music itself is lovely (and apparently composed by the author). But I find it unpleasant to try to listen to music and words at the same time, so I really didn't like the musical additions and wished they'd been left out of the audiobook.

The OH found this in Whole Foods and called me on the cell phone to tell me about it:

http://www.jarrow.com/product.php?prodid=245

NattoMax™

Jarrow FORMULAS® NattoMax™ is an extract of the Japanese superfood Natto, which is made using soybeans fermented with Bacillus subtilus natto.

NattoMax™ is concentrated without solvents. Each capsule offers 2,000 fibrinolytic units. Nattokinase is a fibrinolytic enzyme that promotes healthy circulation by its effects on serine protease-mediated digestion of fibrin.*
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

I am firecat on http://tor.com

"Study: When kids become teens, they get sluggish," by LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer (warning, contains fearmongering)

While 90 percent of 9-year-olds get a couple of hours of exercise most days, fewer than 3 percent of 15-year-olds do. ...
The ... study, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, tracked about 1,000 U.S. children at various ages, from 2000 until 2006. ...

I've seen a few critical comments on this study along the lines of "Teens have more responsibilities," "Schools make children hate exercise," and so on. But what I'm wondering is — if somewhere between 10 and 15 is the magic cut-off point where children become less active, has anyone asked whether there might be a biological cause, something to do with puberty? Perhaps the body says to itself (via hormones) “We have to save some of this energy for reproduction now.”

Voice of the Violin by Andrea Camilleri


rating: 3 of 5 stars
Audiobook. 4th in a series of Inspector Montalbano mysteries (first one I've read). Montalbano is down-to-earth with a healthy disrespect for authority. Set in Sicily. Bonus food porn. Grover Gardner does a good job of narrating. I will probably pick up the other books in this series at some point.



Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell


rating: 3 of 5 stars
Audiobook. Consists of several interlinking stories of different genres -- historical fiction, mystery/thriller, comedy, science fiction. On the audiobook, each story has its own narrator. I became engrossed in it while listening to it, but ultimately I found it annoying - first of all, I didn't like most of the protagonists, and second, I don't tend to like books that constantly remind me the author is trying to do something clever. Also there is some heavy-handed moralizing.



Ha'penny by Jo Walton


rating: 5 of 5 stars
Paper book. Ha'penny is the 2d in an alternate history trilogy set in a past in which Britain made peace with Hitler and then started down its own path to fascism. Jo Walton brilliantly describes the attitudes and choices of a variety of characters who get caught up in a situation that's spinning out of control.


View all my reviews.

Cribbed from one of the reproductive rights organizations:

The Bush administration is proposing a new regulation that could discourage doctors and health-care clinics from providing birth control to women who need it.

This proposed regulation deliberately confuses the definitions of contraception and abortion and could seriously jeopardize state laws and policies that protect women's access to birth control. For example, state laws that require hospitals to provide sexual-assault survivors with access to emergency contraception could be jeopardized.

US citizens can send a comment to your legislators here:
https://secure.prochoiceamerica.org/site/Advocacy?s_oo=_jnFkDBkbA8i1N1CyrYe0A..&id=3253
or here:
http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/spp08sadv2/forward/wn63ix344m86ixb ?

Here is more about the proposed regulation:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cristina-page/hhs-moves-to-define-contr_b_112887.html

via jenk

Go to musicoutfitters.com
- Search on the year you graduated from high school and get the list of 100 most popular songs of that year
- Bold the songs you like
- Italicize the songs you liked then, but don't now you are ambivalent about (my tastes haven't changed much over the years...a lot of these songs I'll sing or dance along with and cringe at the same time)
- Strike through the ones you hate
- Underline your favorites.
- Do nothing to the ones you don't remember.

Top 100 Hits of 1979/Top 100 Songs of 1979
1. My Sharona, The Knack
( it was a good year for disco... )

I'm at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott for a NAAFA convention.

I drove here. Once I hit LA I realized that although I've visited neighboring areas a number of times and have spent a day or three in LA proper here or there, I've never been here for a solid week.

I probably won't have much time to do anything other than conventioning, but if I were to do something around town, what do you think it should be?