I've been noticing that young men are wearing skinny jeans again, snug fitting all the way to the ankle. Thank the gods. I so do not like the baggy clown pants look that the gangstas made popular.

The gangsta types are actually still wearing those, maybe because you can fit a huge gun inside all that fabric without attracting notice. But fortunately the rest of the men have come to their fashion senses.

Jeans are getting skinnier on gals too. We're losing that flare flap at the ankles, which I shall not miss. I detested "bell bottoms," as I called them, when they came back into fashion fifteen years ago; and although I came to tolerate them and even wear some of the more modestly flared jeans, I never did like the extra fabric flapping around my shins. Let's do skinny again! With the lovely things they're doing with elastic, it doesn't even cut off blood flow anymore.

[Edit: I only mean skinny; I don't mean so tight they amount to denim leggings. Anything that enters "baggy" territory needs to go. That's all I'm saying.]

The premise of Brigadoon has plot holes big enough to drive a horse and carriage through. Anyone who has worked on the play, seen the movie, or ever heard of the plot has seen the immediate problems with the set-up.

Even assuming the magic is possible--that a village in the Scottish highlands could vanish in the 1700s and reappear for one day every hundred years, its inhabitants looking more and more anachronistic with each reappearance--the timeline still makes no sense.

If it were the 1700s when this miracle got instigated, and it's the 1900s when our two American heroes stumble upon Brigadoon in its one appearance during the twentieth century, then gosh, let's do some quick math: In Brigadoon time, the miracle began two days ago. They're placidly walking around as if totally used to it, when anyone who truly lived in such a place would still be going, "Holy *^&@! It's seriously another hundred years later out there?"

Couldn't they have made it reappear, say, every twenty years? Then at least it would have been going on for ten days in Brigadoon time; and twenty years for the outside world is still enough time to be a romantic obstacle.

For that matter, if it's such a remote village, and the citizens are not allowed to leave it, how do they even know the miracle's working? If, in Brigadoon time, no one from the outside showed up yesterday (i.e., the one appearance in the 19th century), how would they have any idea whether a hundred years had really passed or not?

Also, the linguist in me can't help pointing out in this and in all other time travel stories, there's no way the inhabitants of an 18th-century Highland village would be easily understood by 20th-century Americans, or vice-versa. The dialogue really ought to be all:

FIONA: I'se gang wi' thee, lad.*
TOMMY: Sorry, what?

In short, if I'd come up with the idea of Brigadoon, I would never have written it, because all the practical difficulties would have doused my inspirational spark within five minutes. Surely the difficulties occurred to the actual writers too. So how did it get written?

My conclusion: the story is romantic, and the music is great, so everybody dismisses all the outrageously bad plot devices and enjoys the show. It's totally unfair, the passes that musicals get as long as the songs are good.

On the other hand, maybe it means I shouldn't stress so much about believability in my stories, especially the ones with paranormal elements. Readers or viewers want their disbelief suspended. They only ask that you help hold it out of the way with your delightful storytelling, no matter how ridiculous.

Good to know.

Waitin' for my dearie (to get home from work),

Mol

*Stolen shamelessly from a Robert Burns poem.

All right, fess up. Who put me up on a big long list of sexy geeks of 2007? (Scroll down a bit.) With a photo from over five years ago, I might add.

It's likely someone asked if they could nominate me, and I said, "Sure, go ahead!" and then promptly forgot about it. So just jog my memory.

Regardless, it was a pleasant surprise. Dude, I'm listed on the same page as Captain Jack!

Today, during my babysitter's hours, I took my ancient laptop to a coffee shop and worked on a novel, just like a stereotypical writer. (Except I drank tea, not coffee.)

A friendly gray-haired man with a notebook, at a table near mine, remarked that I must have my own business. I said, nah, just trying to be a writer.

He asked, like everyone does, "Oh, what do you write?"

You'd think I'd have a set answer for this by now. I always stall and hedge, as if I don't actually know what I write. I eventually made it clear that I write novels, of many genres, though the one coming out soon is a ghost story.

He wanted to know what it was called. I told him, and said he'd look it up, and suggested his wife would like it too. Cool. I managed to self-promote despite myself.

Then two cops sat down at a table near both of ours, and the guy said to them, "Hey, she wrote a book called The Ghost Downstairs. Bet you guys investigate a lot of those."

They grinned. "Sure, or at least other things that go bump in the night."

I asked them if it completely bugged them when they read books or saw movies in which police procedure was all wrong--because goodness knows I don't know how to get it right.

One said, "Mostly we just wish we could really do it like that!"

The other said, "It bugs my wife more than it bugs me." Then he added, "Anyway, any form of entertainment, books or movies or what have you, require a total and willing suspension of disbelief."

So true. I feel better for not spending too much time fact-checking for my novels.

This touches upon what I mentioned in a comment to dirae the other week. Nearly all readers have two coexisting desires in mind when they read fiction (or even nonfiction): 1) the desire to know the true facts regarding whatever the subject matter is, and 2) the desire to read a great story, even if it fudges the facts. But for most people, one of the sides outweighs the other. Responsible scholars are devotees of type 1. Fiction writers, or at least definitely me, are of type 2. I see a cool article about some historical or scientific discovery, and I think, "Hmm, interesting. But how could I change and embellish it and make it more interesting for a story?" It's the escapist in me, I suppose.

Unrelated photo posting:

I like how this photo of Zach turned out, from last night. If you look closely, you can see my reflection in the window, taking the picture. (He likes to watch the streetlights come on, an activity that becomes more and more possible the farther we get from the summer solstice.)

Whoa. Awesome photo of lightning striking the Space Needle this morning.

We've been hearing thunder and seeing distant flashes off and on for about the last fourteen hours. Rain soaked everything, just in time to keep fireworks from setting the state ablaze like California. Ah, I love Seattle.

Though I am still a bit scared of lightning. It's hotter than the surface of the sun, dudes. Scary.

Dude. My mom recently collected old family stories from her side, via various far-flung cousins, and this one stands out. To say the least.

The Nolans were a large family of Irish Catholic immigrants living in the Midwest in the 1870s, and were devastated when the mother died of illness. In accordance with her deathbed wish, her daughter Rosa willingly joined a Catholic girls' school in Iowa. After that, at about age 16, feeling that the best way to help her bereaved father and brothers was to pray for them and serve God, she joined a convent.

Her dad and brothers didn't entirely like this idea, as this was the type of convent where once you got in, you didn't talk to the outside world anymore. In fact, the nuns enforced the rule so strictly that when Rosa died some time later, nobody informed her family. Her father only found out by traveling to the convent and asking about her. The nuns' explanation was something to the effect that Rosa belonged to God/The Church now and not to the world.

Well, the dad did what any good father would. He went home and collected his sons, and they all drove the wagon back to the convent under cover of night, snuck into the cemetery, dug up Rosa's coffin, and took it home to rebury it, allegedly somewhere on the farm.

As you can imagine, Nolan family feelings for Catholicism after that point weren't of the fondest, but apparently several did remain with the church.

But seriously. Dude. Grave robbing. I am so going to write a short story about this.

I've seen this a couple times, and what with the cool TARDIS-related Flair dirae sent me over on Facebook, I guess I better fill it out...

When you see this meme, quote Doctor Who in your LJ.


The Doctor: Come on, we can all have a good flirt later.
Shakespeare: Is that a promise, Doctor?
The Doctor: (sigh) Fifty-seven academics just punched the air.

- "The Shakespeare Code"


The Doctor: Must be a spatial temporal hyperlink.
Mickey: What's that?
The Doctor: No idea. Just made it up. Didn't want to say 'magic door'.

- "The Girl in the Fireplace"

Sayeth the meme...

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible - (not sure what to do here, since I've read some of it but not all of it, was forced to read some of it, like some of it, and hate some of it.)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (I read it by choice...and sort of hated it.)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (Am tempted to strike-through this one, due to absurdly depressing content.)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I like the ones I'm familiar with, well enough.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (I can't remember several of them, so I should catch up again sometime.)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Isn't this a repeat of #33?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Well, I read about two-thirds of it...)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (Just saw the film. Am a bit in love with James McAvoy as a result. Also want to read the book.)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (Again, about two thirds of it.)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (Ditto. But with more hating.)
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I like the ones I've read.)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Look at all those boldfaces! They say six? I have read fifty-seven. Hah. See, I told everyone I didn't need an English degree in order to read the "good" books. Point made.

Two mildly amusing things of late:

1) Spotted a cartoon in American Scientist titled "Fermat's Last Novel," with caption, "That's it, 'Guy gets girl, war then peace, don't have enough time to put it all down here, will flesh out later'?"

Sounds like what goes on in my head much of the day.

2) While channel-surfing, we lingered on a travel show about the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. My two-year-old son pointed at the screen, beaming, and said, "Look at all the cows!"

That's what the drunk tourists in Pamplona say, too. Seconds before getting gored.

I'm messing around with Facebook (no, I don't really know why), and it perplexes me. Is it basically like the profile page of LJ, without the actual blog function? Or am I missing something?

The one benefit I can see is being able to find people by their real names. Other than that... ??

(Yeah, go ahead. Friend me over there. I'll return the favor, whatever that's worth.)

Recipe for insomnia
------------

Take a handful of any of the following irritations, and stir (and toss, and turn).

- My arm is squished if I lie like this.

- My hip hurts if I lie like that.

- The pillow is blocking my nostril.

- My shoulder is too cold.

- My feet are too hot.

- I should get up and go to the bathroom. No I shouldn't. Yes I should. No I shouldn't.

- The inside of my nose itches.

- I'm so hungry my stomach is eating itself.

- My mouth is dry. My teeth are sticking to my lips. I should get a drink of water. No I shouldn't. Yes I should. No I shouldn't.

- My hair is poking me in the neck.

- My ear is bent funny against the pillow.

- My nightshirt is twisted around me too tight.

- I'm preoccupied by those emails I need to answer.

- I'm preoccupied by thinking about illness, injury, and death.

- I'm preoccupied by story ideas I don't spend enough time working on.

- I'm preoccupied by the insulting things people said to me five, ten, or fifteen years ago.

- I'm furious because I'm going to be too tired tomorrow to get anything done.

- Furious. Argh.

- A bird is singing outside. It's only 4:00 a.m. Argh. Hate the bird.

...And this says nothing about sleep disruptions caused by others, such as toddlers. Then, at least, there's a reason I'm awake. But there is nothing more agonizingly frustrating than lying awake for no good reason while the clock ticks away the minutes and hours. 12:48...1:15...2:09...3:34...4:02...and you bargain for less and less time. I'll be all right if I can just get six hours of sleep...or five...or three and a half...or two...

I've been this way off and on for most of my life. The worst spell was in college, when, for no apparent reason, I didn't sleep at all for about a week. These days I usually do get at least a few hours even on the worst nights, and the worst nights are no more than a few times a month. But I'd rather get seven or eight hours every night, thanks.

I don't want meds. At least, not really, not regularly, not so I rely upon them. Does anyone have other sleep-inducing tricks? Acupressure points? Breathing techniques? Melville novels?

All other insomniacs out there, come here. Group hug. I'm sorry I didn't come out earlier. It's nothing to be ashamed of, except maybe once in a while when we turn into total crazy people and beat our heads against the pillow, or kick the mattress repeatedly with our heels, or throw ourselves upon the floor in a frustrated heap. But sleep deprivation is a form of torture, you know.

"There's nothing about this haircut that suggests the name 'Bob' to me." - Steve

( photos! )

The Perfumed Court, the subject of my last enthusiastic entry, has lived up to my gushing hopes. Less than a week after my order, all the little sample decants are in my hands. And they came with candy! Just one Hershey's Kiss or coffee-flavored hard candy per package, but still, a lovely customer service touch.

As for the scents, what can I do but swoon?

Cannabis Santal blends beautifully on me, still rather manly but in a sweet, earthy, delicious way. I notice the patchouli more this time around, but it's not at all overpowering as it can be in some blends. The various notes just sink into my skin and get comfortable, sending out a tendril of vanilla and fresh tobacco every so often when I move. Smells fabulous under my leather jacket. Ahhh.

I have sampled Creed's unisex Millesime Imperial as well, which according to rumor is worn by royalty and celebrities all round the world, including Harrison Ford. It's a clean, fresh, expensive scent, but (thankfully, given the expense) isn't for me. I want to love lemony aquatic fragrances, but they don't want to love my chemistry. Unlike scents that blend well for me, scents that don't blend well--like this one--seem to just sit on top of my skin, gradually growing thin and stale and not doing anything interesting. I'm pleased to know what Harrison Ford smells like, but am sort of bummed, too. I hoped he'd smell like a smoky leather jacket. Oh well; he probably does when he's in his Indy costume.

I've sampled a bit of Donna Karan's Black Cashmere too, and definitely must try it by itself, full throttle, tomorrow. The bit I dabbed on my hands is fascinating me. It smells like at least three different scents that have enchanted me in nature: rockrose (labdanum), Russian olive trees in bloom, and the juniper/sage/pine campfire-like incense of the American Southwest. Cinnamon is definitely in there too. Dry, yet saved from desiccation by just that hint of blossoming desert trees and their exotic fruits. Totally unusual. Definitely not for everyone. Got to try some more to see if it really works for me, or if it's too good to be true. Am knocking on a chunk of aromatic wood.

Seriously, someday I might just plunge into the aromatherapy and perfumery worlds, and abandon this writing thing. Except when it comes time to write scent descriptions, of course.

To the certain destruction of much of my free time and pocket change, I have discovered The Perfumed Court. They sell sample-size decants of nearly every fragrance under the sun, including some very hard-to-find and even discontinued ones. Most of the smallest vials are $3 each, which is an affordable price for getting to try the perfume for a few days or a week to see if you really like it.

Also, some of the larger sample vials are big enough for a hundred sprays, enough to last a month or two. Seems a good option when you've already sampled a scent and you know you like it, but can't quite bring yourself to spring for a big, expensive bottle.

Such is the case with me and Fresh's Cannabis Santal, which I've tested and retested over the past year and finally have to admit I covet. No, it doesn't smell like pot smoke, thank goodness. Not on me, anyway. I get a relaxing, spicy, somewhat masculine blend of chocolate, vanilla, vetiver, and resinous shrubs--rockrose ("labdanum" in the fragrance world) and sandalwood come to mind, though they aren't included in the official list of notes. How they made that all work together, I do not know, but I really like it.

So then along with the larger spray vial of Cannabis Santal, I ended up ordering four small samples of other scents from hither and yon. Hard to restrict myself to just four. It would be hard to restrict myself to just a hundred, actually. This site has not seen the last of me, oh no indeed.

It's Flame War Wednesday! Let's make some comedy.

Your assignment is to choose a side on today's topic and defend it belligerently and obnoxiously. You should also rip apart your opponents with as much rancor and condescension as you can manage. Use absurd and rude personal attacks whenever possible. Ready? Okay.

Your topic: manual vs. automatic transmission in automobiles.

Example arguments to get you started:

The stickshift is just for annoying motor-elitists and NASCAR-wanna-be trash.
Oh yeah? Well, automatic transmission is for old ladies and young idiots who can't even work the windshield wipers properly and thus shouldn't be allowed to drive at all.

Now you try.

And now for something silly...

In my files I found a document I wrote about eight years ago, when I was working for the Accounting and Admin departments of a construction firm.

Evidently I got bored that day.

-----

Files from the Accounting Department of Fairyland General Contractors

*****

CHANGE ORDER
From: Queen of Hearts
To: Jack of Spades

1. Paint all roses in West Garden red: $1,025.34
2. Overtime charges for converting flamingoes into croquet mallets: $547.20

NOTE: Owner reserves right to decapitate workers if work not completed in satisfactory or timely manner.

*****

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
From: Union of Miners, Dwarves Local 7

Please supply Material Safety Data Sheet on substance used to contaminate enclosed apple sample. Subject (Ms. S. White) is in our custody and under glass for further inspection should you wish to send a medical examiner. Please forward MSDS and any related information to the attention of Sneezy.

*****

PURCHASE ORDER
From: Witch in the woods
To: Dreamland Candies

Furnish candy as described in purchase order summary below:
48 l.f. graham cracker siding
8 50-oz. tubes frosting mortar, white
500 chocolate-wafer roof shingles
15 l.f. red licorice door frames
2 large green gumdrop doorknobs
5 hardened melted-sugar windows, 3' x 4'
1 stove, large enough to fit local boy and/or girl

*****

AUDIT EXCEPTION LETTER
To: Lost Boys, Neverland, attn: Mr. Peter Pan
From: Sire Contractors
Project: Eradicate Captain Hook, Lost Boys job #8721

Item 1: You have billed 24,928 miles of flying between London and Neverland for the period December 1999 through June 2000. Please explain.

Item 2: Your workers all appear to be under the age of 16. Please provide proof that you are legally able to hire minors. Also at this time please provide their full names, as we are not able to verify the employment status of "Curly," "Twins," "John," and so forth.

Item 3: Wooden daggers, fire-making sticks, and bows and arrows appear to be small tools, for which you have an allowance in your labor rates. Please credit these items from your substantiation.

Item 4: Coconut-shell helmets and bamboo shields are safety items, for which you also have an allowance in your labor rates. Please credit these items from the substantiation.

Item 5: Your labor substantiation suggests that Ms T. Bell was paid in clothing and housing made of leaves, rather than by an hourly rate. Please verify. Also please confirm with our project manager that "fairy dust" is a legitimate business expense.

*****

CHANGE ORDER
From: Mice, Project Cinderella
To: Charming Estates Construction

1. Graveyard shift hours for driver of pumpkin/carriage $277.50
2. Consulting hours with fairy godmother $993.00
3. Alter design of glass slipper to shatterproof glass per attached OSHA letter $445.00
4. Overtime labor by birds and mice to construct ball gown $778.35

*****

CHANGE ORDER
From: City of Sleepy Hollow
To: Horseman Enterprises

1. Time-loss expenditures between disappearance of schoolteacher and hiring of replacement $430.00
2. Clean-up of shattered pumpkin along Covered Bridge Roadway $65.00

*****
STOP WORK ORDER
To: Beauty Kingdom
From: Blue, Green, Yellow, and Pink Fairies

By order of Red Fairy's Magic Spell and subsequent finger injury to Princess resulting from contact with spindle, all work must cease in the kingdom while occupants sleep for next 100 years, or until amatory intervention by qualified Prince, whichever comes first.

------

(I'm really glad I can't talk in language like "allowance in your labor rates" and "audit exception letter" anymore.)

Okay, some clarification is needed, I feel. Here it is, adapted from a comment on my ebook-poll post...

Those of you who only want to read print books are welcome to get mine in paperback, when it's available. :) I plan to do the same! The paperbacks cost about twice as much as the ebooks at my press, but there's still something wonderful about a physical book. I have to admit, the reason I chose to submit to this publisher was because they had the paperback format alongside the ebook.

I should have made it more clear that I *don't* agree with their assessment of ebooks and "not print" being the future. It's good that they're seeking out the people who believe that, and targeting them as customers, and of course it's less cost and hassle for them. Still, I hope ebooks and print can coexist, and I want consumers to give the new form a chance.

I definitely don't want print books to disappear, though. Hell, I'm considering becoming a librarian someday, and another far-off dream for Steve and me is to own a used bookstore, so we absolutely want to continue the existence of ink and paper.

Also, piracy in ebook-land is just as much an issue as it is for mp3s. But I don't expect to get rich from writing, so I'm hoping the trade-off benefit is the same as it is for the music industry: namely, more fans in more places worldwide, even if the royalties don't climb as high as they legally ought to.

At least for authors, there's always money to be had in selling the film rights.

But while I'm defending the print industry, I also have some criticisms of it. Pass this along to those you know in the field, if you think they can change things. My biggest beef is their marketing focus on a handful of hugely famous authors, to the near-total neglect of newer and lesser-known ones. A related annoyance is the tradition of printing the first run in hardback--which is expensive and which practically no one wants, unless I'm talking to the wrong people--and only later releasing the book in the more convenient and affordable paperback. It ought to be the other way around. First print in paper, then, if the book is a big hit, print some special hardback editions for those who want them for their collection.

I should note that I've majored in social sciences, and have no business degree experience to back this up.

I've been duly informed that several of you are never, ever, ever, no, not EVER going to read a book on an electronic screen. This post is not for you.

DailyLit looks like a cool site. In their own words, "DailyLit sends books in installments via e-mail or RSS feed. We currently offer over 750 classic and contemporary books available entirely for free or on a Pay-Per-Read basis (with sample installments available for free). ... Installments arrive in your Inbox according to the schedule you set (e.g. 7:00am every weekday). You can read each installment in under 5 minutes ... and, if you have more time to read, you can receive additional installments immediately on demand."

So, if you always meant to read Dracula but never got around to picking up a copy, well, here's a chance to do so in manageable pieces on a daily basis.

I ought to figure out how to get my work on there.

Before facing the world (for the second or third time) as an e-published author* (this time new and improved!), I am figuring I ought to go out and get a proper ebook reading device. I can't see myself reading anything on my cell phone, and those Palm Pilots I had a few years ago posed many a problem. Namely, the batteries ran out quickly and then the whole software system died and everything had to be restored; and also, there was a limit on how big text files could be, so I had to divide up Project Gutenberg ebooks into four or five chunks. That was a daunting and annoying task when you're reading, say, a thick Dickens novel. Highlighting and scrolling for hundreds of pages at a time gets old really quickly.

But! They say the new readers, like the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle, are much friendlier about these things. I haven't done all the research yet on which device is handiest, so feel free to weigh in. And in the meantime I ask you...

Poll #1172907
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What are your thoughts on ebooks?

Add any comments you like. My publisher seems to feel firmly that ebooks, not print books, are indeed the future. And while part of me says, "Tell that to those of us who lovingly sniff aged paperbacks for their delicate aroma," another part of me hopes they're right, because hey, e-published author here. Furthermore, kids these days seem to be heading in the direction of doing everything with their handheld devices; soon they'll be making phone calls, listening to music, emailing, ordering pizzas, taking the SAT's, and yes, doing some light reading if they have time, all on those dinky screens they can't pull their eyes and thumbs from.

And wouldn't it be nice, in some respects? You're lying on the beach with your reader device, and fifty pages into your selected ebook you decide you can't take another word of this lame novel. So you click over to your browser, select and download a new one, and settle back with that instead.

Hmm. I better make those first fifty pages really riveting.

* Yes, my book will be available in paperback as well. But the publisher likes to put the focus on the ebook side, since that's cheaper and faster for all involved.

I just received my first ever Sephora catalog in the mail, and oooh! Six little peel-and-sniff fragrance samples inside! Granted, I'd probably only wear one of the scents, but that's how sampling goes, and it's a pleasure to try them nonetheless.

(The one I'd wear: Ralph Lauren Romance, a scent I've long enjoyed but have never actually bought. The catalog calls it a "sparkling floral"; "a sensual essence of velvety woods, exhilarating florals and seductive musk." I get mostly "soft sophisticated floral," reminiscent of trying on expensive sweaters at Nordstrom's.)

So, ladies who love sniffing samples, get thyselves onto the Sephora mailing list. Men who want to please their women, get them a gift certificate.

As to the rest of the catalog, it seems to contain a lot of stuff I'd render fun but unnecessary, like sparkly powders in many scents and shades, and cosmetic cases in odd bright colors. But I've definitely got my eye on the Hershey's Lip Balm Trio Set in vanilla, almond, and milk chocolate flavors--all SPF 15!

And offline again I go for another extended set of days, most likely. The crazy-busy-ness of spring is upon us.