I got a fun letter in the mail from a friend this week, asking me to participate in a bit of literary chain mail. Since I'm posting it here, that should indicate I'm interested.

The premise is pretty simple. I send a used paperback -- one that I liked -- to the person included on the back of the letter I was sent. (It's the person who invited the person who invited me.) I then send the letter out to six of my friends, and change the address on the back of the letters I send so that the books will be sent to the person who invited me.

...and that's it. It's one book, ping six friends, and you're done.

I only have a few days left to get my part in order, though. Interested? If so, leave me a comment or drop me an email. As soon as I've got six, I'll get started. I'm guessing between the librarians and the far-flung friends, I can probably dig up six people.

I've been wrapped up in Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet for a few days now. I realized I was on to something unusual when I started flagging passages every few pages.

Comments from the narrator so far: Read the rest »

I lay on the bed this afternoon, drowsy with sunshine and tea and salacious novel, and trawled fingers through Edmund's orange fur. As my hand crept over and around, to reach the white fur on his belly, the purring changed from lazy to nearly explosive, as if to say, oh yes, pet me right there...

Stolen from Stephen and Misty.

Misty: "These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. I’ve bolded what I’ve read and italicized what I started but couldn’t finish..."

49 read, 2 in progress, 2 instances of sheer loathing:

1984
The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys

I've been meaning to point out two things that I've added as extras on the site, because some of you might find them equally nifty. I have an industrial-grade barcode scanner on loan from the library, which I used to go through our book collection and scan barcodes into librarything. Every book we own is now listed in our librarything catalog. I opted to just buy a lifetime account and get it over with.

I've been at a bit of a loss for words lately. Many things have happened here, and each time I've had a reason, whether personal or professional, for choosing silence over writing, and I've just left it at that. I'm well aware that I'm out of the habit of writing now, but I'm also aware that I have to be very careful of what I say, because my name is now well enough known in the library world that my co-workers can easily google my name and turn up this site.

I started this habit when Stephen and Misty began returning books to me with little removable flags, like Post-It notes but smaller, affixed to the margins of pages. What a great way to remember something that caught my eye, I thought.Months later, I stumbled across a set of the flags and promptly purchased them, stashing a dispenser or two in the rooms that I typically read in.

Children spend years of their lives wondering, planning, dreaming of this moment. Adults ask the question before children are barely out of diapers: So, sonny, what do you want to be when you grow up? The adults find the answers cute, charming, and endlessly entertaining.My classmates and I were asked this question, once; our answers are printed in a sixth-grade yearbook that NONE OF YOU WILL EVER SEE.

He is a strange cat, difficult to predict, sometimes surprisingly intelligent, but often his intelligence is masked by his petulance. Tenzing is six, nearly seven; an age in which humans have begun to move toward full comprehension and conversational ability. I joke about my 'eternal toddlers' but there is truth in that statement, more truth than some people realize.While very much alike in appearance, Edmund and Tenzing are very different in temperament.

Lately it's been just - quiet.

I'm okay with that, I think; we've gotten past the rumble and bluster of dragon*con and birthday season, and suddenly here we are staring another set of holidays square in the face. The trees turn slower here than they do in Colorado; the deciduous trees of north Alabama are just now starting to color, and are nowhere near the yellow blaze of aspen that decorated every Colorado street corner in September.