Tamora Pierce

alright, confession. this is what i wish i was reading tonight. and i reread them all over the summer... heh. anyways. Tamora Pierce's Tortall series... well, four of them at this point that i've read....

start with the song of the lioness quartet, then the wild magic quartet, then protector of the small, and the daughter of the lioness books. i guess that's the chronological order of them... girl power books set in magical land of tortall... all starts when alanna switches places with her twin brother thom so that she can learn to be aknight shile he learns to be a sorcerer. she disguises herself as a boy, befriends the prince and his great friends, and works harder than anyone else at the palace to earn her place. the other series are all in the same vein - girls/women doing something new, proving their place in male dominated worlds, and changing things for the better. fast paced stories, great friendships, magical creatures, good and evil, conniving enemies, and tons of fun. she has another set of books for younger books - the circle of magic - which i don't like quite as well, but these ones are well worn and have a well-deserved place on my shelves. great for your 5th-7th grade niece/daughter/friend or good to get out of the library for a fun afternoon's indulgence. really, though, well worth the time for some brainless reading for adults, good empowerment reading for girls.

plus, look at the cool covers for the protector of the small series:

It's Noah!!!

This guy is the sweetest, funniest, most talented person i've met in a long time. and he's huge. making costumes for this guy was ridiculous. he's got a 50" chest. but he sings like a nightingale both in tenor and soprano ranges. he was our ralph rackstraw last year in pinafore and when he descended from the sky on a ladder singing and swinging, everyone went crazy. he also sweats like a pig and requires lots of laundry, but he's so willing to help out that it didn't really matter.


if you can't guess which one he is, well.... and listen to the little clip on the article - ignore the dumb harvard jocks - and remember that this is him after playing a football game. there's also a better bit at the end with an orchestra (not so hot) and all. sadly, i don't think he's in mikado this year.... oh well... i hope he gets to sing from here on out.

men who love sidney bristow

am i horribly lame for really enjoying the fact that i'm spending my friday night at home with indian take out, a big glass of wine, and men who love sydney bristow (aka alias)? cause it's highly enjoyable. rp started rewatching the first season a couple weeks in and i jumped in maybe 5 episodes in, so now that she's gone, i've gone back to the very beginning. so much fun. so much better than united fruit and even the pretty photo album style guide books i checked out today.

and boy do i love the men who love sydney bristow. oh vaughn.... oh will.... come love me!

and while i'll never understand why sydney always has her hair down (this is a problem i have with most female super hero/super spy types - doesn't it get in the way!?!?), she does get to wear some pretty cool get ups and use some awesome gadgets. and i really want her house and her wine glasses.

also, bought the black patagonia coat. should be on its way soon. very excited. and looked at myself in a window the other day in passing and i actually looked grown up. it was weird.

lazy bum says good night

that's me tonight. i have stacks of books on the floor next to me. and i have not touched them. i have been watching tv and eating indian take out in my pjs for the past 4 hours. dumb. dumb. dumb. i have so much that i should get done this weekend, especially if i want to enjoy my thanksgiving break and not bring a dozen books with me. so, as usual on friday's (sorry if you're getting sick of it), i'm writing about how i'm planning to do lots of work this weekend. if possible, i'd like to at least write a couple paragraphs.... what i have to turn in in a little less than three weeks is fifteen pages of secondary research. i can throw in some primary stuff if i'd like to, but i think i'll probably just stick with secondary, as there are so many facets of the project i need to work through there, first.

yesterday was n's birthday. i called him twice - once before school and once after dinner. i'm so proud of him... he's such an amazing kid. really. i told js about him, about the accident while she was driving me home after dinner with a visiting prof last night. it felt right - i was more excited about his birthday than is maybe normal for an older sister - and she's the first person here who i've felt comfortable enough with to open up about that. she didn't over react, she just let me tell the story, and understood why his birthday is such a big deal. because it is. he's nineteen. and he's going to be twenty nine. and thirty nine. and it might not have happened. so happy birthday wonder brother.

Dingley Falls

i think this was the best book i read this summer. Michael Malone's Dingley Falls:



it's a quirky small town portrait wrapped up in a mystery... patrician connecticut is shaken up when violently hateful letters start appearing in people's mail boxes and perfectly healthy people of all ages begin dying mysteriously. an amazing cast of characters, all wonderfully complicated and conflicted who, without ever seeming saccharine, get their just desserts. it's a hilarious book, but not a comedy, and a sad book, but not a tragedy. and Malone's writing is just dazzling. i just inhaled this book because his prose skips across the page and i just couldn't stop.

the book is set in 1976 and dingley falls is a cross section of old and young, straight laced, hippy, avant garde and precocious, not necessarily where you expect to find it. a wonderful quartet of society matrons finds themselves in an uproar when one runs off with a visiting beat poet. girls on the edge of becoming teens, experimenting, wanting to jump in the convertible but also depending on the advice of the local priest and very close with their fathers. a batty old woman, last in the line of the dingley founding family, who swears she's seeing strange flashes in the forest.

npr has an excerpt here

jutting breasts

"You don’t even have to wait for the flying spears and airborne bodies that — if you watch the movie in one of the hundreds of theaters equipped with 3-D projection — will look as if they’re hurtling directly at your head. You could poke your eye out with one of those things! Which is precisely what I thought when I first saw Ms. Jolie’s jutting breasts too."

“Beowulf” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Gory violence and a naked Angelina Jolie avatar.


rp and i have committed to not seeing this movie (apparently the giggles i post are for movies i don't want to see). but we are cracking up over this review. thank you nytimes.

The Egypt Game

another childhood favorite, that i actually hadn't thought about in a long time...


Zipha Keatley Snyder's wonderful story about a game of pretend that goes too far. i loved all things egypt as a child, still do in a very romanticized way, and this book was the perfect manifestation of all that fascination. a wonderful play of characters - children from diverse families and backgrounds who come together because of their love of egyptian mythology. together, they make their own imaginary world in an empty lot. it's a reminder of the wonders that can be achieved with an empty shed, some junk antiques, and a lot of pretend. i still love playing pretend, and this book adds that great bit of mystery and investigative digging that made any imagination game so much better.

great book for 3rd - 6th graders, at least as far as i remember it. wonderful adventure story of collaboration and making the most of what you have.