I been havin a snake

I'm sitting at the desk. A middle-aged man, more articulate than many of our patrons, enters.

Man: Do y'all have any books about evaporation?

Me: For a child or an adult? (thinking he might be trying to help his kid with a science project)

Man: For an adult. For me.

Me: About evaporation of a certain substance, or...? (I was thinking maybe he was wondering whether wine or gasoline or perfume was harmed by evaporation.)

Man: Like, of the ocean.

Me: Hmm. What did you want to know?

Man: Well, someone told me that fish evaporate, you know, and go up in the clouds.

Me: ...You mean, like, when fish die and disintegrate, organic molecules evaporate with ocean water?

Man: No, no, live fish. They just go up in the clouds alive.

Me: ...Evaporation means a liquid changing into a gas. And fish, um, aren't ever liquid, so...

Man: So you don't think that's right?

Me: I can say with confidence that it is not.

Man, looking suspicious: Well, I still want to see a book, just to make sure.

"Evaporation" isn't even a subject heading. I suggested he consult an elementary-school science textbook, but I'm pretty sure they're not going to discuss fish evaporation. The hell?

I've been keeping a reading log in an Excel spreadsheet for more than three years now, and tonight I was playing around with it a bit and I have some nerdy numbers to report.

Since February 27, 2002, I've finished 633 books (I've stopped recording those I don't finish) and I'm in the middle of two right now: Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America and The Librarian. That's a total of 635. I don't count picture books.

80% of these were published between 1962 and 2003, with another ten percent on each end.

I finished 26% of the books in a single day, and took 5 or more days to read/listen to 13%. Almost all audiobooks take me more than 5 days.

29% are nonfiction. Less than one percent each were short-story collections, poetry, plays, essay collections, or graphic novels.

Almost seven percent were recommended by Becky. I learned about another seven percent via book reviews, mostly in professional journals, and seven percent more were for library school courses. Jeff was responsible for one percent and Mom for two percent. Most of the rest were books I stumbled across on my own, with a few random recommenders mixed in there.

My favorite books of all time (well, since February 2002) are highlighted in yellow in the spreadsheet. There are nineteen of those. Here they are:

• The Moon Is Broken: A Mother's True Story


• House of Stairs


• Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls


• House of Leaves


• Honeymoon in Purdah: An Iranian Journey


• More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction


• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time


• Motel of the Mysteries


• Dolores: Seven Stories About Her


• The House of Sand and Fog


• Affinity


• Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students who Took Vegas for Millions


• The School Story


• What Happened in Hamelin


• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal


• A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again


• The Ghost Writer


• The Time Traveler's Wife


• Pages for You

It's almost the midpoint of 2005 and I don't have anything like a best-of list for this year, I mean in terms of books. Nothing has really grabbed me. I have been reading lots, but while I really like some of it, there's nothing I'm raving about.

Perfect Circle, Sean Stewart, 2004: This is the tale of a Texas ghost hunter and his attempts to hold down a steady job while spending time with his twelve-year-old daughter and not obsessing too much over his ex-wife. And then some literal ghosts from his pasts come back to, well, haunt him, and they make him do some crazy stuff, and it's really a pretty good book, but again, it didn't grab me.

Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, Judith Levine, 2002: This is a report that uses tons of statistics, anecdotes, and expert opinions to prove that children should not be prevented or even discouraged from sexual behavior. "Sexual behavior" means anything from toddlers masturbating to ten-year-olds playing doctor to fifteen-year-olds having intercourse. I already believed all of this when I started reading the book, but it was nice to have some verification of what I already knew.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 1964, and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, 1972, both by Roald Dahl: Yeah, these are really good, and I'll see the movie when it comes out, but again, no passion.

House of Sleep. Towelhead. Wanted. Speak Softly, She Can Hear. All perfectly fine books. Good reads, some of them. Not in love. Last year at this time, I was already peeing my pants over Dolores: Seven Stories About Her;, School Story; House of Sand and Fog; Affinity; Bringing Down the House; The Corrections; Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal; and What Happened in Hamelin. This year, I guess my favorites are Beginning the World, Not Much Just Chillin': The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers, Towelhead, Surviving the Applewhites, The Effects of Light, The Watsons Go to Birmingham -- 1963, I Am Charlotte Simmons, Intern Blues: The Private Ordeals of Three Young Doctors, and The Position. That list just does not compare. Is it me?

Me: [My] Library; can I help you?

Caller: I called the state library and they said you have that resource there that's a list that the state has that I can look at of all the hospitals and doctors...you know what I mean?

Me: I'm sorry, I don't. Can you explain it again?

Caller: The state library says it's a list of all the doctors and hospitals and I think it's DSS and can I use the DSS there and I need to look it up on the list and they said if I called the library they would have it so do you have it?

Me: Well, to tell you the truth I'm not really sure what that is. We do have access to the Internet here...

Caller: Well, just transfer me to the main library and they could tell me because they would know there at the main library if you don't know there at your library and thank you.

Me: Sure. I can't transfer you, but the number is...

Caller: And they said I could do it at any library so I thought maybe I could do it at your library.

Me: Okay, could you try telling me one more time what you're trying to find?

Caller: Well, can you just pull it up and tell me if you have it because I need to know if you have it before I come get it.

Me, with exquisite patience and total ignorance: What's it called?

Caller: It's on doubleyew doubleyew doubleyew dot state dot louisiana dot dss dot listofstuff dot gov slash something dot dss slash hospitals....

Me, interrupting: Wait, so you just need to go on a Web site?

Caller: Yeah, it's a Web Internet site and it's doubleyew...

Me: Sure, you get one free hour of Internet access. Just bring your library card with you. We close at eight.

Caller: So if I come in and I have my library card and I sit down at your computer and I type doubleyew doubleyew doubleyew dot dss dot louisiana dot healthcare dot gov slash doctors slash findingstuff then it would just like show up there on the screen and I could read it?

Me: Well...I think so.

Caller: But how do I know?

Me: ....Well, if the person that told you knows what they're talking about...then it ought to work out that way.

Caller, suspiciously: Okay, I'll see you in a while.

Mercifully, this person never arrived, or at least I didn't interact with him if he did.

...between my job and this chick's. Yeah, I don't usually have to deal with semen, but that's about it.

Take that in any form you'd like. You could be a DJ, you could paint, you could write, you could even code. Still, you hold whatever you do as Art. You are passionate, and you can also try too hard. What kind of goth are you? Created by ptocheia

Last night, Jeff and I went to visit Consuela at her new bartending job. This involved us visiting the slightly more tourist-friendly outer bar of a Goth establishment in the Quarter. I was careful not to wear all black. We shot some pool (the table is covered with dark-purple felt), selected the happiest songs available on the jukebox (the Ramones and Nirvana), and tried our best to ignore the clientele (a bizarre mixture of frat boys in khaki shorts looking for a Hardcore Experience on the dance floors upstairs and leather-clad bikers requesting that Consuela turn up the Megadeth).

One of Jeff's favorite activities is subtly fucking with the minds of whoever's sitting next to us at any given bar, so I rolled my eyes when he feigned interest in the black and red paintings shown to him by one Melody, a girl with ink-colored hair and pasty skin. I knew he was just wasting her time, since he obviously wasn't going to buy her shit. Still, I played along as Melody asked me and Consuela which paintings we preferred ("Uh, the tree one," I said), and as she appealed to Jeff on our behalfs ("She likes this one! Buy it for her!"). But I was stunned as I saw the boy actually handing Melody a twenty-dollar bill, and even more shocked as, with a wink, he handed a painting each to me and Consuela. Later, he said, "She offered me a two-for-one deal. I guess she really needed the money."

Melody's art can be viewed at her Web site as well as (of course) Boutique du Vampyre. Sadly, the prints now owned by Consuela and me aren't on the site.

Yeah, so anyway, I went to the grocery store tonight (the A&P on Magazine) and, while standing in the soft drink section, noticed a sign above my head. The aisle was bedecked with the sort of markers one expects in a grocery store: "Juice" appeared over the juices, "Sodas" over the Coke and Pepsi, etc. But hanging off the bottom of each drink sign was another printed placard inscribed as follows (punctuation and capitalization follow the original):

The Dawn of a new age. From teas to drinks, "ready to drink."

Huh? This inspires a number of questions, including:

1. What new age?
2. Are teas not drinks?
3. Are the drinks not actually ready to drink?

I realized a couple of hours ago that I'd finished all my egg salad and wouldn't have any for breakfast tomorrow unless I acted fast. I put my last five eggs on to boil and went back upstairs to continue working on the Anne Hutchinson manuscript I'm fact-checking, reminding myself to go get the eggs in twenty minutes.

Thirty-five minutes later, one of the cats meowed at the bedroom door. I went to open it and a wave of heat hit me. I had the air conditioner on in my room, but I still didn't think the hallway air should be quite this hot and moist. Then I yelled "Doh!" and ran down the stairs to remove my eggs from the heat. I wanted them to stop cooking ASAP, so I put them in a bowl of cold water and stuck them in the freezer. I again returned to fact-checking, reminding myself to fetch the eggs from the freezer in a few minutes.

Ninety minutes later, I again yelled "DOH!" and ran down to the kitchen to take the bowl out of the freezer. I used a knife handle to chip away at the ice and took my poor little eggs out. I peeled and sliced them, tasting a bit, and they're just fine. Eggs are hardy little creatures.

That is the new love of my life. Eggs have become a staple of my diet, but I'm sick of scrambled, and I don't like fried because while fried whites are awesome, runny yolks suck ass and it's not worth it. So, while egg salad has not really been something I've eaten a lot of in the last, say, seven years, in 1998 my college roommate and I (hi, Lauren!) used to make egg salad for breakfast every Sunday morning and then pack the bong and watch Bulls games. It was a recipe Lauren brought to our home on 1020 Foster Street, Apartment One, and it was very simple: hard-boiled eggs, diced onion, mayo, salt and pepper. On toast. Yum.

So anyway, we always just made enough to eat for breakfast that very day, but I had the brilliant idea to make a week's worth and bring it to work for breakfast. This was partly inspired by the fact that I don't have a toaster, but we have one at work, so unless I want cold flimsy bread, I'd better think ahead. So four eggs were a-boiling and then I had sort of a flashback to a certain kitchen utensil I soundly taunted Lauren for insisting we needed back in college, but as soon as she bought it I recognized its ingenuity. It's an egg slicer. And I opened my kitchen drawer and...I still have it. Hallelujah. And oh, I just learned from the file name of the picture linked above that the device can also be used to slice mushrooms! Who'd have thought I could learn so much from Google Image Search?

...by way of Tiny Little Librarian, it's a library quote for the ages:

Sigh...We're So Ghetto

...and couldn't resist blogging it. This is Jeffrey considering a potential Halloween costume. I was in favor of it because it made it so easy to topple him. 

is The Lovely Bones. Jeff and I have started carpooling to work, and I don't listen to audiobooks when I'm in his car (obviously) or when he's in my car, so it's taken me forever to finish this one. It was the longest ten CDs of my life. Actually I thought it was eleven, so when the (bloody annoying) narrator said, "The end!" at the conclusion of Disc 10, I thanked a god in whom I never before believed, and then noticed that Disc 11 is an interview with the author. Uh, no thanks.

I'm about to spoil the book, but you should thank your lucky stars you don't have to read it yourself. It starts out with the murder of fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon by her neighbor, George Harvey. He rapes her, strangles her, puts her body in a safe and throws the safe in a sinkhole. The book is narrated by Susie, looking down from heaven at the world she left behind.

The next few chapters are pretty interesting: we hear about the police investigation and how Susie's parents and two younger siblings deal with the murder, and we learn about several suspects. Susie's dad suspects Mr. Harvey pretty much from the beginning, but the police won't listen to him. They think it was Ray Singh, her quasi-boyfriend. Eventually, the trail grows cold and the police abandon the case.

This is when the book starts to suck. Susie's sister Lindsay gets a boyfriend. Eventually, forty-nine discs later, there's a big rainstorm and they run naked in the mud and they get engaged. Susie's mom starts up an affair with the lead detective assigned to her daughter's case, and then moves to California, abandoning the family. Susie's dad and her little brother keep on truckin'. Then there's this chick Ruth that's sort of obsessed with Susie's death; she was in her class but they weren't really friends. She starts hanging out with Ray. Ray's mom is the neighborhood hottie, and Susie's dad gets a little crush on her, although nothing comes of it and who cares anyway?

You won't even believe what actually happens in the end. Seriously, it's un-fucking-believable. Susie, who's jealous that Lindsay gets to grow up and Become a Woman and all that shit and she, Susie, does not, actually takes over Ruth's body so she can have sex with Ray. That, my friends, is the big final scene of the book. Have you ever heard of anything so lame in your entire life? Have you seen the movie Ghost?

Before the ending, I just thought the book was boring and pretentiously faux-literary, with all its descriptions and similes and profound statements about the meanings of life and death. Once I heard the end, I began to realize it's one of the greatest travesties ever visited upon the innocent readers of the world. Stay far, far away.

Oh, and all the reviews I've just read on Amazon say the book is about heaven. It so isn't. Heaven is mentioned like five times, as this place where Susie lives now and all of her physical needs are met but she still misses her family. After she has sex with Ray via Ruth's body (I can't believe I actually have to write that clause), then she gets to graduate to Real Heaven where she can hang out with her dead grandpa an' shit.

Before this week, the only book I'd read by Tom Wolfe was Bonfire of the Vanities, which I loved. Somehow, though, I never managed to pick up any of his other books. When I heard he had a new one, though -- I Am Charlotte Simmons -- I put myself on the hold list for it.

Loved it. It's the best book I've read in 2005 so far. It tells the story of four kids at a prestigious fictional college called Dupont. The title character is a freshman from the mountains of North Carolina - she's pure as the driven snow, has always gotten straight As, and is the first person from her family ever to go to college. Her family's fairly poor, but she got a full ride.

Then there's Jojo Johanssen, a junior and a starter for the nationally ranked basketball team. He takes the "athlete-friendly" courses: Rocks for Jocks, Stocks for Jocks, etc. He sleeps with groupies, plays a lot of video games, and works out all the time. His biggest problem is freshman sensation Vernon Congers, who's the team's sixth man and hungry for Jojo's spot as a starter.

Hoyt Thorpe is a dickhead of a frat boy that's going to grow up to be the main character from Bonfire. His claim to fame in his senior year at Dupont is that he saw a sophomore giving head to the California gubernatorial candidate, and punched out the dude's bodyguard when he approached them.

Adam Gellin is a leftist intellectual with dreams of being what he calls a Bad-Ass Rhodie, or Rhodes Scholar. He wants to avoid the clichéd tedium of grad school while still making his mark on the world as a maverick genius. In the meantime, he's a reporter for the school paper, and spends his free time hanging out with a group of similarly inclined buddies and the prototypical man-eating lesbian. He also delivers pizza, and he's Jojo's tutor, paid by the athletic department.

When the book begins, all four of these characters rotate points of view, so it's not clear at first who's the focus of the book. But once each of the boys has a few interactions with Charlotte, she tells the rest of the story.

It's not a perfect book, and the characters seem at first to be stereotypes: the naive freshman, the dumb jock, the rebellious liberal, and the narcissistic frat boy. Still, I absolutely could not put it down, and like I said, it's the best book I've read in 2005 (and I've read 81). I think I'll try Wolfe's The Right Stuff next.

Nutty day. First thing this morning, Jeff and I got in his car and drove around to local elementary schools to promote the Summer Reading Program. Last year when we did this, we asked to see the principal at each school, but we found these individuals to be either busy, or willing to see us but harried, or overly enthusiastic in a phony way, or downright unqualified to be a school principal on the grounds of claiming your K-8 classes are too stupid to learn to read. This was unpleasant and time-consuming, so this year we decided to seek out the school librarians instead. This is much more fun. Today we befriended one librarian who was actually covering the school reception desk when we got there because, of course, who cares whether there's anyone working in the LIBRARY, and another who works all by herself in the library, with no help of any kind, and talked our ears off for half an hour about how the state's plan to take over failing schools is craptastic, and another whose principal won't let her get rid of the 1982 World Book so she can make room for books that will actually be read.

When we got back, I was on the circulation desk when a Vietnamese man, whose English was only marginally better than my Vietnamese, frantically reported that he lost his keys. He was pretty sure he'd left them in the bathroom an hour earlier. Now they weren't there, and they weren't in the computer lab where he'd been in the meantime, and they hadn't been turned in to me, and also his car was missing from the parking lot. What kind of car was it? A 1990 Honda Accord. I figured this could only be the work of joyriding teenagers, because who else would steal such a vehicle? I called the local police precinct and the man answering the phone informed me that this was the man's fault and the man's problem and he, the policeman, was not at all inclined to send anyone down to take a report.

The crime victim was angry and confused and very sad about the loss of his little vehicle, so I called the main police number and they agreed to send a car. This was at 1:45. When I left the building at 5:00, the man was still awaiting the arrival of the police. He'd made several more phone calls, to no avail. A co-worker told me that a Vietnamese man in a police uniform had entered the library and she'd asked him to help the man, since they spoke the same language and, you know, HE'S A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, but the dude wouldn't do it.

Truly I don't. Get this: I just got back from lunch at Juan's, which is probably the best local Mexican restaurant I've found. It's not excellent, but there aren't any Mexican people living in New Orleans, so what do you want? This place has a vegetarian menu, rice made without chicken broth, and beans made without lard. It's a long walk or a short drive from my house, and it's pretty cheap. I like it well enough, and I go there about once a month.

So today there was a line waiting to be seated, the first time I'd ever encountered such a thing at Juan's. I waited about ten minutes and was seated in a booth near the bar. I ordered rice and beans, and settled in with my book (My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult) to wait for my food. A twentysomething blonde cutie in a miniskirt approached my table with her boyfriend.

Girl: Hi! Would you mind if we borrowed the other part of your table?

Me: What do you mean?

Girl: Like, sit there and drink our margaritas.

Me, with a smile: No. Sorry, I'm just reading my book.

Girl: Oh, do you have friends you're meeting?

Me: Nope, I just prefer to eat alone.

Girl, getting pissed: We don't want to TALK to you. We just want to sit there.

Boy: Hey, it's cool. Come on; she just wants to read her book in peace.

Me: Sorry. (I return to my book. The girl sets her margarita on my table. Begins talking loudly to her boyfriend.)

Girl: I guess I'm just used to (name of restaurant or town; not sure which) where everyone sits with everyone else. I mean, what's the big deal?

Boy: Well, she just wants to have her own space.

Girl: If she didn't pay extra for it, it's NOT her own space. (I hide a smile. The kids walk away, presumably in search of another victim.)

I don't mind being asked to give up half my table, but surely I don't need to be browbeaten when I politely decline. Am I fucking crazy, or is it too much to expect that when I go to lunch alone, I don't have a couple of tourists sitting in my booth getting drunk and staring at me while I eat? Doesn't the price of my meal include a table to myself? And plus, duh, you're in New Orleans. You can take your drinks outside if you don't feel like waiting. God.

1. Yesterday I was at Jeff's house watching Lauren's guest appearance on CSI. Jeff went to take the trash out or something, and came back with a story about an enormous bug that was hopping up and down the sidewalk making sounds so loud he'd thought it was the neighbors' door closing. "Ew," I said, and went back to my Miller Lite while Jeff Googled "big flipping bug" to find out what sort of insect it might have been. No success.

A few minutes later, I was ready to leave. Being notoriously terrified of bugs, I demanded that Jeff walk me to my car so he could protect my delicate ass from such molestation. If the next sixty seconds were a radio drama of the 1930s, it would go something like this.

(Creak of JEFF's apartment door opening. JEFF and DAISY step into the night, walking toward DAISY's car half a block away. Sounds of soft-shoe footsteps on cement ensue.)

DAISY: So where was the bug?

JEFF: There, in the neighbors' doorway.

DAISY: I don't see it now, do you?

JEFF: No.

DAISY: Was it black?

JEFF: Are you racially profiling the bug?

DAISY: Well, if it's black, we should stay on the sidewalk. Since the cement is light gray, we'll be able to see the Giant Flipping Bug clearly, you know?

JEFF: Yeah, okay. But see, you're walking near where --

(Sound effects: SQEEE SQEEE)

DAISY: AAAAAAEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAH! (sounds of Daisy running down the sidewalk and flinging herself back into Jeff's kitchen)

Yeah, so then we went out the back door and walked out in the street until we got to my car. Jesus Christ. Scariest.bug.ever.


2. Tonight I was doing the dishes and splashing up a big pile of suds. The floor was kind of wet under my bare feet. I stepped across the kitchen to get a couple of spoons off the stove so I could wash them. Stepping back, I felt something sticking to the bottom of my wet foot.

I lifted my foot and swiped at the bottom of it to remove whatever it was. I gasped in horror as I felt a cockroach. I screamed and began frantically sliding my foot against the floor to remove said cockroach. I finally succeeded in scraping it onto the floor so I could investigate it more closely. It was hard to see it clearly against the dark red floor, but: yep, giant cockroach that I'd just KILLED with my BARE FOOT. Disgusting. I shivered and writhed with the horror, and made plans to wash my feet immediately after disposing of the corpse.

I grabbed a plastic bag to scoop up the dead bug. After gingerly lifting it off the floor, I glanced at it to see the scope of the damage.

Against the white plastic, what I'd stepped on was clear: Piece of wet cabbage.

When I drive home from work, I take Interstate 10, and I exit onto 90. The exit is in the left lane, and since 90 crosses the Mississippi River, traffic is often backed up half a mile before the exit. Being a responsible and conscientious driver, I always get in the left lane well in advance and wait my turn.

Every day, though, as you can imagine, there are numerous assholes that think they don't have to follow the same rules as everyone else. They think they can get in the middle lane, which exits on Claiborne Avenue, and pass all the traffic patiently waiting in line, and THEN cut into the left lane. If they try to cut in front of me, I vehemently shake my head and pull up closer to the car in front of me, not allowing the would-be cutter in. I make an exception to this rule if it's a car with an out-of-state license plate, figuring they might actually not have known which lane they needed, but that's it. No one else gets in. Your time is not more valuable than mine.

Someone else always lets them in, though, which irritates me, but not much. Whatever.

So today, I waited in line for ten minutes, and then when I was almost to the merge, a white station wagon with a Louisiana plate pulled up next to me on the right with his signal on. As usual, I declined to let him jump in line. He drove dangerously close to me for a few feet, trying to get me to brake so he could cut in line. Again, I wouldn't let him. Not only was he trying to cut, but he was blocking all the through traffic behind him in his lane. What a dickhead.

Then I nearly jumped out of my seat as I heard a bullhorn go off behind me. "SIR! STAY IN THE RIGHT LANE! DO NOT CUT IN LINE! GET OFF AT CLAIBORNE AVENUE!" blared the loudspeaker of an unmarked cop car. The dude in the station wagon tried to ignore the command, but the cop pulled up right behind him, flashing his lights. "SIR! EXIT AT CLAIBORNE AVENUE! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO MERGE TO THE LEFT!" The dude finally had to acquiesce.

Sweet victory.

Two comments actually spoken today...actually TO us, not just overheard by us.

Comment One: "I'm going to hose you down and push some meat on you. That's how you do vegetarians."

Comment Two: "Words to live by: Keep life simple, and set stuff on fire."

I read a bestselling thriller last week: Cast of Shadows (2005) by new author Kevin Guilford. I'd put a hold on it a few months ago because Library Journal or some other review source gave a plot summary I thought sounded intriguing: it's a few years (10 or so) in The Future, and a physician whose specialty is obstetric cloning -- like in vitro fertilization, except with cells from a deceased donor, not an egg/sperm combo -- suffers the loss of his seventeen-year-old daughter, murdered at the Gap store where she worked after school. When the doctor recovers the girl's clothes and purse from the police a year or so later, he finds (and this is the hard-to-believe part) a semen sample the cops took from her vagina. Of course, he gets the idea to clone the killer, and he implants the clone into the uterus of a patient.

If you accept the notion that the cops would keep that sample in the same bag as the victim's jeans and socks, then the rest of the book is fairly believable. The doctor follows the son as he grows up and his behavior becomes pretty disturbing. He takes photos of the kid and uses photo-aging software (like they use on missing kids) to figure out what he'd look like as an adult. Then he starts looking for the clone.

I did guess the ending pretty early, so I guess the book was a failure in that regard, but I really liked it. Highly recommended for beach reading.

The weirdest part, though, was that it's supposed to happen in 2010-ish, but the online community that's the setting for much of the second half of the book seems a lot like the Street from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, which came out in 1991, or William Gibson's Idoru, published in 1996. If Guilford is paying homage to those authors, that's cool, but it seems a bit heavy-handed, like he's not too familiar with Internet communities to begin with. In fact, it seems like maybe he read Idoru and/or Snow Crash but isn't a member of a 2005 online community, so his ideas of it come from past visions of the future. This is especially true considering that the online community is completely unnecessary to the plot or the conclusion of the book. It could have been entirely left out. I don't get it.

I also read books 3, 4 and 5 in the Shadow Children series by Margaret Peterson Haddix. Like the other books I've read by Haddix, the idea is great (it's a future society in which parents are only allowed to have two kids, so "third children" have to stay in hiding all their lives or risk execution) but the writing is...not horrible, but boring. The author doesn't create compelling characters; she explains too much; she conflates personal growth with the acquisition of bravery, which in turn is accomplished via one selfless act and no real thought. It's kind of like fanfic, but with everything spelled correctly. Still, I eagerly await Book 6. I really do want to find out what happens.

1. Today, Jeff brought me a Diet Cherry Coke for lunch. I began sipping it, thinking it tasted a little bit fishy. Then he mentioned he'd bought it from a seafood restaurant. I insisted the odor had infiltrated the bottle. He thought I was nuts until I pushed it under his nose. That put him in his place. (Note: I don't mean to suggest he doesn't still think I'm nuts for assorted other reasons.)

2. I just discovered that my daily multivitamin contains gelatin. It says so right on the bottle, but I didn't notice when I bought them. I'll finish this bottle, but can anyone recommmend a tasty chewable multivitamin that doesn't contain sugar or any animal products?

However, I partially redeemed myself tonight by taking little P to see Disney on Ice's production of Finding Nemo. The relevance? Yeah, uh, it contains a clear message that fish are people too. And that you shouldn't catch them and display them in a tank in a dentist's office.