When I was invited to be part of a panel at the 2012 BEA Bloggers Conference, I accepted in the interest of adding one more blogger to the program. Although I didn’t know any of the other panelists, the topic “Critical Reviews: Fine-Tuning Your Craft” sounded like one that belonged at a book-blogging conference–if I hadn’t been asked to participate in the session, I would have been interested in attending it. (I was asked to […]
Graduation night for the High School @ Moorpark College, May 24 Having had dual high-school and college enrollment for the last two years, our Kate is more than ready to continue as a full-time real college students. Congrats and best wishes to her cohort in the Class of 2012, everywhere! Subscribe to Blog via Email Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Email Address Subscribe […]
Tall Paul and I made our very first sojourn to the annual Renaissance Pleasure Faire this past weekend, and while we were there, I did something else for the first time. You might think that being one-quarter Sicilian would give me an affinity for handling knives (outside the kitchen). You would be wrong. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, seriously. And I mean the actual knife. Go sit down. I enhanced the focus on […]
(I rescheduled a book review from today to Thursday because I wanted to put on my mom-blogger hat before last week’s news literally becomes “last week’s news.”) I really wasn’t sure if I’d make a response to last week’s sensational TIME magazine cover for its feature on attachment parenting, but the more I read other people’s responses to it, the more I realized I did have some thoughts of my own to add to the many […]
…and this is its very artistic cover. (It’s actually just part of the cover–it’s wrapped in a half-jacket that the author calls a “censor band.*”) I haven’t read it yet, but Tall Paul and I went to Vroman’s Bookstore a couple of weeks ago to listen to him talk about it. He didn’t read from it–Christopher Moore never reads at a “reading”–but he had plenty to say about the book and the research that went into it. This […]
The organizers of 2012 LA Times Festival of Books knew exactly what they were doing when they teamed John Green and Lev Grossman “in conversation.” The two authors had a bit of a mutual-admiration-society thing going on. Grossman’s Time Magazine review of Green’s latest young-adult novel, The Fault in Our Stars (my “book of the year-so-far”), described it as “damn near genius,” and he really nailed it with this observation: “One doesn’t like to throw […]
In her conversation with Los Angeles Times columnist Mary McNamara at the 2012 Festival of Books, Judy Blume noted that YA literature “didn’t really exist” at the time she began writing it. If that’s true, she helped bring it into existence. I have pretty clear memories of frequenting the young-adult sections of my local library and bookstores during my middle- and high-school years–they may not have been very large compared to YA collections now, but […]
When we last saw our tour group at the Warner Bros. Studios VIP Tour, we were on our way out of the “Midwest” and about to visit a working soundstage, which is where most interior filming happens. Some of that does get done on the back lot too, though. These are two different kinds of interior sets used on the back lot. The one on the left is a “facade,” and on film you’d see […]
Unless you live in the middle of it, you might not realize how little of the work associated with “Hollywood” is actually done in Hollywood, California. (Conversely, I work in Hollywood at a job that has nothing to do with “Hollywood.”) Last Saturday, Tall Paul and I visited one of the places where Hollywood’s work has been done for more than eight decades: Warner Brothers Studios in beautiful downtown Burbank. You may have done the […]
(Warning: Dithering follows…) I signed up for the 2012 Book Blogger Convention so long ago it still was the “Book Blogger Convention.” According to the official records, I created my registration for Book Expo America and BBC on January 23. I’d registered earlier for 2011’s BBC and had been holding off this year in anticipation of news about BBC programming, but since I was at least 95% sure I was returning this year no matter […]
This is published post #1668, dated March 15, 2012. Post #1 was published on March 16, 2007. That averages out to .91 posts per day over five years. Five years of blogging! Who saw THAT coming? Five years ago, it certainly wasn’t me. And sometimes I still feel like a newbie who’s playing catch-up, and will always be a few steps behind no matter what; the online world changes so fast. On the other hand, […]
(I’m in this mob somewhere. I think. It’s hard to tell from here, and I was the smallest person in the class.) Aside from the classmate who was my first husband and my son’s father, there are very few people in the St. Petersburg (Florida) Catholic High School Class of 1982 that I’ve kept in touch with on any regular basis since we graduated. But I’ve learned plans are in the works for our 30th class reunion(!!) on […]
