2. Read Nicola Griffith’s essay, “Identity and SF,” just posted to her website.

3. When I blogged about the WFMU book, I noted that I had not actually listened to the station yet. I have begun to remedy that criminal lack, most often via selections from the archives of The Speakeasy with Dorian Devins. Great interviews, with an eclectic selection of guests. Go, listen.

4. Apparently the guy next to me at the coffeeshop has a horse’s whinny as his computer’s alert sound. Time to put on my headphones.

My favorite so far: mindgrain.

On Monday night, my plan was to hear the Printz speeches and attend the reception afterwards. But I could feel it coming over me as soon as I went into the auditorium and sat, not with friends, but by myself near the back: the feeling that I’d need, soon, to retreat. I listened, and I thought, and as the applause for Geraldine McCaughrean was dying down, I walked quickly out of that room and back to my hotel to write. Not just this.

Later, after a little arm-twisting via text message, I went out again — more excellent time with friends — then back to the room, but still wound up. Turned on the television. “The History Boys” was just starting. Gorgeous. Very smart. Very clear that it was originally a play. Very glad that it happened to be on.

Then it was three-thirty, and really, really, really, time to sleep.

Saturday June 28th, from 1:30-3:30 pm: I’m on a panel — “Teens at Your Branch Library: From Trauma to Triumph?” at the Anaheim Marriott, Platinum 3/4 (Spoiler: Yes to triumph.)

Sunday June 29th, from 9-10 am: I’m one of the featured authors at the Young Adult Author Coffee Klatch at the Hilton Anaheim, California Pavillion B.

Otherwise I will mostly be at YALSA programs & meetings. If you’re reading this and we haven’t met in real life, please say hi and introduce yourself! And if we do know each other, I’m looking forward to seeing you!

Also: if I actually had an “author hat” and a “librarian hat”, what do you think either/both of them would look like?

At home, I crack open the copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that I bought last year, but hadn’t yet gotten around to reading. I’m thinking vaguely about where to go for dinner. As I read, it slowly dawns on me: perhaps the kitchen?

You develop routines, and it seems bizarre to change them, even though your routines are someone else’s definition of bizarre. I don’t think I’ll turn into an every-day bike commuter or home cook. But it wouldn’t hurt to be both more frequently.

I only took photos of the oldest graves. That way, it felt more like documenting history and less like an invasion of privacy. But I noticed decorative trends among the newer stones: Mount Hood. Trucks. On one, a skateboard. Friends had poured out a couple of beers for him.

Tippi Hedren from The Birds. via Boing Boing Gadgets, elsewhere.

Then, read Personal Days. I went to Ed Park’s reading at Powell’s last night, and read the book in one sitting after I got home. When you start it, it feels like office humor — especially clever and funny office humor, but office humor — but there’s already more going on. The point of view, for instance — it’s the only book I know besides The Jane Austen Book Club to use a collective voice for part of the narrative — but also what’s happening in the office. The novel goes somewhere surprising, and the way Park does it reminds me a little of the way John Marks evokes the news office going to hell in Fangland, although — I don’t think this counts as a spoiler — Dracula doesn’t make an appearance.

This is so cool. Wordle is “a toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.”

This one is generated from the prologue & part of the first chapter of The Rules for Hearts. I don’t know how big a block of text you can use — I might try it with more. And I’ll probably do an Empress one too.

via matociquala