Evil Wrapped in a Fangirl Disguise

I finished 2010 with a re-read of Harry Potter & the Sorecerer's Stone. I'd like to re-read the entire series this year. I guess my goal is to have that done before the final movie comes out.

Meanwhile, I'm starting the year with a book called The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson. I picked it up because John Green mentioned it on the vlog he shares with his brother Hank (here) because he's friends with Maureen and because the book had been challenged in two states. It wasn't banned in those high schools, simply shelved as "restricted." Apparently for containing a positive lesbian romance. It also contains at least one character questioning her sexuality. Is she gay? Is she bi? She loves her girlfriend, but she also has these...feelings for guys.

It's very readable and I'm enjoying it. Though I would sort of like to kick the one character in the face (the questioning one, not for questioning but for not wanting to be honest about it).

I find it kind of funny that I'm enjoying John Green's recommendation more than his own books. Don't get me wrong, they're good and I've enjoyed the two that I read - and I love watching his vlogs - but they never quite leave me the way I want them to leave me: wowed, super satisfied, full of yeah, that was good. Like, say, Steve Kluger's Almost Like Being in Love, which had me flailing forever. Or John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things, which still breaks my heart.

I also picked Generation Kill back up. And Mom bought me One Bullet Away (aka Nate's book) last time we went to a bookstore. I picked up The Hunger Games last time I was working at the library. As well as another book.

I HAVE TOO MANY BOOKS TO READ.

That's the one bad thing about working at a library; you always see at least five other things you want to pick up every time you're in.

I have reached new levels of dirty editing/rewriting fic while at work.

omg.


(Also, oi. Boring day. Busy, but dull.)

Writing smut at work.

Good use of company time? Y/N?

And on Ash Wednesday, too! Gasp!

My brain is a little bit on crack under the cut.

( Supernatural - 5.12 )

*

I'm at the Library of Doom tomorrow. sdrohc_ratiug as asked me not to die while I'm there. I'll try not to. That town's a little scary these days, though I've never had any problems with anyone in the library. Or anyone in general. I skate by on niceness.

Meanwhile, I started working on a follow-up to Before the Night Is Through. I've also been working on other "Castiel's First Time ____" fics.

And, of course, what I should really be working on is the feature for the paper. The thing about features that freaks me out is that the people they are about will probably read them. I don't want the nice people I spent a pleasant hour+ to be unhappy.

My plans for today consist of:

- library!
- fic posting!
- being the only one in the house awake at midnight! Probably!

Exclamation mark!

Um. Anyway. I never do anything for New Year's. I am just not that exciting.

Although...I do have those bottles of rum, tequila, and amaretto ginnith gave me...maybe I'll actually crack those open and have a drink of some kind.

I am maybe a little excited about the fic. I was able to take a lot of things from another piece that I thought was going to die a lonely, quiet death on my harddrive. It's always nice when you can save the good bits of something.

Two Mormon elders walked in while I was writing hot man-on-angel action.

Though worse would be if I was still at college and one of the Jesuits asked me what I was working on.

"Oh, nothing much, Father. Just exploring the relationship between the human and the divine."

A big thank you to shetiger for the lovely snowflake cookie! It is awesome and you are awesome and basically made my day. ♥


*

Yesterday we were completely without the internet. This morning Dad rebooted it (the whole internet, he's talented like that) and now it works. So it turns out yesterday we could have had it all along and I could have accomplished slightly more than I did. Oh well.

I did finish reading Kate DiCamillo's The Magician's Elephant. Easy, quick read. I really enjoy her style of writing. And now when kids check it out, I can say, "I liked that book," and we can have something to discuss.

Also finished writing two fics. That's right, TWO. Though one of them will probably not see the light of day in it's current draft/form. The other I am e-mailing away to be polished up for posting. It's a follow-up to Busted. Which, ha, I kind of can't believe I wrote a follow-up. There's also a third one planned. ginnith says that I grew up in the time of the trilogy and it makes sense that should be reflected in my writing.

Though I can honestly say I never, ever thought I would write on a pornographic trilogy involving hot angel/man love when I was in high school. Out of the many things we talked about during breaks in Choir, that was not one of them.

Oh, which reminds me I should ask Neesh about the lyrics for "O Holy Crap."

I also watched the first part of Alice on SyFy (uuuugh channel). I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed it quite a bit. It reminded me a lot of Tin Man (which I also enjoyed, mostly, though I think it ran too long). At first this really annoyed me - the similar heroine, the mysterious past, the mysterious family, the not-quite-our-world setting - but then I realized that similarities go back farther than the adaptations.

It's likely I'll post more about that after part two tonight.

You know what is awesome?

When a kid comes into the library and asks you if any of their ordered books came in. You tell them, "At least one of them so far. The fourth Lemony Snicket," and turn around to the hold shelf because you just scanned it in.

And then you hand it to them and their entire face lights up and they beam at you across the desk because they just finished the third book that day and you have just...handed them the keys to the kingdom, y'know?

You just know they're going to go home and devour that book.

When it's one of the more quiet kids and you make them actually grin like that just by providing them with a book they were looking forward to, well.

It's brilliant.

Today was fantastic. I love my job. The librarian one, I mean.

Instead of subbing at the library today like I was supposed to, I attended training at the service center. And by training I mean a lecture on the best children and young adult books of the year.

It was brilliant. The guy is very popular in the library circuit apparently. He helped choose the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards finalists and winners. So now I have his lists of books and I basically want to read everything on them. There are a handful that really stood out to me and my particular literary interests, so now I'm kind of antsy to get my hands on them.

We also got free books. I picked up Shaun Tan's Tales from Outer Suburbia, which I read on a slow day subbing and loved. I think Tan's use of text and visual is wonderful.

I've also read his book The Arrival which is just brilliant. It's a book about the immigrant experience and the only text in it is that on signs or paperwork in the new land. But all of that is in an invented language, so the reader ends up in the same shoes as the main character. I love it.

The other book I picked up was The Eternal Smile by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim. Yang also wrote American Born Chinese, which I read a few months ago. That was primarily why I picked this one up.

I love that we're seeing more and more "main-stream" graphic novels. It's a form of literature that gets overlooked or shot down a lot which is unfortunate because there are so many beautiful, challenging, insightful things you can do with them. The good ones anyway. I am a fan.

I don't like that in our little no-traffic-lights town kids are afraid of gangs following them. Yesterday I finished the day at the library and had a group of kids ask me what they should do if they are followed. It makes me really worried for them.

Especially since last Thursday something almost went down in the parking lot across the street from the library. I only worked part of the day so I missed it, but I heard all about it from the regular librarian yesterday. She called me after it happened, too. And Mom saw part of it.

You've got the gang sporting red surrounded by the gang sporting blue and their both across the street posturing in the bank parking lot. So the librarian called the police department and got the police chief and told him he should check it out. At this point the two 10-12 year old boys in the library looked up, noticed what was happening, and bolted.

The police chief and several others showed up. It was all moved to the park.

Nothing happened. There was talk that they'd been rousted out of another local town. But just because nothing happened then, doesn't mean it won't. And that scares the crap out of me.

I know what I'm supposed to do if something does happen. That doesn't make it any better.

Other than being a nice person in general, this is why I am nice to all of our library patrons. Especially after that newspaper tagging incident.