Kimberly Hirsh

If you were a friend on my old MySpace account and got a new request from me, think nothing of it but do please add me again.  Sorry for the inconvenience; there were some privacy issues with my old account that could only be resolved by starting over completely.

The April issue of readergirlz is now online.  This month’s book is On Pointe (Affiliate Link) by Lorie Ann Grover, a verse novel about a ballet dancer who finds herself getting too tall for her passion.  As April is National Poetry Month, a verse novel is an especially appropriate choice.  My local library system has only one copy of On Pointe, and that copy is on hold for someone distinctly not me.  That’s good; it means it’s getting read!  None of the local bookstores have it, either; I just ordered it from Amazon, and expect to have it read by mid-month.

This month’s issue of readergirlz includes a playlist, community challenge, slideshow, party ideas, discussion questions, author interview, and recommended reads.  The first song on the playlist, “Video” (Affiliate Link) by India Arie, is one of my favorite songs in recent years.

For more books about dancers, take a look at Little Willow’s I Am a Dancer booklist.  To read about real-life dance experiences, read her article Dance Dreams.

Over at Jen Robinson's Book Page I found this meme:

Where do you do most of your reading? Your favorite spot?

I do most of my reading while in motion.  When I go for walks is when I read the most.  Otherwise, it’s a toss up between the couch and bed.  The couch on which I read is big, hideously mustard-colored, and comfy.  It’s one of those weird segmented couches, with a corner pieces, two pieces with only one side to them, and one piece with no side at all.  (When I say side I really mean arm, I guess.)  We’ve pushed these together to create a vaguely bed-shaped thing.  When I read in bed, I use the Bedrest Pillow my boyfriend discarded due to its non-working circuitry.  He got a new one and I got his old one.  It doesn’t have the massage/light/heat functionality, since it’s broken, but it does let me sit up in bed.

I can think of two favorite spots to read.  One is on my grandmother’s patio, in Florida.  When the weather is just right, around Christmastime, it’s a lovely 70ish degrees Fahrenheit and a breeze is blowing.  I sit and I read and no one disturbs me.  The other spot is the porch of my boyfriend’s family’s beach condo.  I’ve only been there twice, but my ritual was to wake up every morning and go sit on the porch and just read until he woke up.  The sound of the waves and the smell of saltwater serve as a perfect backdrop for a good book.

From Emily Dickinson:

I ’M nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell! They ’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody! 5 How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!

…here’s thoughts of health for Little Willow’s cat Hollywood!

This may be the longest I’ve gone between posts since back when I started this blog. I’m going to address a few topics all at once.

Thing One: I’ve a lot of things I want to say, but not a lot of time. I’ve been doing a lot of catching up at work, and it’s used most of my energy. I’m still reading, so here’s my currentlies:

1. Virtual Mode by Piers Anthony; this is a re-read. Due to recent events in life I’ve set it aside for a bit, as it brings up some emotional issues I’m not quite ready to handle.
2. I, Claudius by Robert Graves; this is my read-at-work book but it has been displaced by others for now. About one week a month I have to perform lunch duty, which usually consists of sitting in a chair, watching students go by, and checking hall passes. That’s a good twenty minutes a day I can devote to reading when I’m not checking the passes. It looks good to be a Latin teacher reading I, Claudius, and I, Claudius is a book I’ve always wanted to read. Most recently, though, I have been reading my other books during this time.
3. The Last Dragon by Silva de Mari; reading this because it was a Cybils nominee, and enjoying it thoroughly. It doesn’t go as quickly as many YA or children’s books do, though.
4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Gatekeeper Trilogy: Out of the Madhouse by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder. I also walk for twenty minutes a day and I like to read while I do this. I saw one of my favorite professors doing it on campus once. I thought it looked charmingly academic, so I took it up myself. Don’t worry; I’m very careful not to run into or in front of things. Reading this has been a fun flashback and, combined with a recent re-watching of Buffy Season 4, provoked new thoughts about the show’s themes, what I did and did not like about it, and why. As a rule, I love Buffy, in case you were wondering.

Thing Two: A colleague and I were talking about YA fiction a couple of weeks ago and agreed that especially for us as teachers, it’s exactly the right thing. You can read a book with substance to it, but usually YA books don’t bog you down so much as books for an adult audience would. You get through the books quickly but still feel like you’ve really read something. So we’ve decided to start recommending and swapping YA books. I only own two, so I’ll be loaning those to her: Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen by Dyan Sheldon. These are my two recent favorites, which is why I own them. Because of the aforementioned rapidity of reading, I generally get my YA books from the library. I’m looking forward to seeing what she has for me. I told her that even though I don’t have a lot of books, I can provide her with plenty of lists. Maybe I’ll even tell her that I get most of my YA recommendations from Little Willow at Bildungsroman.

Thing Three: I love the feel of books. At Costco they set the books out in stacks on tables. I touched all of them, and felt that even though I hadn’t read them, the books were part of me. It was a good feeling.

Thing Four: Content I hope to provide soon:

• Elizabeth I review
• Millicent Min review
• The Last Dragon review
• Love in Shadow review

Thing Five: Spring break starts Friday! I will be traveling to Florida for most of it, but hope to find time in the car and at my lodgings for reading.

That is all.

Kelly at Big A, little a tagged me to list 5 Non KidLit Blogs I read. We’ll skip over the part where I gush about how exciting it is to be tagged for a meme. (It very rarely happens to me. So, it’s exciting.)

I’ve been in the blogosphere in general a much longer time than I’ve been in the kidlitosphere, so let’s see what I can come up with.

We’ll start with more plugs for Sonja Foust. Sonja has been my friend since we were in chorus class together in 9th grade. I think we had another class together too, but I’m ashamed to admit I can’t recall which classes were with her and which were with her twin, Joanna. I’ve always been able to tell them apart, though, so that should count for something. Sonja’s blog is about her adventures in the realm of romance noveling. Also, her husband and dog. Sonja is very funny, which is what separates her from a good number of romance novelists.

I’m tempted to cheat by just listing all my livejournal friends from my personal journal but that’s hardly fair, so I’ll only give you one. elfstar18 is another of my real life friends, who talks about lots of different things in a writing style that’s always entertaining. Recently she’s been talking about comic books a lot. I’m sure she has good things to say, but I can’t verify it because I’ve been staying away for fear of spoilers.

Catwalk Queen is a fashion blog, which always keeps me up-to-date on what’s hot and what’s not. Its editor-in-chief, Gemma Cartwright, and its other contributors are avid readers, so many of the posts are more literary than you might find at other fashion blogs. There is even a series of posts about book-inspired outfits. So far there’s Harry Potter, Famous Five, Babysitters Club, Nancy Drew, Miss Marple, and Madeline.

Shoewawa is brought to you by the same people as Catwalk Queen; it provides me with an endless supply of pictures of shoes to drool over and never buy.

Lastly, I give you Jane Espenson’s blog. Jane is one of my top 3 favorite screenwriters (tied, really, with Joss Whedon and Tim Minear) and her blog consists mostly of advice for others who’d like to have her job. She’s always clever and very literary, and one time we both had car maintenance done on the same day. I take this as a sign that we’re meant to be friends.

I tag Little Willow at Bildungsroman, Miss Erin, and anyone else who cares to participate.

Gus: The Theatre Cat by T. S. Eliot

(an excerpt… for the full poem, go here)

“I have played,” so he says, “every possible part, And I used to know seventy speeches by heart. I’d extemporize back-chat, I knew how to gag, And I knew how to let the cat out of the bag. I knew how to act with my back and my tail; With an hour of rehearsal, I never could fail. I’d a voice that would soften the hardest of hearts, Whether I took the lead, or in character parts. I have sat by the bedside of poor Little Nell; When the Curfew was rung, then I swung on the bell. In the Pantomime season I never fell flat, And I once understudied Dick Whittington’s Cat. But my grandest creation, as history will tell, Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.”

This is a reading blog, and my friend Sonja Foust is an author.  She’ll be published on Friday, the same day as the new Ninja Turtles movie comes out.  I think she should be flattered to share the spotlight with some of the greatest characters known to comics, TV, movies, and merchandising.

Sonja is first and foremost a romance writer, and her short story “Love in Shadow” is being published by The Wild Rose Press. I can even recommend it whole-heartedly here, as it was rated PG by ECataromance (sadly no actual cats). It also got 5 STARS. Her dog Sydney, who I’m pretty sure is not a double agent, did not enjoy it as much.

Still, my friend is a published author! I am totally cool by proximity, because we went to high school and college together and we live in the same city. And she’s coming to my show Saturday.

I’m awesome.

Someday, I will have an achievement that is my own.

 Read in 2007:

1. Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies), Justina Chen Headley
2. The Royal Diaries - Elizabeth I: The Red Rose of the House of Tudor, Kathryn Lasky
3. Millicent Min, Girl Genius, Lisa Yee

Currently Reading:

1. The Last Dragon, Silvana de Mari
2. Capt. Hook: The Adventures of a Notoroious Youth, J. V. Hart and Brett Helquist
3. Virtual Mode, Piers Anthony
4. I, Claudius, Robert Graves

One of the reasons I decided to join the kidlitosphere was the fact that it is so full of conversation-starters. Today I had far too many tabs opened in my browser window, taken from links from other blogs’ entries. What should I write about? A theme emerged, and it’s one that has touched me in more aspects of my life than just reading:

Reviewing.

So the questions driving this conversation (see posts from Meg Rosoff, Kelly at Big A little a, Roger Sutton, Wendy Betts, and fusenumber8) are as follows:

To whom does the reviewer have responsibility? Is it more awkward to write a negative review when there’s a likelihood of you running into the author? Does writing only positive reviews violate a critic’s integrity? Is the author-critic relationship necessarily adversarial?

I first encountered critics when I was 15 and working in community theatre. I received what I took to be a positive review. I thought, “I’m great! Reviews are cool! Critics love me! Yay!” When I was 17, a local theatre critic began to write about my school’s competition play. He hung around our rehearsals a lot and I, in awe of him, became a bit of a hanger-on myself. Over time we formed a real friendship, and I began to think of this critic as my ally. We lost touch for various reasons, but I ran into him again recently. I told him about my current production, and we conversed for a bit about the concept, and the particular strengths of the show’s director.

I made the mistake of mentioning this conversation within earshot of the director himself. I was telling a friend “So I ran into Theatre Critic the other day, and told him about the show…” A grimace came over the director’s face. I had forgotten that critics are The Enemy. We didn’t have any critics opening weekend, sadly. Even a bad review is press, you know.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking critic is the ideal job. You get to consume your media of choice and then write about it. How cool is that? Tester seemed like a cool job, too. So when I was in college, I got a job as a Video Game Tester. I thought this was bound to be exciting - I would get paid to play video games! Woohoo! The job description involved helping a marketing company decide which games to champion. It was quite the opposite. Being a Video Game Tester was the most boring job I’ve ever had, and probably the closest to being a professional critic that I’ll ever come. Whatever they threw my way, I had to play, and it was my responsibility to then evaluate the game honestly. How dull!

What I wanted to do, and what I’ve wanted to do each time I’ve considered a career as a critic, be it theatre, video game, or book, is share things I like with other people. That is not, however, what it actually means to be a critic. Critics have a responsibility to two groups: their readers and their employers. Both of these groups require critics give honest reviews, good or bad, and include the bad along with the good. That’s why I’m a blogger. As a blogger, I pick which books I will review. I still value honesty: I won’t write a good review of a bad book. But I’m not above sins of omission. I probably won’t write a review of a bad book at all. In fact, if the book hasn’t gripped me after 100 pages or so, I’ll just set it aside. I don’t think it would be fair to review a book I haven’t finished reading, and I don’t finish reading books that I don’t like. I don’t think this violates my integrity as a blogger, but if I were hired by a publication to review things and left some stuff out that would definitely be a problem.

Lastly, I like to think that the author-critic relationship doesn’t have to be adversarial. A critic can champion the works of someone who might be little-known for any number of reasons. I think this is when criticism is at its best: here’s something good, and here’s why. Still, it is important for professional critics to warn people away from things that aren’t so good; that makes them the author’s enemy.

The solution, of course, is to be a brilliant author.

www.youtube.com/watch
This is the show that’s been keeping me from blogging. I’m the shortest of the ladies with the tall blue hair.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning by John Donne

AS virtuous men pass mildlyaway, 
    And whisper to their souls to go, 
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
    “Now his breath goes,” and some say,“No.”                     

My current show opens this Friday and so I don’t have a lot of time at home to play online. I do have several tabs open in my browser for the rare times I get a minute to read webstuffs, though.

I’m also going to be providing my loyal readers (all ten of you!) with reviews of The Royal Diaries: Elizabeth I and Millicent Min, Girl Genius, which I finished reading today. Here’s a preview: I loved it! Those I intend to write during my downtime at rehearsal, of which there is a lot.

More soon!

This is the second part of a two-part response to Bookseller Chick’s excellent post Writer as Blogger, Blogger as Writer. For the first part, see my post Reading Blogs.

Next Question:

What do you expect from your own blogging?

I expect from my own blogging the same things I expect from others: good writing, interesting content, and good design. Of these three, interesting content gives me the most trouble.

The first problem is that I find myself infinitely interesting. I have to be careful in my blogging not to ramble on at length about things so narrow in scope they interest only me. It’s that whole “Who drives content?” question. In my blogs, I do. Too much, if I want to keep an audience. So that’s something I’m working to improve. Posts like this one, which are parts of larger conversations, are a strong step in that direction.

The other issue I have with content is updating regularly but not too frequently. When I am in the midst of my obsession with a topic, I’ll post to that blog daily or several times a day. As obsession fades, I post less and less frequently, eventually stopping altogether. This is what happened with my crochet blog, my health and fitness blog, my video game blog, my fashion blog, and my publicly visible personal blog. My friends-only personal livejournal is very rarely neglected: my fascination with my self hasn’t faded yet.

Which brings us to the last question:

Why do you blog?

I started lectitans first because slayground (Little Willow of Bildungsroman fame) is a rockstar. She was promoting readergirlz, and I latched on to the notion immediately. In order to be a part of that larger community, I wanted a place to keep track of my own musings on reading. And so we have lectitans.

I then started paying attention to the blogs linked from readergirlz, and the larger conversations about books in which I saw slayground participating. I thought, “These are my people. I want to be a part of that.” So I am reading other book blogs, and engaging in conversation with other book bloggers. Yes, folks, it’s all about community.

I chose LiveJournal as my publishing platform because it is proven as a platform I’ll use consistently. My personal journal is on LiveJournal, and I’ve been updating it nearly daily for five years. Quite a few friends came over from my personal journal, giving me a built in audience. I also enjoy using the LiveJournal friends page as an RSS aggregator, but wanted a separate ID to use for my book-related reads.

I’m not concerned about running out of content for lectitans. Reading is an obsession I’ve had for twenty two years. I’m excited to be finding new book friends, both real in the form of other bloggers and imagined in the form of characters I wouldn’t be aware of without reading other blogs. I look forward to a long and exciting career as a book blogger.

This is the first part of a two-part response to Bookseller Chick’s excellent post, Writer as Blogger, Blogger as Writer. For the second part, see my post Writing Blogs.

Let’s begin with two questions:

What kind of content do you expect from your writers who blog? How about from the bloggers who aren’t (and never will be) “professional” writers?

I look for the same things from all bloggers, whether or not they are professional writers.

Good Writing. I’m looking for two things here: a uniqueness of voice and a strength of style. I want my bloggers to sound like themselves: not like someone else and not like robots or news reporters. At the same time, it’s important to me that they express themselves clearly and concisely. Word choice is key. If a writer uses one word and it’s clear she needed another, she’s lost me. I don’t like poetic prose and I always prefer economy of phrase, though not to the exclusion of the aforementioned uniqueness.

Interesting Content. This, too, has multiple parts. A blogger’s content must be of distinct interest to me to keep me coming back. My interests vary, though I tend to focus on one at a time. I’ve followed blogs centered on writing, health and fitness, crochet, video games and fashion, as well as personal blogs. I go back to each category now and again. I’ve strayed away from personal blogs of anyone I don’t personally know because I rarely find the mundanities of a stranger’s life interesting. I would go back to any well-written blog with glee. If opinions and analysis take precedence over lists of daily events, I will stick with a personal blog. In addition to being tied to my interests the content should be original in some way: completely original, reviews, or annotated links. Linking without comment or re-posting of stories found elsewhere quickly turns me off. Lastly, for content to be interesting it should be updated regularly. Less than once a week and I start to lose interest; more than three or four times a day and I get overwhelmed.

Good Design. I’m a sucker for a pretty page. I don’t care who designed it or if it’s a stock design like my own here at lectitans as long as it’s attractive.

On to the next question:

Who drives content: blogger or reader?

Yes. The best blogs are conversations. I don’t want to read a blog where the blogger writes only what she thinks her readers want without putting any of herself into it. That kind of writing is dishonest and uninteresting. Still, I don’t care to read a lot of navel-gazing. A blogger should be aware of her audience and keep them in mind without giving herself over to them completely. An ideal blog post expresses an opinion, presents information, or provides a recommendation and then asks, “What do you think?” This is why blogs didn’t really flourish until comments became a common feature. The sense of community is very important both to individual blogs and to blogging as a mode of publication.

Continue to part two, Writing Blogs.

I’ve started writing the response to Writer as Blogger, Blogger as Writer.

I’ve decided to make it a point to go to the library weekly. And each week, I’ll tell you what I got.

Today’s library haul:

1. Millicent Min, Girl Genius, Lisa Lee - recommended by readergirlz
2. The Last Dragon, Silvana de Mari - Cybils Finalist
3. Pucker, Melanie Gideon - Cybils Finalist
4. A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life, Dana Reinhardt - Cybils Finalist
5. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Visitors, Laura Anne Gilman and Josepha Sherman - in honor of the 10th Anniversary of the premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Out of the Madhouse, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder - in honor of the 10th Anniversary of the premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
7. Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie - While I was mid-Capt. Hook it occurred to me I ought to finish reading the source material, which I started long ago but never finished.

For my inaugural Poetry Friday post, I am using one of my favorite poems.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
with what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee and then my state
Like to the lark at break of day arising
Sings hymns at heaven’s gate.
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

(The punctuation is incorrect because I typed it from memory.  I then checked it against the official punctuation but I was so proud of myself for typing it from memory that I couldn’t bear to correct it.)

Why I Love This Poem:
Because it shows that even when life is at its worst, maybe somebody loves you and that makes it better a little.  I find it makes it better a lot.

More Stuff About This Poem:
When I teach my students about meter in poetry, I use this as an example of iambic pentameter aka the natural English meter (as opposed to, say, Latin or Greek meter).  I recite it with ridiculous emphasis on the meter, and then also more naturally.  They vary from frightened to awed.  I guess those two things aren’t that far apart, though, are they?

I hope it’s germane to write at length about one’s choice for Poetry Friday.  If it’s not, I’ll probably keep doing it anyway.  Sorry, internet.

I feel like a jerk. I am not posting the lengthy post I promised just yet.

But here’s a preview of things to come:

• the response to Bookseller Chick’s post
• a post on Elizabeth I, especially my ruminations on what it means to be a Queen, and my own Queen obsession
• a post on Capt. Hook, which I’ve not finished yet, and my pirate obsession

Read in 2007:

1. Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies), Justina Chen Headley
2. The Royal Diaries - Elizabeth I: The Red Rose of the House of Tudor, Kathryn Lasky

Currently Reading:

1. Capt. Hook: The Adventures of a Notoroious Youth, J. V. Hart and Brett Helquist
2. Virtual Mode, Piers Anthony
3. I, Claudius, Robert Graves

1. The lovely blackholly aka Holly Black, one of the co-authors of the Spiderwick Chronicles, solicited help creating Latin for her book Care and Feeding of Sprites. I caught sight of it while I was on my medicine run at Target today and flipped through.

You see, I’m something of a Latin expert, what with having a Master’s degree in teaching it and a couple years of experience under my belt with the teaching aspect, plus another 10ish years of reading it. At least, my friends tell me it’s okay to consider myself an expert, so I do. So when blackholly put out the call, slayground sent me her way and her mine, or something, and I did indeed provide her with some scientific names for her Sprites. I’m not sure how many of mine she used. I checked my records and I know at least the Glowing Toadfly and the Little Blueberry Sprite have scientific names I found for her. (The process was: she gave me English names. I used my knowledge of grammar, which dictionaries are good, and what specific connations are to come up with the Latin. Then I sent it to her.) I think she used half of the name I gave her for the Dancing Pondneedle, but only the dancing part. I think.

As you can imagine, it was very exciting for me to see in a store a book to which I had, in some way at least, contributed. (I suppose I contributed an interview to Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy as well. Every time I see that in a store I about have a fit.)

2. A quick plug for Sonja Foust, as well! Sonja has been my friend since we were baby high school freshmen, and the most exciting thing has happened. She’s going to be published! Her e-book romance short story Love in Shadow will be published by the Wild Rose Press. I feel compelled to warn you that this is a romance, with all that entails. I can’t be held responsible for Sonja’s text!

I’m off for a nap, after which I hope to be up to posting the earlier promised post on blogging, writing, reading, and other stuff.

Later - today, I hope - I will be writing a response to Bookseller Chick’s Writer as Blogger, Blogger as Writer post. I will talk about why I started this blog especially, when I had others I could’ve written. I’ll talk about why I chose LJ as my publishing platform. I’ll talk about some other stuff too.

But I want to do that when I’m coherent enough to make sense, and now is not that time.

So I’ll just tell you the tiny revelation I had today while out picking up my medicine: I don’t need to read books in the order they are on my bookshelf, or for the express purpose of cutting down on the number of books I have. That takes all the joy out of it. I need to read books because I want to read them. That is how one should go about reading, especially as a leisure activity. Just as I don’t read books because they’re “good for me,” so I should not read them just to see if I can bear to part with them.

So I’m doing away with the “Upcoming” part of my booklist, because if I make that part? I feel like I have to stick to it.

And that’s silly.

More later!

I’m taking a much needed and deserved sick day tomorrow. I didn’t get to do any reading today, but it is my sincere hope that I can read more of and perhaps even knock out Elizabeth I during my day off.

Thank you to all for the warm welcome to the land of book blogging!

Truth: I’ve been blogging for years. I don’t even know how many. Six maybe? Truth: I have had an LJ for over 5 years. Truth: I don’t spread the URLs for them all over because I’m a teacher. I know nothing is private on the internet, but there are some degrees of anonymity we can preserve. If my students find this journal, I don’t especially mind. Truth: If you want to read about my daily life or my ideas about fashion, I’ll be happy to provide you a link. Just drop me an email - lectitans (at) gmail (dot) com.

(After seeing that Miss Erin has a theatre blog I’m inclined to start one of those, too, but I’ll save it for when I’m doing more than a show a year, because content will be hard to produce, no? Though, hm. I suppose I will be stage managing this summer. Maybe I’ll make one then.)

So, remember how I was going book shopping today?

In the end, there was little time. I needed to go to my parents’ house, because my aging dog is not doing well and it’s important I see him as much as possible. He was feeling better today, so it’s possible he will be with us a while longer. So I only hit Target, where they did not have any of the books I wanted.

But in my mother’s bedroom, what should appear but Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston. Of course she let me borrow it. Booklending is one of a mother’s primary responsibilities.

So now I have that to read! And I didn’t spend any money or have to make a special library trip for it, either. Yay!

This Character Meme was created by Miss Erin.

Character you’d most like to have over for tea? Elinor Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility. I think Elinor and I would get along very well, and could talk about how much we love our families while we sipped our tea and ate scones. Mmm, scones.

Character you’d most like to have as a sibling? Harriet M. Welch from Harriet the Spy. My actual sister was nicknamed Harriet for a long time, because when the movie came out, she and Michelle Trachtenberg looked a lot alike. They don’t really look alike anymore but there were enough similarities between bookHarriet and my sister that it wouldn’t seem an odd addition to the family.

Character you’d most like to be friends with? Lola Cepp from Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, in whom I see myself entirely, and Cyd Charisse from Gingerbread et al, who is nothing like me. Lola is the sister of my heart, the kind of person you could be friends with for a lifetime. Cyd Charisse is so much wilder than myself, but she’s a little crazy and I think there’s a level on which we’d understand each other very well.

Character you’d most like to have as a cousin? I don’t have any first cousins at all in real life! I’m not really sure what a cousinly relationship entails. I think I would like Claudia Kishi from the Babysitters’ Club as my cousin. She could teach me all the good places to hide junkfood, and also how to dress well.

Character you’d most like to have an adventure with? Sequiro from Piers Anthony’s mode books, because he’s a telepathic horse.

Favorite quirky character? Pippi Longstocking leaps to mind. Do I have to explain?

Favorite love-to-hate character? I don’t love to hate anybody, but I do think The White Witch from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is incredible.

Favorite bad guy? Snape, because he’s not. But he is. But he’s not. But he is. Etc.

No one tagged me specifically, so I’m not going to tag anyone else specifically, but if you want to do it, you should.

My goal for last year was a book every two weeks, coming to about two a month. I ended up topping that, reading 30 books in the year.

1. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (re-read) by J. K. Rowling
2. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
3. The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff
4. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
5. Crewel Lye by Piers Anthony
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
7. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
8. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
9. Golem in the Gears by Piers Anthony
10. The Paradise Snare (The Han Solo Trilogy: Volume One) by A. C. Crispin
11. Emma by Jane Austen
12. The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
13. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
14. Women pirates and the politics of the Jolly Roger by Ulrike Klausmann, Marion Meinzerin & Gaberiel Kuh
15. The Everything New Teacher Book by Melissa Kelly
16. Cat in a Kiwi Con by Carole Nelson Douglas
17. I, Trissy by Norma Mazer
18. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
19. Prowlers by Christopher Golden
20. The First Days of School (reread) by Harry and Rosemary Wong
21. My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
22. Classroom Management That Works by Robert Marzano
23. Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card
24. Welcome to the Dead House by R. L. Stine
25. The New Girl by R. L. Stine
26. Innocence by Jane Mendelsohn
27. Dead End Dating by Kimberly Raye
28. Undead and Unwed by Mary Janice Davidson
29. Tall, Dark and Dead by Tate Hallaway
30. Morrigan’s Cross by Nora Roberts

My goal for this year will be three a month. Only 10% of slayground’s average, but she makes reading books her business. To catch up to this goal, because I do believe Nothing But the Truth is the first book I’ve finished this year, I will need to have read 9 books by the end of March. I did one today.

That leaves 28 days.

A book every 3 days, and I’m all caught up.

Books Read in 2007

1. Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies) by Justina Chen Headley

Currently Reading

1. The Royal Diaries - Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor by Kathryn Lasky
2. Virtual Mode by Piers Anthony (re-read)
3. I, Claudius by Robert Graves