Packet finished a day early and the advance copy of Nicola Griffith’s Always (an Aud novel!) to read. A snippet from an early chapter:

Self-defense is not just a skill, it’s a worldview. Like the scientific method–or religion, or motherhood, for that matter–once you accept its precepts you see things differently. I didn’t intend to tell my students this. Just as you don’t try to interest six-year-olds in natural history by discussing physiology and adaptive evolution–but take them, instead, to a pond to watch tadpoles turn into frogs–on the first day of class you don’t tell grown women to change their lives. You show them how to punch a bag.

So good and so full of moments that make me want to stop and read them to whoever is nearby.

The New York Times engages in full-page gushery about my favorite novel of the year thus far: Ysabeau‘s Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog:

Ysabeau S. Wilce’s name already sounds like something the infinitely inventive Terry Pratchett might have concocted — he has an Ysabell, Death’s adopted daughter, in his Discworld series, though he’s been known to lampoon middle initials (in “Maskerade,” a character gives herself an “X” — which stands for “someone who has a cool and exciting middle initial”).

But the test of course is in the tale and its telling. “You think things have to be possible?” Will Parry cried in Pullman’s “Subtle Knife.” “Things have to be true!” A fitting motto for the writer of fantasy, who must create a believable young hero or heroine in a memorable alternate world. Otherwise readers, especially young ones, will eject right out of it.

Not to worry: Wilce has matters well in hand in this, her first novel. Thirteen-year-old Flora Segunda is a charming narrator, and her domain — the city of Califa — is an intriguing mix of the preindustrial and the post-multicultural, with a bracing dose of magic, martial life, time travel and family drama mixed in.

Yay! Read it!

Looks like NONE of us correctly predicted the outcome of today’s round of the book tourney. And Mark’s slip yesterday (I don’t think the books are still up there, but they were) leads me to believe I incorrectly guessed one of the next ones too. YEE-OUCH.

I still believe The Road will win, though. But we’ll see.

Paul Rudnick serves up the best take on the scrotum controversy that I’ve seen in this week’s New Yorker. Or at least the funniest. An excerpt:

"Betsy Barstow, Colonial Girl"

One fine morning, as Betsy went to the village well in the Olde Massachusetts Baye colony, she ran into her best friend, feisty Katey Karmody.

"Oh, Katey," said Betsy, "I have such news! My father and my brothers are joining up with the militia to fight the British, so that we may all be free!"

"Oh, Betsy, that is news!" cried Katey. "My nipples are like muskets!"

There’s more.