- Emails; I owe a few (million). (And the cat is biting my toes as I type this. And halfway under my chair batting at the wheels.)
- That Jeff Ford is funny. (And psst, I’ll be posting about a certain book by Mr. Ford over at the LBC on Wednesday, so plan to drop in.)
- Kameron Hurley reads the infamous VC and takes it apart beautifully.
- More awesomeness from Rebecca Skloot, this time on tissues. The kind in your body, not the kind you blow your nose in.
- I love Liza Palmer on certain TV shows: "Jade’s going to self-destruct any minute now — not every episode is going to focus on your ability to twirl, bitch."
- Sara Gran on one of the worst fictional sins: "More sarcasm: whenever you describe a person of color in a novel, they absolutely must be described as having skin the color of a type of coffee, a type of chocolate, or some combination thereof; mocha frappacino, bittersweet cafe au lait, cocoa with a dab of espresso–as long as you don’t stray from these two food groups, you’re good."
- Meghan with another lovely rant on feminism. Also, an interesting little post from Paul Collins on how Caitlin Flanagan’s book now differs from the galley; he refers to her as "future footnote."
- Book Nerd weighs in with an excellent post on the Tournament of Books. Parental advisory: Snark is discussed frankly and honestly.
- You do not know how upset I am to discover that our UPN affiliate (WWOR out of New York) is showing a BASKETBALL GAME Tuesday night and won’t air Veronica Mars until Wednesday. Grrowl. If it were a WNBA game, maybe I could forgive.
- Muriel Spark is dead: Read Jenny and Maud.
- Hop on over to the LBC for the opening festivities of the spring round; as mentioned, I nominated a book this time (beat by a nose, as was nearly everything up; it was close this time). We’re doing some things differently not for this round, but the next one — the nominees for summer are already up at the site to give other people time to read along if they so choose. And there’ll be more of Ed’s mad podcast skillz.