Crimes and Misdemeanors
Jul. 28th, 2009 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timerippleI had a crazy weekend in that it was the Simmons Summer Institute, with the theme of "Crimes and Misdemeanors." The class's syllabus was based on works by the speakers, so it was pretty exciting to hear them speak and meet some of them. What a weekend. I am still reeling from how much I love MT Anderson. I thought I loved him before, but damn.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Opening ceremonies stuff commenced directly after class. My group's presentation was scheduled for right after Roger Sutton's opening remarks. I went around all day with a fixed smile telling people, “This is the face of utter terror.” Luckily I looked fabulous.
I sat next to Martha Brooks at dinner, which was a little awkward because I’m a terrible conversationalist, but she was willing to talk about herself quite a bit and so were the other people at the table. She talked about having dual editors, one in Canada and one in the US. She thinks it’s good for an editor to have some writing experience, and recommended keeping a personal journal and writing about things that deeply affect you. Then you can draw on that, the experience of writing and the reflections themselves. She said her jazz mentor used to lie back on the sandwich-strewn floor and raise his sax and play. “You have to lie back into the music,” he would tell her.
I like that. I thought about it as we were preparing to present. Lie back into the whatever-you’re-doing. Nothing matters but this.
And do you know, it went pretty well. My heart was beating a little fast in the beginning, but it was under control by the time I had to speak. I didn’t get hoarse or stumble. I’d been mouthing my part earlier, getting my mouth around the words and starting a sentence over if I messed up, which seemed to help. During Roger's introduction, as he explained what the class was about and what the presentations had been, we kept flashing each other little subversive grins. The assignment was to put It's Perfectly Normal (written by Robie Harris, illustrated by Michael Emberly) on trial. It's a sex ed book, recommended for ages 10-14, and it does a pretty good job, in my opinion.
The subversive grins were because all of the challenges to this book have been from a conservative/religious/omg naked cartoons/omg sex ed/think of the children's precious innocence point of view. Whereas our challenge was that it excludes any mention of transgenderedness, and that this exclusion is a bad thing.
We knew we were going to be something of a shock. Nobody gasped or anything when we read the challenge, but I maintain we did a cool thing by seeking out a new challenge and turning this into a real debate rather than a farce.
And when I got home I opened up the conference folders they handed out. Not just schedules and speaker profiles, but swag! A spy pen! A swim cap! (Wtf, a swim cap? really?) A Graceling tattoo! A Graceling poster! A Graceling poster with the big pointy Graceling cover dagger! WOOOOOOO!!!!! AWESOME.
:D:D:D:D
Friday morning kicked off with Gareth Hinds, who showed some sneak previews of his graphic novel adaptation of the Odyssey. Needless to say I got pretty excited about that. He talked about having to change some things for the sake of narrative flow-- shortening the Land of the Dead episode, for one. Then he showed the scene where Odysseus’s dog dies. He has Athena come and bear away the dog’s soul, which hit me in the face with a big giant WTF. It works brilliantly as a narrative device, but it makes no sense whatsoever in the context of actual ancient Greek religion. I mentioned that to him later during the evening signing, only more politely, of course. He kind of laughed embarrassedly and gave me to understand that he knew perfectly well it made no sense. My opinion of him instantly went up, and I went off clutching my signed copy of Beowulf with a dazed and fangirly expression. Beowulf, I should add, from what I can tell so far seems much more impressive than his Merchant of Venice.
Lenore Look was the second speaker, and she was adorable. I must read her Alvin Ho books. Favorite quote: “My characters are well-behaved children, and Asian at that!”
Marilyn Nelson read from her new book Pemba’s Song and from The Freedom Business. She has a lovely but surprisingly high reading voice.
Next was the lovely and warm Martha Brooks, who talked a lot about secrets shaping lives, secrets shaping how we communicate with one another, and finished up with singing thirty seconds of Joni Mitchell in an astonishingly powerful jazz voice. I felt a little guilty about not buying anything for her to sign, but I swore there would be no more buying after Beowulf. I did get to talk to her a little more, however. What a lovely, lovely woman.
Next up was Kevin Henkes in conversation. I admit I was pretty tired by this time and my mind kept wandering. He read a bit from Junonia and quoted E.L. Doctorow: “No character is complete without the author’s unconditional love.” That notion floated around quite a bit over the next two days.
5:00. Kristin Cashore, Simmons Poster Girl! She wore pigtails, which was just about the cutest thing ever. She talked about wrasslin’ skeletons and confessed to numerous juvenile crimes, mostly involving chocolate. I suspect the entire MA/MFA/MS program has a crush on her. She named Margaret Mahy’s The Tricksters as one of her favorite books (I noted this on the back of her bio sheet and drew a heart next to it), and talked about cutting anachronisms out of her pseudomedieval fantasy world.
KC: In this world, there was no ancient Greece! I won’t use the words “marathon” or “Spartan.”
ME: Thank God, someone who knows her Greek history!
KC: A mind-reader is a mind-reader all the time, not just when it’s convenient for the plot!
ME: I think I love you.
Apparently the promotional Fire bookmarks are spoilery, so I must make sure not to read them. She signed my copy of Graceling later and was very sweet. As I flailed earlier, there was a Graceling poster included in the Swag Folders, and on Sunday morning a box of Fire posters turned up. Win!
Avi was the last speaker of the evening, and he was very entertaining. I wasn't as impressed as I was obviously supposed to be, probably because I’ve only read Nothing But The Truth (twice, balefully) and none of his other books. Negligent grad student is negligent. He finished up with a reading from Who Was That Masked Man Anyway? and did all the voices.
Saturday I showed up at 8 for muffins and awkward conversation. At 9 there was a reviewing roundtable with Vicky Smith (Kirkus), Roger Sutton (HB) and Deborah Stevenson (BCCB).
Then Blue Balliett, who was nice and interesting but not really one of the highlights for me. She talked about how her books are mysteries about real art. I kind of wanted to ask her about crimes committed by/in the name of museums (e.g. the Elgin Marbles), but didn’t really have the opportunity.
JonArno Lawson did his bit after lunch, and luckily he played the guitar and had an adorable Canadian accent, otherwise I might have fallen asleep because it was, after all, after lunch. I couldn’t really find a coherent thread to his talk except random bits of poetry, but that was okay. His favorite West Side Story song is “Gee, Officer Krupke,” which served pretty effectively to endear him to me.
Then, O then, Francisco Stork made it in time for his talk at 2. I was introducing, and I do hope I didn’t screw up too badly by talking too fast. I got a bit carried away in the second half of my introduction, but apparently he quite liked it. And Anita Silvey complimented me on it afterwards (I am reasonably certain she does not hand out compliments idly to all and sundry).
In case you're interested, this is what I said:
“Good afternoon. I am honored and delighted to introduce to you our next speaker. Born in Mexico, he came to the United States with his family when he was nine years old. He later majored in English and Philosophy at Spring Hill College, studied Latin American literature at Harvard, and holds a law degree from Columbia University. His most recent book, Marcelo in the Real World, has garnered tremendous critical praise, receiving starred reviews in Booklist, The Horn Book, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal.
“The Symposium examined Marcelo in the Real World earlier this week, and found it practically replete with crimes and misdemeanors, rulemaking and rulebreaking. It has legal crimes, moral crimes, crimes of action, crimes of inaction; crimes committed against and for the sake of strangers, friends, and family; and the task of reconciling an internal, personal rule system with the rules of the “real” world.
“Please join me in welcoming Francisco Stork.”
He spoke about external crimes and internal crimes, crimes against oneself, crimes of the spirit. He was so very hopeful, being adamant that his duty as a YA author was to portray hope, growth, or at least the hope of growth.
I got my copy of Marcelo signed, of course. When he first walked in and I headed over to introduce myself, he recognized (or pretended to recognize) my name, saying he thought we’d spoken on the phone. I told him I’d been Arthur’s intern last summer, and emailed him a few times. I told him Cheryl always called Marcelo her baby, and she let my babysit a few times-- “Ah yes, with copyediting and all that,” he interjected. Maybe he really did remember me; I did type up the final round of copyedits. At any rate, it was really special that I got to introduce him.
Professional Connection-- a bunch of us stumbled around until we finally found the right room for Randy Testa, VP, Education and Professional Development, Walden Media. “Breakout!: Freeing the ‘Extra’ from the Prison of the Ordinary: Beverly Cleary, Ramona Quimby and Klickitat Street Go to the Movies” seemed like mostly an excuse to promote the upcoming Ramona movie, but whatever. He mentioned some of the other adaptations Walden’s done, like the Narnia movies (in which people were much more interested).
It was a really long afternoon. Ellen Levine spoke at great and passionate length about social injustice, and read excerpts from Freedom’s Children and talked about Rachel Carson.
Anita Silvey put the concept “Children’s books can have a profound influence on a person’s life” on trial, because she is awesome like that, and basically talked about her new book, Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book. I didn’t end up buying any of her books either, but I was tempted because, as I say, she is awesome. She had swapped out her customary black hat for a flowered straw one, which was festive and summer-like. And awesome.
Jack Gantos finished up the evening by telling five embarrassing author stories (all about himself) and asking us to declare him guilty/not guilty and come up with a punishment if guilt was determined. I tried to be creative, but judged him guilty on only three of five counts, and decreed that he should work as a taxidermist, be defenestrated, and write a book entitled Buggery on the High Seas: A Moralistic Fable for Impressionable Youth.
In my own defense, I was very tired and it had been a very long day.
Sunday. Sing it: Ooooone daaaaayyy moooooooooooore...
9 am (a small mercy): more morning beverages, no food, and more awkward conversation with somebody who had bats in her apartments. She brought out her camera as proof, and I stubbornly refused to concede that the bat was disgusting. I thought it was kind of cute.
Then I tried really hard to keep my brain from exploding as M.T. Anderson delivered “Distressed: A Revised History of the Traveling Pants.” (Roger called him “Mr. Tobin Big Words” on his blog entry.) It was a highly ironic call to move from symbol to action with regard to the filthy underbelly of the clothing industry. He talked about the Gossip Girl obsession with brand names-- “A kind of Upper East Side Tourette's”. He talked about the children who make these items-- brand name items, WalMart items-- and about the accelerating cycle of clothing production and consumption. The distressed prep school-like clothing trend, he says, is due to a desire for items that appear to have a history. We have an aversion for used clothing, a feeling that it is dirty, despite the fact that consignment shops wash and new clothes are usually covered in chemicals and made in physical and ethical squalor. And yet we desire items with a history. “The pedigree of privilege is being sold.” Books that accept the world as it is are all very well, but, he says, we need books that question and redefine reality rather than accepting our reality.
How did he say it? Centuries from now scholars will look at our literature, delineate a set of themes and symbols, look at the glittering facade that floats atop the scummy river of corruption, and they will say, “Nice pants!”
I hope somebody publishes that talk somewhere, some day, because it was brilliant and my notes make no sense. My heart, my beating heart.
I talked myself out of buying both volumes of Octavian Nothing in hardcover, because I have no money, and out of buying Feed because it’s brilliant but I didn’t really enjoy it. I didn’t enjoy Octavian Nothing either, per se, but I love it in all kinds of special and Ideal Readerly ways. So I just brought along my slightly battered mass market paperback and hoped he wouldn’t be offended at my cheapness. After all, he’d just finished a lecture on the evils of consumerism.
ME: Thank you for that talk. I wanted to tell you, although it didn’t come up today, one of the things I love most about Octavian Nothing is the concern with what constitutes science, and how that can be manipulated.
MTA: Oh yeah! That’s fascinating stuff.
ME: Yeah, I had this one class on philosophy of science, and that was something that just stuck with me and was really special when I read it.
MTA: Cool. Do you do anything related to science now?
ME: Well, I actually did minor in biology, but that kind of annoyed the classics department.
MTA: Really? But you could read Pliny, and all that! It totally makes sense!
ME: You’d think, right?
MTA: *finishes signing* Haha. Nice to meet you!
ME: Thank you so much! *BE STILL MY HEART*
I love him a lot. He’s a genius, but the kind of genius that makes sense.
C. gave the closing speech, and recapped everybody’s talks. She included the opening night events, and made our presentation sound incredibly smart even though nobody had told her we would be doing it, because she’s gracious like that. And anyway, everything sounds smarter when translated into C.-speak.
And then it was over, and by the time I got to the brunch buffet there was no more French toast so I had to settle for cookies. Woe.
And then I migrated to the library where I tried to get some work done for my paper but mostly slept instead.
And that was my weekend.
And now I'm searching frantically for books featuring a thief narrator/protagonist so I can write my paper. I've got Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief and sequels, Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy, Hilari Bell's first two Knight and Rogue books, and Celia Rees's Sovay. Any others you can think of? Children's books would be best for my paper, although I'd be interested to hear of any others you might recommend.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Opening ceremonies stuff commenced directly after class. My group's presentation was scheduled for right after Roger Sutton's opening remarks. I went around all day with a fixed smile telling people, “This is the face of utter terror.” Luckily I looked fabulous.
I sat next to Martha Brooks at dinner, which was a little awkward because I’m a terrible conversationalist, but she was willing to talk about herself quite a bit and so were the other people at the table. She talked about having dual editors, one in Canada and one in the US. She thinks it’s good for an editor to have some writing experience, and recommended keeping a personal journal and writing about things that deeply affect you. Then you can draw on that, the experience of writing and the reflections themselves. She said her jazz mentor used to lie back on the sandwich-strewn floor and raise his sax and play. “You have to lie back into the music,” he would tell her.
I like that. I thought about it as we were preparing to present. Lie back into the whatever-you’re-doing. Nothing matters but this.
And do you know, it went pretty well. My heart was beating a little fast in the beginning, but it was under control by the time I had to speak. I didn’t get hoarse or stumble. I’d been mouthing my part earlier, getting my mouth around the words and starting a sentence over if I messed up, which seemed to help. During Roger's introduction, as he explained what the class was about and what the presentations had been, we kept flashing each other little subversive grins. The assignment was to put It's Perfectly Normal (written by Robie Harris, illustrated by Michael Emberly) on trial. It's a sex ed book, recommended for ages 10-14, and it does a pretty good job, in my opinion.
The subversive grins were because all of the challenges to this book have been from a conservative/religious/omg naked cartoons/omg sex ed/think of the children's precious innocence point of view. Whereas our challenge was that it excludes any mention of transgenderedness, and that this exclusion is a bad thing.
We knew we were going to be something of a shock. Nobody gasped or anything when we read the challenge, but I maintain we did a cool thing by seeking out a new challenge and turning this into a real debate rather than a farce.
And when I got home I opened up the conference folders they handed out. Not just schedules and speaker profiles, but swag! A spy pen! A swim cap! (Wtf, a swim cap? really?) A Graceling tattoo! A Graceling poster! A Graceling poster with the big pointy Graceling cover dagger! WOOOOOOO!!!!! AWESOME.
:D:D:D:D
Friday morning kicked off with Gareth Hinds, who showed some sneak previews of his graphic novel adaptation of the Odyssey. Needless to say I got pretty excited about that. He talked about having to change some things for the sake of narrative flow-- shortening the Land of the Dead episode, for one. Then he showed the scene where Odysseus’s dog dies. He has Athena come and bear away the dog’s soul, which hit me in the face with a big giant WTF. It works brilliantly as a narrative device, but it makes no sense whatsoever in the context of actual ancient Greek religion. I mentioned that to him later during the evening signing, only more politely, of course. He kind of laughed embarrassedly and gave me to understand that he knew perfectly well it made no sense. My opinion of him instantly went up, and I went off clutching my signed copy of Beowulf with a dazed and fangirly expression. Beowulf, I should add, from what I can tell so far seems much more impressive than his Merchant of Venice.
Lenore Look was the second speaker, and she was adorable. I must read her Alvin Ho books. Favorite quote: “My characters are well-behaved children, and Asian at that!”
Marilyn Nelson read from her new book Pemba’s Song and from The Freedom Business. She has a lovely but surprisingly high reading voice.
Next was the lovely and warm Martha Brooks, who talked a lot about secrets shaping lives, secrets shaping how we communicate with one another, and finished up with singing thirty seconds of Joni Mitchell in an astonishingly powerful jazz voice. I felt a little guilty about not buying anything for her to sign, but I swore there would be no more buying after Beowulf. I did get to talk to her a little more, however. What a lovely, lovely woman.
Next up was Kevin Henkes in conversation. I admit I was pretty tired by this time and my mind kept wandering. He read a bit from Junonia and quoted E.L. Doctorow: “No character is complete without the author’s unconditional love.” That notion floated around quite a bit over the next two days.
5:00. Kristin Cashore, Simmons Poster Girl! She wore pigtails, which was just about the cutest thing ever. She talked about wrasslin’ skeletons and confessed to numerous juvenile crimes, mostly involving chocolate. I suspect the entire MA/MFA/MS program has a crush on her. She named Margaret Mahy’s The Tricksters as one of her favorite books (I noted this on the back of her bio sheet and drew a heart next to it), and talked about cutting anachronisms out of her pseudomedieval fantasy world.
KC: In this world, there was no ancient Greece! I won’t use the words “marathon” or “Spartan.”
ME: Thank God, someone who knows her Greek history!
KC: A mind-reader is a mind-reader all the time, not just when it’s convenient for the plot!
ME: I think I love you.
Apparently the promotional Fire bookmarks are spoilery, so I must make sure not to read them. She signed my copy of Graceling later and was very sweet. As I flailed earlier, there was a Graceling poster included in the Swag Folders, and on Sunday morning a box of Fire posters turned up. Win!
Avi was the last speaker of the evening, and he was very entertaining. I wasn't as impressed as I was obviously supposed to be, probably because I’ve only read Nothing But The Truth (twice, balefully) and none of his other books. Negligent grad student is negligent. He finished up with a reading from Who Was That Masked Man Anyway? and did all the voices.
Saturday I showed up at 8 for muffins and awkward conversation. At 9 there was a reviewing roundtable with Vicky Smith (Kirkus), Roger Sutton (HB) and Deborah Stevenson (BCCB).
Then Blue Balliett, who was nice and interesting but not really one of the highlights for me. She talked about how her books are mysteries about real art. I kind of wanted to ask her about crimes committed by/in the name of museums (e.g. the Elgin Marbles), but didn’t really have the opportunity.
JonArno Lawson did his bit after lunch, and luckily he played the guitar and had an adorable Canadian accent, otherwise I might have fallen asleep because it was, after all, after lunch. I couldn’t really find a coherent thread to his talk except random bits of poetry, but that was okay. His favorite West Side Story song is “Gee, Officer Krupke,” which served pretty effectively to endear him to me.
Then, O then, Francisco Stork made it in time for his talk at 2. I was introducing, and I do hope I didn’t screw up too badly by talking too fast. I got a bit carried away in the second half of my introduction, but apparently he quite liked it. And Anita Silvey complimented me on it afterwards (I am reasonably certain she does not hand out compliments idly to all and sundry).
In case you're interested, this is what I said:
“Good afternoon. I am honored and delighted to introduce to you our next speaker. Born in Mexico, he came to the United States with his family when he was nine years old. He later majored in English and Philosophy at Spring Hill College, studied Latin American literature at Harvard, and holds a law degree from Columbia University. His most recent book, Marcelo in the Real World, has garnered tremendous critical praise, receiving starred reviews in Booklist, The Horn Book, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal.
“The Symposium examined Marcelo in the Real World earlier this week, and found it practically replete with crimes and misdemeanors, rulemaking and rulebreaking. It has legal crimes, moral crimes, crimes of action, crimes of inaction; crimes committed against and for the sake of strangers, friends, and family; and the task of reconciling an internal, personal rule system with the rules of the “real” world.
“Please join me in welcoming Francisco Stork.”
He spoke about external crimes and internal crimes, crimes against oneself, crimes of the spirit. He was so very hopeful, being adamant that his duty as a YA author was to portray hope, growth, or at least the hope of growth.
I got my copy of Marcelo signed, of course. When he first walked in and I headed over to introduce myself, he recognized (or pretended to recognize) my name, saying he thought we’d spoken on the phone. I told him I’d been Arthur’s intern last summer, and emailed him a few times. I told him Cheryl always called Marcelo her baby, and she let my babysit a few times-- “Ah yes, with copyediting and all that,” he interjected. Maybe he really did remember me; I did type up the final round of copyedits. At any rate, it was really special that I got to introduce him.
Professional Connection-- a bunch of us stumbled around until we finally found the right room for Randy Testa, VP, Education and Professional Development, Walden Media. “Breakout!: Freeing the ‘Extra’ from the Prison of the Ordinary: Beverly Cleary, Ramona Quimby and Klickitat Street Go to the Movies” seemed like mostly an excuse to promote the upcoming Ramona movie, but whatever. He mentioned some of the other adaptations Walden’s done, like the Narnia movies (in which people were much more interested).
It was a really long afternoon. Ellen Levine spoke at great and passionate length about social injustice, and read excerpts from Freedom’s Children and talked about Rachel Carson.
Anita Silvey put the concept “Children’s books can have a profound influence on a person’s life” on trial, because she is awesome like that, and basically talked about her new book, Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book. I didn’t end up buying any of her books either, but I was tempted because, as I say, she is awesome. She had swapped out her customary black hat for a flowered straw one, which was festive and summer-like. And awesome.
Jack Gantos finished up the evening by telling five embarrassing author stories (all about himself) and asking us to declare him guilty/not guilty and come up with a punishment if guilt was determined. I tried to be creative, but judged him guilty on only three of five counts, and decreed that he should work as a taxidermist, be defenestrated, and write a book entitled Buggery on the High Seas: A Moralistic Fable for Impressionable Youth.
In my own defense, I was very tired and it had been a very long day.
Sunday. Sing it: Ooooone daaaaayyy moooooooooooore...
9 am (a small mercy): more morning beverages, no food, and more awkward conversation with somebody who had bats in her apartments. She brought out her camera as proof, and I stubbornly refused to concede that the bat was disgusting. I thought it was kind of cute.
Then I tried really hard to keep my brain from exploding as M.T. Anderson delivered “Distressed: A Revised History of the Traveling Pants.” (Roger called him “Mr. Tobin Big Words” on his blog entry.) It was a highly ironic call to move from symbol to action with regard to the filthy underbelly of the clothing industry. He talked about the Gossip Girl obsession with brand names-- “A kind of Upper East Side Tourette's”. He talked about the children who make these items-- brand name items, WalMart items-- and about the accelerating cycle of clothing production and consumption. The distressed prep school-like clothing trend, he says, is due to a desire for items that appear to have a history. We have an aversion for used clothing, a feeling that it is dirty, despite the fact that consignment shops wash and new clothes are usually covered in chemicals and made in physical and ethical squalor. And yet we desire items with a history. “The pedigree of privilege is being sold.” Books that accept the world as it is are all very well, but, he says, we need books that question and redefine reality rather than accepting our reality.
How did he say it? Centuries from now scholars will look at our literature, delineate a set of themes and symbols, look at the glittering facade that floats atop the scummy river of corruption, and they will say, “Nice pants!”
I hope somebody publishes that talk somewhere, some day, because it was brilliant and my notes make no sense. My heart, my beating heart.
I talked myself out of buying both volumes of Octavian Nothing in hardcover, because I have no money, and out of buying Feed because it’s brilliant but I didn’t really enjoy it. I didn’t enjoy Octavian Nothing either, per se, but I love it in all kinds of special and Ideal Readerly ways. So I just brought along my slightly battered mass market paperback and hoped he wouldn’t be offended at my cheapness. After all, he’d just finished a lecture on the evils of consumerism.
ME: Thank you for that talk. I wanted to tell you, although it didn’t come up today, one of the things I love most about Octavian Nothing is the concern with what constitutes science, and how that can be manipulated.
MTA: Oh yeah! That’s fascinating stuff.
ME: Yeah, I had this one class on philosophy of science, and that was something that just stuck with me and was really special when I read it.
MTA: Cool. Do you do anything related to science now?
ME: Well, I actually did minor in biology, but that kind of annoyed the classics department.
MTA: Really? But you could read Pliny, and all that! It totally makes sense!
ME: You’d think, right?
MTA: *finishes signing* Haha. Nice to meet you!
ME: Thank you so much! *BE STILL MY HEART*
I love him a lot. He’s a genius, but the kind of genius that makes sense.
C. gave the closing speech, and recapped everybody’s talks. She included the opening night events, and made our presentation sound incredibly smart even though nobody had told her we would be doing it, because she’s gracious like that. And anyway, everything sounds smarter when translated into C.-speak.
And then it was over, and by the time I got to the brunch buffet there was no more French toast so I had to settle for cookies. Woe.
And then I migrated to the library where I tried to get some work done for my paper but mostly slept instead.
And that was my weekend.
And now I'm searching frantically for books featuring a thief narrator/protagonist so I can write my paper. I've got Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief and sequels, Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy, Hilari Bell's first two Knight and Rogue books, and Celia Rees's Sovay. Any others you can think of? Children's books would be best for my paper, although I'd be interested to hear of any others you might recommend.
