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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
- Publishers put a lot of thought into designing the covers of books sold at airports
More on the great cover discussion of May 2008. - One man’s plan to rescue book reviewing
Involves reviewing books, just in case you’re wondering. - How do you get a debut novel published? It helps if your surname is Depp
Henceforth, we will be known as Booksquare Depp. - HarperCollins? social networking site Authonomy in beta for aspiring authors
And we await the results of this project. - Online library gets FBI to back off
The Internet Archive pushes back against a National Security Letter and prevails. Characteristically, Brewster Kahle had a muted reaction to his success. - Magic triumphs over realism for Garcia Márquez
See, when an author "quits" writing, it means "at this moment, in the next, who knows?’ - Which Author Remains Obscure Because of All the Ink Wasted on Barbara Walters?
Ron Hogan digs into a critical (get it, critical?) question raised by Seth Godin about media saturation of certain topics at the expense of others. Special to MediaBistro: fix your page titles! - Punctuation Has Never Looked So Sexy
Funny. - Online library gets FBI to back off
The Internet Archive pushes back against a National Security Letter and prevails. Characteristically, Brewster Kahle had a muted reaction to his success. - Magic triumphs over realism for Garcia Márquez
See, when an author "quits" writing, it means "at this moment, in the next, who knows?’ - Which Author Remains Obscure Because of All the Ink Wasted on Barbara Walters?
Ron Hogan digs into a critical (get it, critical?) question raised by Seth Godin about media saturation of certain topics at the expense of others. Special to MediaBistro: fix your page titles! - Punctuation Has Never Looked So Sexy
Funny. - Gay Penguin Tale Tops List of ‘Challenged’ Children’s Books
Yet, the obvious solution eludes the challengers: don’t read the book.
| Friday, May 9th, 2008 | ||
|
truepenny |
4:38p | Due South: "Starman" "Starman" (DS 2.11) Original air date: February 22, 1996 Favorite quote: RAY: How do I get out of this town? MOTEL CLERK: Left at the corner. RAY: Well, I don't have a car. MOTEL CLERK: Then you have a problem. RAY: You have no idea. Is there a car rental agency? MOTEL CLERK: Apollo Thirteen Rentals. RAY: How about a bus? MOTEL CLERK: Last one went through an hour ago. RAY: Does the space shuttle fly over any time soon? MOTEL CLERK: Ask Bob. RAY: I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a dull spoon. [she offers him a spoon] RAY: No, no, it's just an expression. Spoilers. ( Great Scott. Turtles. ) |
|
whatwasthatbook [ wire_mother ] |
2:09p | Juvenile SF Back in the mid- to late-'70s, when I was in elementary school, I read a juvenile science-fiction book that I have been trying to find ever since. All I remember was that one of the characters was a spider-like alien who laid an egg during the story, and was connected to the rest of its race in a constant hive-mind, but was painfully disconnected from that while in "hyperspace" (or whatever term the book used for its faster-than-light travel system). It may have been a Scholastic book, as the size and page quality in my memory are consistent with that publisher. edit to add: the alien is one of the protagonists. normally, its species survives "hyperspace" or whatever by wrapping up in a cocoon and hibernating, but can't do this while caring for an egg (which causes the distress of the protagonist-alien in the story, as they need to make an emergency faster-than-light journey for some reason). |
| Thursday, May 8th, 2008 | ||
| pepysdiary | 10:00p | Monday 8th May 1665 Up very betimes, and did much business before I went out with several persons, among others Captain Taylor, who would leave the management of most of his business now he is going to Harwich, upon me, and if I can get money by it, which I believe it will, I shall take some of it upon me. Thence with Sir W. Batten to the Duke of Albemarle's and there did much business, and then to the 'Change, and thence off with Sir W. Warren to an ordinary, where we dined and sat talking of most usefull discourse till 5 in the afternoon, and then home, and very busy till late, and so home and to bed. |
| Friday, May 9th, 2008 | ||
|
papersky |
3:56p | Words: 1830 Total words: 55997 Files: 3 Tea: Spring tea Music: There Double Concertos RSI: feels fine, do exercises! Reason for stopping: End of bit. That was a very stressful bit. I'm having a cup of tea to calm down. It's a while since I've written something like that. There's only one excuse for doing something this peculiar, and that's doing it really well. |
| booksquare | 6:58p | The Daily Square Today’s links of interest: |
|
desperance |
6:08p | The cost of cats There has been a fly in the house today. Between them, the boys have notched up one (1) box of eggs [Mac] and one (1) much-valued china bowl [Barry] in their frankly reckless pursuit of the thing. I would have hung up its trophy head regardless of the expense, but alas: Mac caught me the fly, but he eated it. I do feel mildly revenged, though. Their tea-tin said "tuna flakes", but it wasn't. "Undifferentiated mush", I would have called it; in a restaurant, I would have sent it back. They're eating it anyway, and I'm sneering at them. |
|
truepenny |
11:38a | the company I keep Check out the TOC for Flytrap 9. |
|
musecrack [ musecracked ] |
9:12a | The Long Hall ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) |
|
musecrack [ musecracked ] |
8:29a | |
| scholarsblog | 4:10p | Poetry Friday - 10 *sigh* I'm beginning to wonder if my Fridays are jinxed ! I got paid today although it appears that my boss still didn't sort out the screw up of my wages from two weeks ago (waiting for my pay slip to arrive so I can cross check it with my pay claims and find out for sure). But since I had money - and an unexpected afternoon off (after working flat out all last weekend, despite it being a public holiday weekend), I went out to do some errands earlier, and I managed to twist my ankle on one of our dodgy local pavements. Trouble was, I didn't just twist my ankle, I lost my balance as well... So now I have one bruised and swollen left knee, one bruised and swollen left wrist, and one bruised and swollen right arm from inside wrist to outer elbow... Oh AND a sore right ankle. The only thing I didn't HIT was my head - and that's probably only because everything else had already come into contact with the ground or the nearby bench (that my right arm hit) before my head could get there ! And of course, my dignity is bruised, but at least no one can see THAT !! I was picked up by two lovely chaps who were sitting outside the cafe opposite which I took my tumble and one, the cafe owner, fetched me a large cup of cold water after checking I hadn't hit my head and didn't need an ambulance. Life - why do you hate me so much? Anyway, I've been meaning to share this poem by John Betjeman for a few weeks now, so here it is without further ado: Diary of a Church Mouse Here among long-discarded cassocks, Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks, Here where the Vicar never looks I nibble through old service books. Lean and alone I spend my days Behind this Church of England baize. I share my dark forgotten room With two oil-lamps and half a broom. The cleaner never bothers me, So here I eat my frugal tea. My bread is sawdust mixed with straw; My jam is polish for the floor. Christmas and Easter may be feasts For congregations and for priests, And so may Whitsun. All the same, They do not fill my meagre frame. For me the only feast at all Is Autumn's Harvest Festival, When I can satisfy my want With ears of corn around the font. I climb the eagle's brazen head To burrow through a loaf of bread. I scramble up the pulpit stair And gnaw the marrows hanging there. It is enjoyable to taste These items ere they go to waste, But how annoying when one finds That other mice with pagan minds Come into church my food to share Who have no proper business there. Two field mice who have no desire To be baptized, invade the choir. A large and most unfriendly rat Comes in to see what we are at. He says he thinks there is no God And yet he comes... it's rather odd. This year he stole a sheaf of wheat (It screened our special preacher's seat), And prosperous mice from fields away Come in to hear the organ play, And under cover of its notes Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats. A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I Am too papistical, and High, Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong To munch through Harvest Evensong, While I, who starve the whole year through, Must share my food with rodents who Except at this time of the year Not once inside the church appear. Within the human world I know Such goings-on could not be so, For human beings only do What their religion tells them to. They read the Bible every day And always, night and morning, pray, And just like me, the good church mouse, Worship each week in God's own house, But all the same it's strange to me How very full the church can be With people I don't' see at all Except at Harvest Festival. This week's poetry round-up is over at Writer2be. |
|
oursin |
4:06p | Hedgehog does the skive Because I have taken the day off (well, I am working tomorrow) and instead of devoting it to polishing up and reading through for time my piece for the Berks, so that I can get it off to the discussant, or making a start on my sections of the collaborative chapter, I have given myself up to frivolity. Well, sort of frivolity, if under that heading you include finally getting myself down to the National Portrait Gallery for the Brilliant Women: C18th Bluestockings, which was good, if not huge. I particularly liked the 'friendship box' - a ?snuffbox with minatures of 4 female friends from the Bluestocking Circle. Also noted that several of the women were painted in extremely elegant dress with a certain amount of decolletage, but Hannah More, just converted to Evangelicalism, had her neckline firmly filled in with some kind of muslin or lace jabot. And for someone who was 'Portraytz do not want', Mrs M was represented by several at various stages of her career. Have bought the associated book. There was also a smaller display (a couple of cases) in the Victorian era galleries on Victorian women historians, one of whom, I discover, was the first editor of the Calendar of State Papers, yay, go her! I then indulged in some book-shopping - rather thin spoils at Murder One, but in Forbidden Planet I spent more or less the entire amount of cheque I had just deposited for providing a reader's report for an academic press. Even though they did not have the third Mike Carey Felix Castor novel, which, however, I managed to source in Waterstones Oxford Street. *** Some links: Excellent news: After 30 years, black archive gets a permanent home: although a substantial Heritage Lottery Fund grant for converting premises into a museum and archive store still leaves me with big question marks about ongoing maintenance, cataloguing, conservation, etc. Deeply unexcellent: class and gender double standards over drunken bad behaviour: the 'yobbish toffs' of the Bullingdon Club versus The number of women being arrested for late-night drunken behaviour, particularly in the West Midlands, is soaring. But are they really becoming more violent - or are the police just treating them more harshly? |
|
ozarque |
9:33a | Linguistics haikus... (1) The words of English can always be made empty by intonation. (2) A noun is not a person or a place or thing. A noun is a name. (3) A verb is not an action word. It is a word you can add "-ing" to. (4) A preposition isn't just a word that is short and on a list. (5) A preposition is a word that tells you how all the parts are linked. I'd be pleased to have additions to this set from you [youall], if you're willing... |
|
papersky |
9:16a | Thud: ILE Words: 1718 Total words: 54157 Files: 3 Tea: Jasmine Music: NMPA RSI: feels fine. But do exercises! Reason for stopping: next bit is a long bit, better to have a break and get to it later. You know how some people say The Lathe of Heaven is like Philip Dick? Which Dick in particular would you compare it to? |
|
ozarque |
7:43a | Recommended link; politics... Strongly recommended: the May 8, 2008 column titled "The Candidate And The Pastor," by Bill Press, at http://www.billpressshow.com/column |
|
desperance |
1:25p | Learning new stuff Famously, I dislike research; equally famously, I love to learn new stuff. (One of these, you understand, is Wurk; the other is the satisfaction of curiosity, of which I have a catload.) This morning, in the pursuit of New Stuff not unrelated to my last post (see how far I will go into the convolutions of syntax, in order to avoid any suggestion that I have been researching?), I learned that there is a profession called cosmetology, and that "In the United States of America, all states require barbers, cosmetologists, and most other personal appearance workers (with the exception of shampooers) to be licensed". It's the exceptions that prove the rules delightful; but I think we will forswear cosmetologists and keep all such work under the purview of a competent barber. What more or better licence could he want, after all, than the patronage of the Half-Emperor? (Don't say "the other half". I still haven't worked out what this means, but I'm fairly sure there isn't one.) |
| feministsf | 7:55a | Feminism, SF, and Technology as Mystification In recent entries to this blog and their comments, people have brought up technology as a SFnal feminist issue. I have to make an intervention on this commentary, because my opinion on the subject is profoundly influenced by an essay by Joanna Russ entitled “SF and Technology as Mystification”; and some of those comments are making me angry and frustrated, and furthermore I feel that I must put forth my point of view so that it may steer the exchanges that take place here in a more fruitful direction. Russ’s essay appears in the collection To Write Like A Woman, and is, luckily for me because this means you can all read it that much more easily, also available in its entirety online: SF and Technology as Mystification (1), from Science Fiction Studies # 16; Volume 5, Part 3; November 1978. (Thirty years ago!) In the bulk of her essay, Russ describes talk about technology as a cognitive addiction, which allows a mystification to take place. My primary focus in writing this blog entry is the mystification that can and often does happen, rather than the addiction that she was addressing at the time, and what it is that the mystification conceals. (I’m not saying the addiction to talk about technology is vanished from public discourse — but the context for its occurence has changed a little since the late 1970s. I’ll write more on context below.) The first thesis of Russ’s essay is this:
(Please refer to the essay for Russ’s definition of technology, which I’ll skip here.) Online discussions of SF from a feminist standpoint are a bit like “the academic humanities”, and as such, I often find that technology is a non-subject here too. With the obvious caveat that, in, say, discussions of world-building, or the bugs in the implementation of plug-ins for this blog, technology could itself be a subject, but… in a feminist forum, it cannot, must not be “a consolation for, and an obfuscation of, something else.” Further on in her essay, Russ explained what she reasoned to be that something else which lurked below the surface of those discussions that took place in academic and SF circles during the 1970s:
In the second thesis and synthesis of her essay, Russ explained the addiction model and applied it to talk about technology, then suggested alternative forms of input as a cure for the addiction.
For the second thesis of this entry I write here, I will put forth the radical statement that feminism is a political issue. I hope that this doesn’t surprise any of you. I cannot, however, let it remain unwritten as an implied premise for the dialectic of my argument, so I have to explicate it. Feminism is a political issue. It’s a political movement. It’s a wide number of trajectories, positions and attitudes, all of which have to do with politics, and thereby conjointly with various spheres of human activity. Economics, violence, art, etc. It is because of politics and economics that feminism exists. Feminism is a complicated issue. It has innumberable facets and intersections. But it is a social, a political matter, because it comes from the way that human societies are set up, from the way human beings regulate interactions between people, from the power and money and statuses and relative positions that human beings create through the organisation of our societies. On Feminist SF - The Blog!, this blog, we can have discussions on the subject of feminist SF. We can also talk about technology as it relates to feminist SF. But, for the sake of feminism as an endeavour in this world from which we contribute to the blog, we cannot allow the mystification of technology, we cannot allow an obfuscation of the politics and economics, of the social ramifications that push feminism into existence. Women are not simply and solely oppressed by the advanced, industrialised phase of capitalism. This concern that lurked behind the addictive talk about technology which Russ wrote about is not the only one that we have. In our discussions of SF, there are many other concerns that can hide behind the surface. I wholeheartedly believe that it is vital to keep, therefore, the taste of the politics and economics that push feminism into existence, in our minds when we approach SF as feminists. *** I will bring in specific examples of some of those political issues and instances of obfuscation here. One of those issues being the use of the pronoun “we”. Behind it there are people, and it addresses people also in different ways — depending on the people behind it, depending on the intentions of the writer, depending on the political relationship of the writer and of the readers in the intended audience, and of the readers actual. We’re not all the same when we contribute to this blog. And we, therefore, face different challenges. Writing from the radical perspective of the oppressed isn’t the same as writing from the liberal perspective of the ally. It’s an excellent example for comparison with Russ’s indictement of technology as a non-subject, because he puts the theoretical concept of technological singularity on the same level as feminism. It’s an excellent example of obfuscation, because, as Madeline F. points out, he:
Tycho shows absolutely no grasp of the underpinnings of feminism as a real issue. In his position as a liberal ally, however, he is free to “be playing with false abstractions” that include feminism. The many mystifications in his blog entry, and in his comments, may be the byproduct of a lack of understanding that may eventually be remedied, but they sicken me nonetheless, on two counts. One, in that they make no sense, and the mental effort required to discern whereby they came to make such little sense is dizzying. And two, in that they appear on this feminist blog, which forces the rest of us — which includes me — to deal with them because they become part of this first-person-plural-”we”. The silver lining, here, is that this we also includes people who are not me who can look at the abstractions and see the details indicative of their nature, and that sometimes productive tangents may also come of bumping into the moonlit objects of false abstractions. (1) NB: the printed version of “SF and Technology as Mystification” in To Write Like A Woman has the corrected attribution of the reference to “lunacy” and “idiocy” to Rebecca West, but the online version still references Mary Ellmann instead. I’d like to add that the reference originally appears in the prologue to Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. |
|
jemck |
11:15a | How soon can I have a new week please? Bad news: I've just spent the last hour and more resolving internet connectivity problems hereabouts. I could really do without this in a week that's already been a disaster as far as productivity goes. Good news: parents' evening yesterday was a series of teachers saying nice things about junior son and offering advice on how to improve on already impressive performance. Bad news: the proceedings were thrown into considerable confusion by the fire alarm going off. Good news: we did still make it to aikido class on time. Bad news: my practise ended ten minutes early thanks to an inadvertent clash of heads. It was equally as much my fault as his. Given I'm the senior grade, that makes it all my fault. Good news: I have an offer of some very interesting teaching work in June - that may well lead on to something even more interesting. Details to follow in due course. So, overall, this week probably just inches into the plus column. But I would really, really like one with fewer peaks and troughs next, if you please. |
|
whatwasthatbook [ jesstorious ] |
12:51a | driving me crazy! This is what I remember about this book: 1. It's from the Young Adults Section 2. The cover was a water color drawing of a girl who looked sad. 3. She was a young girl telling a story about her mom's marriages and relationships and how eventually someone ended up getting shot? Her mom was a loser but her mothers parents were wealthy and they had to live with them for sometime, her mom married a guy who made wooden farm animals that went in peoples front yards, she then dated an older man and left her with him while she ran away. The daughter had to take care of the old guy because he was really sick and she was responsible for paying the bills and such. In the end someone gets shot, and she's telling this story to a counselor and she lives in an all girl home. Found it!! The Facts Speak for Themselves by Brock Cole. |
| Thursday, May 8th, 2008 | ||
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whatwasthatbook [ dunedain_minx ] |
4:56p | Kid with Lou Gehrig's I read this book in Jr. High circa 1977-78 as required reading in English class - so of course I don't remember it well. It's a fictional story about a boy diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's, and I think (but I'm not sure) Lou G. is his hero, or he befriends him, or... something. Very vague, I know, but thank you in advance! I'll know the title when I hear it. |
| Friday, May 9th, 2008 | ||
| feministsf | 4:28a | Cheat sheet to L. Timmel Duchamp’s work, for WisCon Okay all you people who have Alanya to Alanya, Renegade, Tsunami, and Blood in the Fruit in a 2-foot-high stack on your to-read shelf. Listen up! For the ultimate WisCon prep so you can know what everyone is talking about, read the novel Mission Child and then read Duchamp’s analysis, Maureen McHugh’s Mission Child. That makes the perfect combination so you get some insight into the work of the two Guests of Honor for WisCon 2008. There will also be a fabulous little inexpensive book for sale at WisCon, Plugged In, with one short story from McHugh and one from Duchamp, both very guaranteed to make you run off to your time machine and hack your body into Cyborg-Manifesto-ish feminist futurity while you download James Tiptree Jr.’s “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” straight into your brainstem.
So, what else? You *could* read the whole Marq’ssan series before WisCon if you are that sort of person. Or at least books 1 and 2. But we know you have lives. Just *buy* the Marq’ssan series now. Buy it at WisCon and get Timmi to sign it. Read it all in one big gulp, later, if you must delay till the last book of the series comes out. Meanwhile, here is the bare bones guide to the mindblowing coolness that is L. Timmel Duchamp’s writing. Cyborgs, women’s relationships with other women, surveillance, torture, interrogation, co-optation, dystopia, weird aliens, time travel, art, alternate histories; but above all, brave revolutionaries, resistance, and hope. I think everyone should read The Red Rose Rages (Bleeding), a novella Duchamp wrote in 1990. Dystopian interrogation novel, lite: the gateway drug to her longer work. It’s a near future where pretty much everyone is in the prison-industrial complex. Eve Escher, a prison psychologist/torturer, is dealing with a prisoner, Sarah Minnivitch. Read it and plan to need comforting afterwards. It is not that the torture scenes are over the top compared to what you might read or see in the news. It’s that the way the torturers and tortured think will be familiar. You will recognize something about the structure of society here and of all power relationships. Of teacher and student, boss and employee, doctor and client, author and reader, maybe lover and beloved. If multinational corporations and prisons creep you out; if you have thought at all about the insidious effects of surveillance in our culture; if you like the twisty no-good-guys ethics of TV shows like The Wire, then you will fall into Red Rose and stay up all night thinking it over. It’s a good book to read alongside of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother or Alice Nunn’s Illicit Passage. Also, it is cheap, short, punchy, and a quick read. You can see what Lesley Hall thought of it over on Strange Horizons. Other short stories or novellas might also be a good lead-in and get you hooked on Duchamp’s complicated, scary, masterful science fiction. The stories in her book Love’s Body, Dancing in Time go forward to the future and other planets, and stretch back into histories and alternate histories. I thought of Joanna Russ’s story “Souls” and am inspired to re-read it, after a day I spent last weekend reading “The Heloise Archives” and “The Apprenticeship of Isabetta di Pietro Cavazzi” and researching (online) the story of Heloise and Abelard. Finally I found this interview which explained some of Duchamp’s thinking behind her alternate history and her take on the “real” history. If you can’t buy Red Rose or Love’s Body yet, you can still read some of Duchamp’s criticism and her short stories online — for free. In one of her essays, The Stories of Our Lives Duchamp speculates on the kinds of stories we are capable of telling, that we are allowed to tell, that other people can even comprehend to be stories:
She goes on to discuss Karen Joy Fowler, Nicola Griffith, Le Guin, Gwyneth Jones, and the stories they tell, the meta-stories that women are able to tell in science fiction. You might just start going through the list of incredible essays on great science fiction by women that Duchamp has made available on her web site. She tackles the most difficult and intricate work, takes it apart and lays it out. I appreciate how her essays are easy to read, but complicated to think about. Her writing has helped me think about things I didn’t know how to think about before. But, as a starting point, try Pleasure and Frustration: One Feminist’s Reading of Lois McMaster Bujold’s A Civil Campaign. You’ve all read Civil Campaign, right? HOW many times? I can’t even count. See what you think of Duchamp’s analysis of Bujold! Or, if you have read Glasshouse recently, you might dive into her complicated critique, published in Strange Horizons. From the short fiction available free on her website, I recommend Bettina’s Bet and “The World and Alice”. You might not be able to resist the Elizabeth Bennett/Darcy story. If I have time this weekend I’ll write about Maureen McHugh’s work, but for now, here is a link to her blog and one to her author-ish web site, which links you right to her fiction with stories free online & novels to buy. I think my Twittering “Tranny Julie of the Wolves! In space!” is not really doing justice to Mission Child… though it did make a couple of people immediately buy and read it! |
| Thursday, May 8th, 2008 | ||
|
desperance |
11:09p | One of those things that happen So I was sitting in my bath, musing upon... Well, not musing upon anything much, really: listening to the radio, rather, as I do. Only it struck me suddenly that I'd quite like to write about the adventures of a barber who served the upper crust; and that would probably be a steampunky elite, which would add to the fun of it all; and - hey, could it be called...? Yes, it can. I have googled, and the name apparently did come out of nowhere; for this little time, I guess I have made a Googlewhack. The title and first line are: I SHAVED HALF-EMPEROR CYRRHENIUS These? These are the steadiest hands in the demi-monde. [And don't ask me about these halves and demis, I haven't worked that out yet...] |
|
plaidder |
4:07p | A new song for PJ Brought to you by the latest rhinovirus: ( Read more... ) Thanks, I'll be here all week, The Plaid Adder |
| booksquare | 6:58p | The Daily Square Today’s links of interest: |
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whatwasthatbook [ evilweevil04 ] |
9:58a | Two books that I loved ... around ten years ago. Hey all, I'm looking for two books that I remember reading around ten years ago, but I think they were earlier -- from the early '90s, maybe late '80s. They both centered around sixth to eighth grade girls, and here's what I remember of the plots: 1. This book was about a girl band who found they weren't getting gigs because they were girls -- so they got the genius idea of dressing up like boys, instead! I think their new band name was Tommy and the Tigers, and each of them came up with boy names, some got their hair cut short, and there was one girl who had to -- gasp! -- bind her breasts, because she was the first to develop in that way. One of the characters was named Rene, and she was the ironic, sharp-talking one. <lj-cut text="One of the big plot points was..</lj-cut> They had one fan who was -really- into them -- a girl a few years younger than them -- and the band gets a little worried about this. I think the girl had a big crush on boy-Rene. She ended up sneaking into their hotel room and finds out that they're girls. Instead of blowing their cover, she admits to just pretending to having crushes on them, so her mother wasn't worried about her not liking boys.</lj-cut> Found! It's <u>Sixth Grade Secrets</u> by Louis Sachar. 2. I -thought- this book was called "Sixth Graders Don't Lie", but I can't find that anywhere, so I might be mistaken. This focused on a young girl with really long hair that had never been cut. It starts out, I believe, with her lying a lot, and her parents giving her an ultimatum that if she lies once more, they'll cut off her hair. So she makes an effort to stop lying, but problems with boys and .. dog houses? cause her to accidentally lie again. I believe there was something about becoming class president, and the popular, catty girl in the class screwing her over by asking for her autograph? It's all very dramatic, and <lj-cut text="I think the end ..</lj-cut> I believe in the end she ended up dating the boy who got her hair cut off, despite all the drama.</lj-cut> Also found! This is <u>Hey, Didi Darling</u> by Stephanie A. Kennedy. Thanks sooo much, everyone who helped me out. I'm really excited to read these again. |
|
papersky |
2:12p | Thud: ILE Words: 1031 Total words: 52424 Files: 3 Tea: Pacific Sun Music: Three Double Concertos RSI: been better Reason for stopping: end of bit. If you were going to buy a Christmas present for a fifteen year old in 1979 and for some reason you had decided against a paperback SF novel, what else might you get them? |
