librarygrrrl.net

It should come as no surprise to you that I am crazy about dogs, especially my little beast.

So when the new book Ella in Europe: An American Dog’s International Adventures showed up in the library, you know I had to check it out.

And what a great book it was! The author is just the same kind of crazy-dog-lover as I am, the kind who always pets dogs out in public, and the kind who made a major life change in order to share his life full-time with a dog. (I bought a house so I could get a dog.) In the book, the author chronicles his travels through Europe with his best friend at his side, marveling at how civilized Europeans are with civilized dogs. It makes me want to live there, rather than here, for the sake of Ms. Maggie Jane.

Upshot: If you’ve ever loved a dog, or love someone who loves dogs and you just don’t get it, you really ought to get your hands on this book. Maggie and I give it all paws up!

My site got hacked last night, through no fault of my own (as it turns out). But if you got here and there was some dragon all entwined in a rose on, with music playing, that was the hack.

They got to EVERY SINGLE ONE of my index files across the site. It really sucked, but I was able to replace most of them from the nightly and weekly builds at my host.

Welcome to your vacation weekend, Megan. /sarcasm

Anyhow, most everything (save a few pages that I know I have backed up at home) should be back to normal. Let me know via the comments or by email (the link’s at the left) if you notice that dragon anywhere else.

Off to buy me some Dragon-Be-Gone (and to sleep again.)

Amy got me a subscription to Harry & David’s for Christmas. After a snafu with the December delivery (they tried to deliver it to the library during the 10 days we are closed - curses!), I was getting quite worried that they’d forgotten about my January shipment too. I need not have feared, for today arrived a wonderful box of 6 amazing, juicy, tasty, nuggets of tangelo and orange goodness. After the week I’ve had, this was definitely a highlight!

Written by the same fellow who wrote my undergrad behavior psychology textbook, and a professor in a department I’m responsible for here at Swarthmore, The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz has a warm spot in my heart.

Besides those warm, fuzzy feelings, though, the book is really good. I don’t know what to say that hasn’t already been said by some other folks, so I won’t. Just go get yourself a copy of the book and read it. It just came out in paperback, so it’s cheaper and has a prettier cover (eggs!) than the hardback. And if you don’t want to buy it, many public and academic libraries own it too. Trust me, it won’t be a waste of time, and might even change your life for the better.

So in classic librarygrrrl-fashion, I am barrelling through an author’s repetoire now that I’ve decided I like the first book of theirs. This weekend, I picked up the third Thursday Next book, The Well of Lost Plots. I’ve heard varying reviews of this book, most of which said it was the weakest one in the series so far. Color me a non-critic, but I liked it just as much as I liked the others.

In this book, Thursday decides to take refuge in Bookworld to keep Goliath Corp. and SpecOps off her back while she’s busy percolating her and her eradicated husband’s baby. Her main struggles in this book include remembering her husband Landen (Acheron Hades’ sister Aornis infected her with a forgetting mindworm before she took refuge in Bookworld), learning the ropes involved in being a Jurisfiction agent (will she pass the written and practical exams or not?), and trying to figure out just what’s wrong with UltraBook 9.0 (because we all know that no upgrade is without problems).

Good plot, all the fun of the first book in the explanations of how things work in Bookworld, more Pickwick (Dodo v.1.2) and her egg, and the intrigue of seeing Generics develop into characters… I give this one both thumbs up.

In other news, it’s flurrying again. I do love a white winter, although I wish the city of Philadelphia would figure out how to plow sidestreets more effectively. I understand that parking in this city is a huge drag (and thank goodness for my garage and off-street parking spot), but they’ve GOT to find a way to get people to move their cars so they can plow around here. I’m just saying.