It figures...

Why is it that every time Izzybella and I plan in advance to go catch a movie something always interferes? Tonight we'd planned to go see Epic Movie. My husband was even going to go with us. So of course I have to have an upper respiratory infection (oh, yeah, the doctor confirmed it, gave me a Z-pack of antibiotics and some heavy-duty decongestants) and feel worse today than I did yesterday. I'm at work for another 40 minutes, and then I'm going home for the afternoon. Anyway, I just flat-out feel too lousy to go out tonight. I'm going to stay at home tonight, curled up under my nice warm covers and read and sleep and sleep and read.

So while I'm talking about reading, first let me say that I heart Half-Price Books. They are the bestest!!! I look up all the books I want to read, and then I go armed with my list to Half-Price. Patience and a lot of visits--fortunately, there's a store on my way home--and I usually find much of what I want. And by browsing the clearance shelves, I have made some real finds for 50 cents to a dollar.

The next thing pertaining to books that I heart is librarything.com. If you have a lot of books, like I, and you want to find some way of keeping track of what you own and organizing them at least on computer, this is the way to do it! You just enter the ISBN of the book, and the information on your book comes up. You click it to enter it into your library, and voila! On your older books, you might have to enter the title or the author, but so far I've only come across one book that their system just flat couldn't find. And it's a French grammar book from the 70s that my husband purchased when he was in France. I even have an old horribly-written sci-fi paperback from 1955 that I can't bear to get rid of; I just entered the author's name, and there it was! You can download it to your hard drive in a comma delineated file if you want to export it into Excel; you can access it with your cell phone if you're standing in front of a tempting book at Half-Price Books and can't remember if you own said book already; and you can make fun widgets like the one to the right (random books from my library). So I can't recommend librarything.com highly enough. So far I only have the books from one room of my house entered. It will take me quite a long time to get them all done, but it will be very nice once the project's finished.

New book finds:

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes was 13 when she wrote her first novel, and 14 when In the Forests of the Night was published. It's a well-written vampire fantasy. I read it Wednesday (one of my 50 cent clearance finds), and yesterday I picked up Demon in My View, a sort-of sequel to it. I like it. I recommend it. Go. Find. Read.

Grave Intent, by Deborah Leblanc. I like horror, but not axe-murderer blood-and-guts kind of stuff. It has to be more subtle than that. This was good. I don't like books where young children are in peril, so that bothered me a bit. And one thing that the plot hinged on was complete bosh, but the story was so well-told that it wasn't until after I'd frantically finished reading the book, put it down with a sigh of relief, and begun reflecting on it that I sat up and said, "wait a second! That couldn't have happened that way!" But it's okay. In the heat of the moment I didn't even notice it, so I forgive Ms. Leblanc. There are no vampires in this one, but a shape-shifting ghost of a Gypsy and a real asshole of a father who gets his just desserts in the end.

I like vampire books, and want to read more. If you have any recommendations, I'd be happy to hear them. When I was at the World Fantasy Con in Austin, I went to a breakout session with some vampire writers, and it kind of got nasty. One of the writers whose work I had actually thought of reading began telling everyone that if they stole any of her work she would sue them. (I had slipped out of the session before this happened; Clover told me about it.) Apparently it just came out of nowhere; instead of encouraging all the up and coming writers in the room, the panel were telling them all that there is no room for more writers of vampire fantasy fiction, which is complete hogwash. It got ugly. Fortunately, at one of the panels the next day, the situation was politely addressed (with no names mentioned), and we were all encouraged to write away, because there absolutely is room for more writers of all types of fantasy. Clover--what was that woman's name, do you remember? Because up until she said that, I'd been thinking I wanted to read some of her books because they sounded interesting. But after she just flat-out assumed that everyone is dying to plagiarize her works because we're all pathetic little turds with no minds of our own, I don't want to give her one red cent!

Well, despite having spent a few minutes on this post, I've gotten my work done, and it's about time for me to head home. I'll stop at Half-Price Books on the way home to sell two bags of books I no longer want and buy a few more to keep myself amused in the random hours that I'm not sleeping this weekend.

Stay healthy, everyone, and start writing on your Sheherazade Project theme! (linky goodness to the right!)