First, Justine Larbalestier had an entry a bit ago about what writers should wear to book signings and the like and although it sounds like just a tiny entry she got a whale of a bunch of comments and it's really an interesting discussion. (The sort where no one gets mad at anyone! Yea!) I have always been a jeans and t-shirt/sweater sort of person and the periods in my life when I worked somewhere that didn't allow me to dress that way were pure torture. I've always thought jeans are pretty much fine for any nonformal dress-type occasion and pairing them with a nice shirt and boots ought to be plenty fine to me. Do go see what everyone else thinks though, it's really quite fun.

I've been reading reading reading lately, and also catching up on all those pesky reviews and such. I worked out a few more plot details for the YA Urban Fantasy (how about "Into the Mist Down Below" for potential title #6,000?) and also got going (mentally anyway) on the direction for the next AK book - this one more a memoir about myths and realities in the Last Frontier then the AK flying book.

So yeah, lots of creativity but still much much to do.

I finished Amy Koss's Side Effects for the next Eclectica ("Surviving High School" titles) and I am so loving this book. Eighth grade Izzy is diagnosed early on with lymphoma and the book follows her through treatment along with her family and friend Kay. There is also a bit about how her classmates and teachers acknowledge her illness but mostly it is all Izzy all the time and she is magnificent. Here she reacts to hearing from the parent of one of her preschool classmates, a woman she has not heard beans from in years who now wants to come and visit with her daughter and her friends:(supposedly to cheer Izzy up)

I could see this chick shaking her finger and telling her SUV full of spoiled girls that I was an example of what real problems were. That they should take a good, long look at my bald head, my scarred-up arms, et cetera, and thank the Lord they weren't me.

I'd be today's lesson on why they should be grateful for everything they had and stop whining for more clothes or more spending money or whatever.

Koss nails so much of what it is to be the "sick one" and has really created a great, killer rebel in Izzy. The best part - the revolutionary part - is that this is a book about a kid who gets sick but lives. Screw all those other books nominated for prizes, Side Effects deserves accolades for that acheivement alone. The sick kid lives in this book, just like they live all the time in the real world. It's about damn time is what I think, and I certainly hope some of those folks at the Newburys will think so too.

And in other reading news, Hadani Ditmars chronicles the many parts of Iraqi life that everyone else seems to miss (musicians, beauticians and the cagey MPs in the green zone) in her very compelling Dancing in the No-Fly Zone. I'm reviewing this in Eclectica this winter and I find it quite engrossing. My only complaint is that Ditmars goes back in forth in time between visits she made prior to Desert Storm and in 2003 and sometimes she loses me a bit with the jumping - it takes a couple of paragraphs to figure out if she is remembering or recording her present trip experience. But that's a small quibble for such a fascinating book. It explains a lot of what folks think about Americans over there and is very timely.

Finally, I wouldn't be me if I wasn't reading something on the Arctic. Edward Maurice wrote The Last Gentleman Adventurer about his five years with the Hudson's Bay Co in the 1930s. It's very well written and quite interesting - Maurice really went out of his way to learn the language, meet the Natives and immerse himself in Arctic life. But I wish he had been able to write more about after he left. (He passed away when this book was going to press.) He fought in WW2 and then settled in an English village and became a bookseller. It was such a difference from what he did in Canada and I'd like to know more about that life, and about his family. That's a sign of what a likeable character he is, I suppose - I'd really like to spend more time in his "company".