There is an excellent piece on Garry Trudeau in the Post. I've always been impressed with his work - he takes chances that a lot of writers (and cartoonists) don't dare consider. This is a fascinating peek into his creative process, and as fans well know, it's exceedingly rare that he allows something like it.

This was April 25. On the comics pages that day, Dagwood fixed himself an absolutely ENORMOUS sandwich; Garfield kicked Odie off the table again; and in Beetle Bailey, the only military-themed comic strip, Lt. Fuzz accidentally dropped a glass of water and cussed in funny cartoon hieroglyphics.

In Doonesbury, this was the story: B.D., the football coach and Vietnam vet who went to Iraq with the National Guard and lost a leg in a rocket-grenade attack near Fallujah, has been shamed into entering therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder because he overheard his little girl, Sam, tell a friend that she'd become afraid of her daddy. On this day, B.D. will begin to relive the battlefield event he has repressed, the one that made him a moody, alcoholic paranoiac and that torments him with guilt and shame that he does not understand. Through the rest of the week, B.D. will retell what happened when his armored vehicle came under attack from insurgents and -- desperate to escape and save himself and his men -- he gave the order to flee through a crowded marketplace, mowing down civilians.

And while you are at the Post, do read this very impressive letter from a Harvard professor, mathematician and author who takes issue with an earlier review of his book. There is a lot here about what is so disturbing about reviews and reviewing in general and certainly food for thought. I mean, it's okay not to like a book and give it a negative review but is the reviewer accusing him of plagarism on the basis of a half dozen sentences or not? I don't know and this kind of sly silliness is really quite annoying.

Dennis Lehane does something good in Orlando. This is the sort of program that impresses the hell out of me. So many of my former students were in the Army and yet barely able to write a complete sentence. Anything that gets kids reading, whether in the military or jail, is time and money well spent as far as I'm concerned.

Iceland killed an endangered fin whale yesterday as the country resumed commercial whaling. I continue to read The Sixth Extinction, and continue to wonder just what the hell we are doing with this world.

Poppy Z Brite gives us a little peek into her creative process as she works on Dead Shrimp Blues. (There's a teeny tiny spoiler for Soul Kitchen, but really nothing major.) I'm working on a piece on Soul Kitchen and DUCK right now (and that ARC will be on its way to you this week Jenny D!) and I've been thinking about how seamlessly Poppy crafts her novels - there is so much work and research in there but it doesn't seem like it to the reader. You just get caught up in Rickey and G-Man's world and forget that figuring out all these recipes and locations and cultural traditions must be endlessly intense. I love her books though - she captures New Orleans in the best possible, more thorough way. She writes about the city (and state) as someone who is determined to know it, if that makes any sense. I'm looking forward to writing about her latest books.

Several bloggers in the kidlit sphere are continuing the discussion on negative vs positive reviewing. I was sucked into this (against my will - I swear!) at the very beginning but I'm not going back this go-round. I don't think I could try any harder to change anyone's mind - nor that anyone's mind even needs to be changed. What's annoying about all of this is that it is clear to me that I can say one thing and be misinterpreted forever and there really isn't much I can do about it. I can see that several bloggers are not understanding how the reviewing works for Booklist - I keep seeing comments about libraries wasting money on bad books or ordering bad books that either we review positively when we shouldn't or don't review at all and so they don't know it is poorly written and thus order it and get disappointed. As I have said before, I have written reviews of books that could be deemed negative for Booklist, because they were by significant authors and my editor knew that libraries would want to know about them (good or bad - and Derrick Jensen's latest is an example of this). But the books I have passed on reviewing, honestly, were by authors that I swear few libraries are going to know even exist. And there just is not room - there is not enough room - in the magazine to take up space reviewing every single book that gets submitted for review by the ALA. It can't physically happen. And since Booklist has been reviewing for a very long time in the same manner I think everyone needs to give the folks there a little credit. They have a system that works, so let's just let them do it.

And on that note, I just finished writing reviews for Billy Boyle (different and well done WWII mystery), Cheating Destiny (amazing book about diabetes and very easy to read and understand), Sippewissett (a nature book I reviewed earlier this month for Booklist and am expanding on for Bookslut) and a whole slew of books on quirky families for my December column (the Cassons are front and center there). I had fallen way behind, hopefully by tomorrow I will be nearly caught up.