1. I have a new review up over at the Voices of NOLA for Paul Volponi's YA drama Hurricane Song. This is a very intense novel set almost entirely in the Superdome during Katrina and the aftermath, when the levees failed. It's an excellent edge-of-seat story and I strongly recommend it for teen readers who want to know more about what happened to the people of New Orleans. I was also able to exchange some emails with the author on how he wrote the book which was very cool. (I do so love the internet when it comes to contacting authors!)

2. I finished Andrea Barrett's The Air We Breathe and was mightily impressed yet again by what a wonderful writer she is. This is a book mostly about tuberculosis patients recovering in the Adirondacks during the WWI era but it also delves deeply into the small things we do to each other and how little arguments can all too quickly escalate into great and nearly uncontrollable difficulties. You can see how wars begin in the novel - in the smallest ways that no one notices. It's also interesting to see how Barrett exposes quiet heroes and how little it actually takes from someone to be heroic. In this way she reminds me a bit of Jo Walton's writing in the Farthing series - the same type of quiet bravery is exalted in those books as well.

Suffice to say, I enjoyed The Air We Breathe a great deal.

3. Thinking about how small actions can lead to big consequences, I have been writing about a crash involving a close friend was was an excellent pilot. In his case it was several things - acute tiredness from a heavy work schedule, a disintegrating marriage and the resultant fights at home, and on the day of the crash rapidly diminishing weather. If he wasn't tired, or angry at his wife, or battling some wicked crosswinds and lousy visibility - if anyone of those elements that night were removed - then I don't think he would have crashed. But that was how it was, and what followed was loss of tickets, loss of job, loss of career, loss of family and nearly loss of himself. Our worlds are so fragile I think - and we never seem to realize that until we are drowning. Is it any wonder that we are better at killing ourselves, and the planet, then actually solving problems?

4. Kirsten Miller is one of my favorite authors for reasons like this. Is she one of the most cool creative people on the planet or what? (And nice to see in the post comments that she is working hard at Kiki #3.)

5. Kirsten also has some thoughts on those mysterious underground rivers in Manhattan - and a few more links to places with similar basement fishing legends.

6. Jenny D. on Sarah Manguso's new memoir:

The Two Kinds of Decay is Sarah Manguso's memoir of the years of the mysterious illness that hit her in her early 20s. It should be read by anyone interested in contemplating the ways a life may be wrenched off course by calamity--more than that, though, it's a poet's book, and the prose has a distinctive quality (quality in both senses of the word) that makes me think of my short list of utter indispensables (Primo Levi, Georges Perec, W. G. Sebald). Plain and ornate at the same time, like the poems of George Herbert....

I will eat my hat if this book does not win a lot of prizes and sell a lot of copies, it should be on writing class syllabi and on medical school syllabi and generally just pressed into the hands of everyone I know!

7. Orion Magazine on "The Gospel of Consumption". We are such a screwed up society; I wonder sometimes how we will ever sort ourselves out.