HBO has a new series out this fall, True Blood, based on the Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse series. The really cool part is that Anna Paquin is playing the lead:

Thanks to a Japanese scientist's invention of synthetic blood, vampires have progressed from legendary monsters to fellow citizens overnight. And while humans have been safely removed from the menu, many remain apprehensive about these creatures "coming out of the coffin." Religious leaders and government officials around the world have chosen their sides, but in the small Louisiana town of Bon Temps, the jury is still out.

Local waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), however, knows how it feels to be an outcast. "Cursed" with the ability to listen in on people's thoughts, she's also open-minded about the integration of vampires — particularly when it comes to Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), a handsome 173-year-old living up the road. But as Sookie is drawn into a series of mysteries surrounding Bill's arrival in Bon Temps, that tolerance will be put to the test.

I haven't read any Sookie books in a while but they were fun and not nearly angsty as the Anita Blake series has become. Vogue describes the show as "a backwoods Oz with sex". I don't know why I find that so appealing sounding, but I do!

And speaking of Vogue, there was an excellent article in the doorstop they called the September issue by biographer Amanda Foreman on her research into the life of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. (Her book, The Duchess, is being made into a Kiera Knightley movie.) (And somehow because of that, the biography now no longer has a picture of the actual Duchess on the cover but instead Kiera Knightley.) (This seems incredibly wrong to me.)

The article is of course not online (damn you Vogue!) but here's a really cool bit:

I discovered Georgiana quite by chance while working on a Ph.D. thesis at Oxford on England the slave trade in the eighteenth century. It was just another Tuesday afternoon in the library; I was dutifully researching the background of an anti-slavery politician when I fell upon a cache of her letters. It required only the idle perusing of a couple of lines for me to realize that I had come a woman of unusual eloquence.

In spite of all my good intentions, I could not go on with my thesis. The voice in Georgiana's letters was so strong it was like having her by my side. For the next six months I pretended to be working on my doctorate while guiltily I followed her trail. It was a profound relief when the authorities called my bluff and I was forced to confess the truth.

She ended up spending five years researching her subject and quite simply fell in love with her. (If you do come across a copy of Vogue the article begins on page 638 - the preceding 600 pages are largely ads.)

Booklist (and my fabulous editor Donna Seaman) gave Terry Tempest Williams' new book, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, a starred review. Here's a bit:

Scientific in her exactitude, compassionate in her receptivity, and rhapsodic in expression, Williams has constructed a beautiful mosaic of loss and renewal that affirms, with striking lucidity, the need for reverence for all of life.

It's already on my holiday list as I so adore Refuge.

There's also a great review of poet Donald Hall's nonfiction title: Unpacking the Boxes, A Memoir of a Life in Poetry. I love this:

In this lovely, candid, quite poignant memoir, Hall recalls deciding, at 14, to spend his life writing poetry. That’s a remarkable statement for anyone to make about himself, let alone about a teenager in Depression-era Connecticut. Hall makes clear, however, that his parents encouraged, nurtured, and stoked his interest in poetry, and also that the reasons behind his decision were more self-serving than noble. He had no athletic skills to speak of, but he noticed that poetry attracted “at least the arty girls if not the cheerleaders.�

Talk about a review making me want to read the book; this one makes it completely irresistible!

Based on reviews in Locus and elsewhere, I'll be watching for Lisa Goldstein's "Reader's Guide" short story to end up in a Year's Best anthology. (I missed the July issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction.) Ditto Kij Johnson's "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss". (Johnson is rapidly becoming one of my favorite writers to watch.)

Yesterday it rained but still I ran. I figured if I couldn't run in the rain in the summer (when it was more than 70 degrees out) then I was truly doomed in this whole endeavor as cold weather rain will be here all too soon. I was supposed to run for 20 straight minutes (a repeat of Friday's goal before I start my final week) but I still can't do it. I ran for 10, walked 1, ran for 5, walked 1 and then ran for 4 to finish it off. I think I will reach the 20 (and ultimately the 30) though - partly I think it would be easier if I had an ipod. I was getting bored running in circles in the rain with the wet dog and two incomplete songs rattling around in my head. Maybe if I could sing it would go by faster. (And really - it was pouring down rain - I wore a hat so I could at least see where I was going.)

But still - it rained and I ran and I can see coming the day when I will make it 30 straight minutes. And that will quite a victory compared to where I was just two short months ago.