And I'm back. While I was gone the new issue of Bookslut was posted with my column entitled "Fly Me to the Moon". Lots of titles there from Brian Floca's picture book Moon Shot to Rick Stroud's adult title, The Book of the Moon, on all (and I do mean ALL) things lunar related. Any teen looking to learn about the history of the Apollo program should find several fabulous resources; I really enjoyed putting this one together.

The new issue of Booklist is also out and included a starred review by me of Haifa Zangana's Dreaming of Baghdad. For those who can't log in over there, here it is:

In this extraordinarily intimate memoir Zangana lays bare the trauma of torture and the special grief carried by those who survive it. Recalling her political initiation in early 1970s Iraq, she writes of a hope to change the world by resisting Saddam Hussein’s powerful Baath Party. Captured, imprisoned, tortured, and exiled, Zangana has known little peace in the decades since. Rather than recall the seminal moments of her life in a linear fashion, she crafts a series of linked stories, letters, and memories. She writes of her family and friends, life in Iraq with the opposition, and her current home in London. Most startling are accounts of her arrest and torture as she describes the men who interrogated her, how she was presented with the beaten bodies of her friends, and how those who beat her were later executed themselves. The power in Zangana’s painful story and the beautiful way she shares it are almost too much to bear. Memory, she writes, “. . . is the unwritten record of the past. Its only partner is forgetting.” Zangana has written and thus preserved her story in an indelible book of genuine shock and awe.

Special thanks to those folks who nominated me for several BBAW awards and it's nice to make the final five for a couple. Mostly thought I'm quite happy to see Guys Lit Wire in the running still - if you are inclined to vote, I hope you think of the crew over there. Personally, I always find these kinds of things interesting, both for who is included in the end and who is excluded. It makes for a couple of minutes of interesting reading (and link following), that's for sure.

Jenny D. raves about a book I must read - check it out and see what you think as well.

Kelly Eskridge and Nicola Griffith have started a new editing/manuscript review/writer's coach service, Sterling Editing. As they both rock in so many different ways, I'm quite pleased to see that their talent will now be available to others. Nicola had a great post up the other day on first vs third person which made me think - I bounced between the two in my memoir (first for chapters about me, third for others which excluded me) but the novel was all third. I was thinking about first for my YA book but I think now third is best. But the western book - that's about what I think about things I read and learn about concerning western myth, etc. So that is first.

This sounds way more complicated then I thought it would.

Anyway, two smart ladies, cool idea, brilliance all around.