As much as I've enjoyed the "branding" discussion, there has been much reading around these parts the past few days. Here are the highlights:

1. Finished the August column on Cuba. HIGHLY recommend the MG title My Havana: Memories of a Cuban Boyhood by Rosemary Wells with Secundino Fernandez, illus by Peter Ferguson. Wells overheard a radio interview with NYC architect Fernandez and was curious enough to track him down and work on a book with him about his Cuban childhood. His family fled Castro in 1959 but the book deals with life in Havana before, a long visit to family in Madrid and the move to NYC. Fernandez loved drawing architectural details from a very young age and his descriptions of Havana, as well as Ferguson fabulous pictures really make this one a huge winner. Betsy have you seen it? You'll love it!

2. Hmm...maybe that column isn't finished. I have a book on 100 great French novels as a "Cool Read" but as the column itself is shortish (for me anyway) I might add a big on Greek Lit as well. We'll see.

3. Part of why I pushed to get this column done early is because I am writing a big feature on the Univ of New Orleans Press for August - a look at local titles on the 5th anniversary of Katrina. (Can you believe that - FIVE years?) For that I've been reading Voices Rising II (which includes a blurb by me on the back for Voices Rising I - odd to see my name there) and also the four latest titles from the Neighborhood Story Project. I remain deeply impressed with these books and the teenagers who write them. It's a project that belongs in neighborhoods all over the country; I'd love to see similar books come out of Detroit or West Virginia, or Maine (just pulling places out of my head). Two of those read so far, two more to go. I've already started the interview with the UNO Press editor but will have more questions before I'm done.

4. A boatload of books read for Booklist - one on gender, one on the history of passports, exotic animal collecting, a nature title from Scotland and communities that live "off the grid". Three more books on tap, two of which are environmental titles. Nearly all of those are terrifying to one degree or another these days; I have to read them sparingly or get too depressed to focus.

5. Reread an old issue of Granta on Nature Writing, partly for the great editorial on Chris McCandless and Barry Lopez and Thoreau. It's about the turnaround from self-reliance in nature to expecting nature to save you which is a bit of what I'm playing with for the next book. I'm trying to find a linear way to organize the chapters for this book. I know it starts with Kerouac and reaches back to London and from there spins into Stegner and Thoreau and even some George Mallory with stops along the way with modern seekers who get lost, or dead, or nearly dead searching for an ideal on the road or mountaintops or in the wild. We have spent so long looking for something somewhere else; I wonder what would happen in the world if we just all figured out who we were (and wanted to be) before worrying about looking for what we didn't know. (That makes sense in my head, I promise.)

6. Also rereading Sarah Vowell because she is the touchstone for the next book as much as Tim O'Brien was for the last one.

7. Still no word on the last book, by the way but hope springs eternal.

8. Toying with the idea of writing about what makes a "good" pilot and how it pertains to my friends who are striking at Spirit Airlines. As I wrote on FB, I know what commercial aviation looks like without unions - Alaska. The reason so many professional pilots die up there every year has little to do with the terrain and MUCH to do with being forced to fly in unsafe conditions (ranging from fatigue to weather to craptastic equipment). Unions are necessary in aviation and without them you would all be faced with a lot more pilots like those flying for Colgan Air in the Buffalo crash and a lot fewer then those in the cockpit for the "Miracle on the Hudson".

Stepping off soapbox now.

9. Working pitches for Outside Mag an Men's Journal from Map of My Dead Pilots. One on things the guys had to know, one on flying the dead body contract. It would help to spin more articles for the book, so we'll see. I honestly don't know if this will get me anywhere but a writer writes, and works her butt off at selling what she has written.

10. Also read and reviewed a Tor collection on Charles De Lint's stories: Muse and Reverie. I was thinking about trying to shoehorn this into a column somewhere (obviously not August but someplace else) and then I received a surprise box from Tachyon who sent not only the latest Ellen Datlow anthology but a few extras as well. (Thank you very much Tachyon.) Anyway, there was The Very Best of Charles De Lint with stories going back decades and an excellent place for new readers to start. So now I'm seeing a dual review of both books in maybe September? It's hard to read De Lint in the summer - he's perfect autumn/winter reading - but he is here now so now it shall be. (The Datlow book, Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror will likely be a standalone review for Oct because really, it's perfect for then, isn't it?)

11. And that's everything book-wise, I think. Just made a couple of interesting requests - we'll see how those turn out. I would point you in the direction of an upcoming title from James Prosek on eels however and a little poetry collection by Kerry Ryan written to celebrate learning how to box (and being brave enough to be a novice adult female boxer). VS is due out from Anvil Press this fall and because I have somehow (luckily) ended up on the mailing list of many small Canadian presses, I will hopefully be reviewing it for you in just a few short months. (I will link when it shows up at the press website.) Doesn't it sound perfect for teenage girls? I'm looking forward to it!

[Let's see - most books from pubs but not the Granta. The pic is of Mallory and the other of my friend, and former Alaska co-worker at the Company, as the strike was heating up last month. Obviously it has begun now and Andy is out on the official picket lines.]