I will be at Book Group Expo October 25-26  in San Jose, CA. This is a fantastic event for people who run or are in book clubs or just love books.  I’ll have more information later but in the meantime, just know that October 25th is also my birthday.

This review is in the Sunday, June 29th Washington Post Book World. I don’t really understand it all, so let’s call it a rave!

This week I’ve been cleaning house, on Goodreads that is. I’d been getting a lot of requests to befriend people and I think, why? they aren’t people who have read or are even “to-read”ing my book. They just seem to want to rack up friends. At first I said yes to everyone thinking that would somehow be a good thing for my book, but now every time I log on , I see these stranger’s updates. Things like “J. Johnson is now friends with Keir.” Or “Mandi liked Bookhead’s Review of “Mein Kampf.” And I think, oh nice for them, but I don’t know either one of them and I assume their friendship is as phony as ours and really I only care about what’s going on with a few people that I know or cyber-know (one has hair made of meat). So last night I decided to keep it rill. I cut all the fat –the only people I’m friending are people I know or people whose work I admire–or pretend I admire. And I’m thinking of leaving the Author Program, too, because I want to write nasty things to people who give my book low ratings and I don’t want them to know it’s me. (Like “Sorry, I didn’t write the book for half-wits.”)
You know?

Howcast — the phenomenal website where my husband Paul is Supervising Producer was ranked #2 in Time Magazine’s 50 Best Websites of 2008. That’s quite amazing! And you can vote to keep it there by clicking here. No bias, but the site is informative and hilarious. (And they have some extremely talented people there like fellow author’s Heather McPherson, Edward McPherson and a Pizza costume.)

Sometimes Paul will excitedly screen a video for Violet and I and we just keep watching more videos, cause we can’t stop ourselves!

Her favorite is How to Make A Baby Headed Dancing Frog. Mine is How to Prevent Identity Theft though I also like this animated one How to Avoid Getting Sick on Amusement Park Rides because the character looks a little like my Paul.

When the site first went up, Violet would watch endless craft videos. One night I put on How to Fold An Origami Swan and went to fold laundry, when I came back she was glued to How to Make a Bearnaise Sauce.

I did an interview with the marvelous and talented Marian Brown of Granta.com and it’s up there now. It was the most fun I’ve ever had in an interview. Please, have a look! And thanks! (Granta is British so I want to be extra polite)

Cheerio!

Today is (fill in with all of the egg frying cliches about heat).  It’s 97° but it feels like 315°.   Whenever I think of a heat wave, I picture open hydrants (which I’ve seen two today), being pregnant in the black out (which I was) and the cranky face of my dad sitting in traffic with his shirtsleeves pulled up…. which brings me to today’s link.

You’ll be hearing about this more, but my friend Tom Vanderbilt’s upcoming book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us) is getting a ton of buzz, as they say in the industry, and he’s got a kick-ass blog up. Check out the GMAC driving test. I scored a 70% and I was real happy!

I’ve written a lot about my friend Barbara — in Glamour magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Redbook and of course in my book. I was talking to her yesterday about the problems I’m having with the proposal of my next book and she said I should scrap the premise and write the whole thing about her.  I said, “Don’t you think I’ve written enough about you?”
Apparently, not.

Every year my mother who, is President of her library, asks me to post an ad for her on Craigslist to have someone pick up the leftover books at the end of their yearly book sale (I’m sure I don’t need to explain why my mother can’t post an ad on Craigslist). So I do it and when the e-mails come, I forward them to her. She always writes back TO ME and I call and say, “Ma, you need to write back to the person who sent the e-mail, not me.” So this morning I called and said, “Oh we got some responses to the ad I posted for you — I’ll forward them to you but remember –write back to them., not me.” And she says all huffy, “I KNOW!” So just now I get an email from her with “Free Books” in the subject line and I think it will say “Thanks for doing this for me, Julie.” But no, it says “Dear Dan, This sounds great! Thanks, Marcia.”

Last night while I was cooking dinner a moth the size of a pigeon flew into my kitchen and settled on the ceiling. I didn’t want to freak Violet out so I told Paul in pig latin and he said he would have to deal with it after Violet went to sleep. Wouldn’t you know it, Paul fell asleep at the exact same moment as Violet and I was left alone with the mother of all moths (I feel I should capitalize Moth — it was that big).

I didn’t want to sit under, waiting for it to fall in my hair, so got a mop and wrapped a towel on it and smacked it. It fell on the floor and then — IT WAS GONE! Where is it? I’ve looked everywhere. I don’t think it could’ve flown in its condition, but what do I know? I am assuming it’s nesting in my only cashmere sweater isn’t full of holes.

There’s a website called Goodreads.com thats just like Facebook or Myspace (I guess, I’m not on those) except it’s all about books. You can befriend people and join groups, etc… but the feature that I like best is that you can catalog every book you’ve ever read and rate it. The bad part is that I’m in their author program so my ratings come up with my name, so I won’t list any book that I am not willing to cough up 5 stars to in the event that someone I rate low will meet me at a party and collar me and say, “what the hell were those 3 stars about?”

I think you should all join and be my friends and then give my book five stars, okay?