Having just read Fire and Hemlock, I am at the point in my reading cycle where I generally find that after reading a Diana Wynne Jones book that no other book can please me except another Diana Wynne Jones book.  Other books feel a bit stale in comparison.

It’s my personal sort of addendum to Jenny’s Law.  Diana Wynne Jones is better on a reread, and rereading Diana Wynne Jones is guaranteed to send me on a fervent spiral of Diana Wynne Jones rereads.

But I am thrilled to announced that this is not the case today!  Because I just read The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner, and I am in love.  I want to shout it from the rooftops!  I am slobbering with anticipation to read the sequels, and I find that I can’t pick up the other books on my TBR list because I’m that excited to pick up The Queen of Attolia on Thursday.  Right now I’m struggling with the choice of rereading Stardust or Tamora Pierce’s Street Magic.  I might pick up The Greengage Summer instead.  These are the only books I have with me today.  I stuffed Tamora Pierce in my bag days ago in a fit of nostalgia.  (I suffer from an extreme case of nostalgia.  This is why I do considerably more rereading than, I believe, the average reader.)

Yesterday was May Day!  I forgot all about it the night before, and didn’t remember to wake up early to bathe in May dew or any such thing, but I did pick a sprig of rosemary and wear it in my hair, and put on a green man pendant.  (Yes, I am a completely unbiased folklorist and anthropologist.)  I read the first chapter of Howl’s Moving Castle, my personal May Day tradition, as it was the first place I ever heard of such a thing as a May Day.

Today I am suffering from a post-performance hangover.  My bellydance troupe performed last night, and when I woke up this morning I found a trail of glitter and mascara from my pillowcase leading out to my car.  Inside my car it looks as though a drag queen with a fondness for Venetian fringe and vintage rhinestone appliques  suffered some unspeakable catastrophe.  I can feel glitter in my tear ducts.  Occasionally, weeks after a performance is over and done with, I’ve found traces of glitter in my fella’s beard.

I have never attended this thing called a Dragon*Con, though I live no-so-far from Atlanta.  I should go, or so say several friends who ought to know about these things.  I may have to this year, because two of my young-adulthood favorite writers will be holding a writer’s workshop there.  Aaron Allston and Michael A. Stackpole, from my middle school days of endlessly reading Star Wars novels!  Aaron Allston, whose character of Lieutenant Kettch, Ewok fighter pilot, made me laugh uproariously, and Michael A. Stackpole, whose Rouge Squadron books were the ones I searched for anxiously on the shelf at the school library.  And now, the chance to meet my childhood idols!  It is an irresistible temptation, since far too many of my childhood idols are now dead.

It’s like Meggie in Inkheart, who assumes that all writers are a perished race, until she meets a living one and realizes that she could be a writer someday, too.  I’ve got a sort of forlorn, nagging hope that I might be, in fact, a writer, and that this might explain some things about me, and it might be nice to see what real writers are like, in the event that one day I join their ranks.

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I am in a vicious, vicious mood today.  I am snarly and growlsome and filled with rage.  It is the epitome of the sneaky hate spiral.  I am reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.  This has nothing to do with my mood.  It has rather more to do with the patrons that enrage me by their constant staring while I check out their books.  Their eyes burn holes in my head.  Look, people, there is nothing interesting about the way I use the scanner.  Turn your eyes away.  Stare at the ceiling.  I don’t care.  Just stop staring at me.  And I also hate the patrons full of their false cheerfulness and good mornings!  Their cheerfulness cannot be real, because outside is full of rain and gloom and utter DESPAIR.

I am liking Jonathan Strange very much, just as I thought I would.  I have just gotten the chapter entitled “The Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair,” which is such a wonderful title I don’t know why it isn’t its own book.  I find myself harboring some slight tender feelings towards Mr Norrell, he is so prim and out-of-touch and so mysteriously able to make the most exciting things sound impossibly boring.

I am also reading The Solitary Summer, which continuously makes me angry.  Elizabeth is so very smugly enjoying her solitude and her garden and summertime and I am not enjoying any of these things at the moment.  Sometimes I can’t quite stand how Elizabeth gets to play shamelessly in her garden and potter around with her babies all the livelong day and do exactly as she pleases while I am stuck at the library checking out books to patrons with laser eyes.

I read Owl in Love a short while ago.  Patrice Kindl wrote it and I have strong memories of reading The Woman in the Wall in middle school and being utterly fascinated.  I loved Owl herself, her voice and the decrepit mansion she lives in and her dietary habits, but to be honest, I was bored.  It is a very slim book so I shouldn’t have had to skim so much of it, but I did.

I read Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and found them v. amusing, though I liked the second book best (possibly).  Reading the Bridgets has caused me, as so often happens when I have a mild sort of orgy reading British literature, to feel like I’m writing with a English accent.

I went to the Main Library yesterday and came back giddy with excitement and a stack of delicious books to read: some Elizabeth Goudge, Rumer Godden, Elizabeth von Arnim, and Dodie Smith.  I have never read Rumer Godden, but An Episode of Sparrows was right there next to Elizabeth Goudge and I have heard such good things about it.  Such wonderful titles!  The Jasmine Farm, Green Dolphin Country, Gentian Hill, The Girl from the Candle-Lit Bath, The White Witch.  I want all these books in my personal library.

I will never be able to catch up on all the books I want to read, never.  There, writing about all those lovely books has made me feel slightly better.

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