Random stuff

Hooray for April Henry! (Given the rhythm of that sentence, it took a lot of effort on my part not to spin it into a parody of "Hooray for Captain Spalding." But I digress.) I noticed that Girl Stolen (I love novels about German pasrty) made both Quick Picks and the award formerly known as BBYA. I had the thrill of doing that with Hidden Talents. Since that was my first experience with those lists, I naively assumed every one of my books would repeat the trick. Nope. Not even close. It's a rare achievement. So, yay for April, who is both a wonderful writer and a very nice person.

On a darker note, let's play a hypothetical game. Let's say that some famous person -- let's call him Person A -- said, "I hope Person B has a heart attack." Now, imagine that the very next day, Person B has a heart attack. Let's also assume that Person B never even knew about the statement. Would we still, as a society, feel some sort of disdain for Person A? At the very least, most people would feel that Person A is not a very nice person. Now, we have Sarah Palin putting cross hairs on a person, chanting rhetoric like "RELOAD!" and then acting like a victim because people called her out on it when her wishes came true.

Another sign of the apocalypse -- the Today Show opted for Snookie (I'm not even going to bother seeing if that's the proper spelling) over the Newbery and Caldecott winners.