Neil Gaiman at Lisner Auditorium

Friday night was a good one for me. Not only did I end up with a free ticket to Neil Gaiman's talk (& book signing) at George Washington University, but due to unexpected friend of a friend connections I got a seat in the second row! Wahoo!

It was incredible to hear Gaiman speak in person, his words and personality over blogs/Twitter has always been so much fun, but the book reading was my favorite part. I didn't know much about The Ocean at the End of the Lane but hearing it in his own voice definitely has me intrigued. I just wish I was a better audio book person though because Gaiman recorded it himself! 

Pictures from my Instagram

Either way it was a really fun night and if you're looking for something new yourself why not check it out? It's only $15.22 on Amazon! A steal!

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.

Your Public Library @ Work - Seattle Edition!

A friend linked me to this earlier today and I just had to share. To kick off their 2013 Summer Reading Program, volunteers at the Seattle Public Library set up a world record making book domino chain!

Anyone else tempted to try this with their collection ^_~?

Happy Friday!

things I'm thinking about

I have finished nothing new and exciting lately, and even if it was sitting on my desk in front of me I'm not sure I could read it. I'm stressed. Life stressed from so many angles it's making me irritable and it's difficult to read books and give them a fair review when I'm in this mood. A couple of things on my plate? Loving a Prince Charming by Danielle Monsch and Scent of Darkness by Christine Dodd - completely different from each other but neither are catching my attention. And I can't say it's a criticism to either of the authors; I have got to get over this hump and soon, dammit!

To deal with all that I've decide to take a moment today and focus on the things that are/should be making me happy. 

1) Dragon*Con - 91 days people! The Hyatt will be taking its lovely chunk of change from me on June 1st, which makes it ALL THE MORE REAL. I have at least a couple costumes in the works (both that make me over the moon excited) so hopefully focusing on Labor Day Weekend will help me. 

2) Dim Sum - what's a happiness list without food? Some friends and I
will be venturing into Silver Spring on Sunday for some of the best dim sum in the DC area. Best part? Roast pork buns! (and turnip cakes, and fried rice steamed in leaves, and dumplings.....)

3) Nordstrom Half Yearly Sale - I'm actually kinda poor right now, what with the hotel price and plane tickets for my sorority's convention in August, but I'm a sucker for a deal. I'm not sure if/when I'll have the budget to buy all the things I want (Kate Spade metallic silver and yellow neon heels I'm looking at you) but Taylor Brand dresses in the $50-$80 range? That'll work for now!

4) Speaking of buying things, I have $10 in HauteLook credit! This never happens for me ok? Just let me bask. And be super discerning about what I use it on because shipping is no joke and I do not want to send it back!

5) xoJane and xoVain - when I'm busy and distracted for some odd reason I also find myself super bored, maybe because I'm trying to ignore all the things? Whatever the reason these two websites help a LOT, with witty writers and articles on cool stuff (mostly female related).

And that's it folks, so tell me - What's making you happy right now?

Window Shopping: Out of Print Clothing

Why are the things I want - which are especially hard to justify because I won't wear them often - so freaking expensive?! And yet beautiful and perfect too. Sigh. I usually share these shorts of things on my FB Page but I just had to talk about them here too. I love them!

 A Wrinkle in Time shirt, $28, Out of Print clothing

Charlotte's Web shirt, $28, Out of Print clothing

I need something happy

Done.

via

The RAtC Sex-O-Meter and Kinky vs Porn

Thinking about my blog and how I wanted it to evolve made me wonder - am I really ranking and reviewing these books in a way that's most helpful to my readers? Am I telling them all they really want to know? And then it hit me - a Sex-O-Meter! Something that would (probably through an easily deciphered image) would clue people in on whether the book I'm reviewing has too much (or too little) sex for their own personal opinion.

I, as you all know by now, read a variety of romance and non-romance. Accordingly, the level of sex in each book swings wildly from G/PG to XXX (I would put more X's in, but I find that redundant). But what about the average reader? What do they want? What are they willing to tolerate? I was talking out this idea with my roommate and we decided that it was GREAT. Who has a Sex-O-Meter?!?! No one I know of!

But what also came about during this conversation was the question of how I was going to decide on my two endpoints. The whole point of a scale is to have the two extremities at either end. Originally I thought maybe I'd put a young adult or juvenile novel at the 'sex-less' end of the scale but I think that's going to be TOO FAR on the innocent end. Instead, I think one of those Harlequin Inspirational Romances is going to be over there on that end. Mostly because this is going to be a Sex-O-Meter, not an Adult Content-O-Meter. I will not be judging books on their language or violence - I'll leave that up to someone else. Primarily, 80-85% of the time, I'm reading some sort of romance novel (or a paranormal with lots of sex added in), thus a Sex-O-Meter would be the most useful. Inspiration Romances are defined by their religious/spiritual aspects, with no sex and little kissing happening in the books. With that in mind, I think they're more than acceptable for any person in the general population so they're going to be 1's.


Well ok then. We've got one end of the spectrum defined. But what about the other side? It's a lot harder to say whatever I've got in my other hand, that 'THIS' is hardcore. Porn is in and of itself something generally considered to be defined by the individual. Thus, I have to create my own definition of porn- at the very least using 'porn' in such a way that it implies that the sex content is far higher than what would normally be found in most books. Finally, after much discussion, I decided to make the far end of my Sex-O-Meter spectrum this one particular E-book I reviewed in an earlier post, Stalked by Jaid Black. As an Ellora's Cave 'Exotika' title it's pretty much guaranteed to contain a lot of raunch, but I feel this title really exemplifies porn - but not in a derogatory way. 'But how can you call something porn and not be derogatory?' you might ask, but I think it's very possible. Porn doesn't always have to be of the type that pedophiles and perverts use to jack off to in the middle of the night. Porn can be used by many people in a completely healthy, consensually satisfying, way. I'm using the word 'porn' to signify a high sex to plot ratio, because it's a word that's easily associated with sex- graphic sex at that.

And yet, still in this discussion with my roommate, the conversation changes - 'What about the books with those guys who change shape and have sex? I definitely think that's porn'. My reply is that those particular books are a type of KINK, not something that is automatically classified as porn. What a huge 'ah-hah!' moment - I do consider things like that a kink and not porn. Because I've found that what kind of sex and how often that sex happens in a novel has very little to do with what type of creatures the main characters are. The question that comes out of that though, is how far does that extend? Are all types of sex going to be categorized more as someone's kink? Maybe that's why we have the delineation of porn, to refer to a medium that incorporates a particular type of sex, a medium that is meant to include large amounts of graphic reference or images of sex, with no consideration to the type of sex being had. Now that I write this, that definition is probably why anyone is able to use the term porn or pornography in a non-derogatory way. The porn itself is almost innocent of what type of sexual act is being portrayed. Thus, you can have both morally defined 'good' porn and 'bad' porn.

Wow. I just referred to porn as innocent. Go figure. I probably just made some fundamentalist's head explode.

Why do we all love Patrick Stewart?

While I realize that this particular topic is kind of random, I still feel like it's something that I want to talk about - Why do we all love Patrick Stewart? Men, women, children- why is he considered to be so cool? Why did I care whether I was in the 2nd row or the 42nd when I went to see him? He seems to be this living embodiment of older, stately elegance, one whose popularity transcends all different kinds of acting mediums - TV, big screen, theater, etc. And it's not just the Trekkies that I'm talking about here. Patrick Steward has officially engraved himself on America's heart. But what has done that- is it his accent? Is it perhaps the quiet calm that he seems to exude as easily as walking? Or maybe the stern father figure persona that he uses so adroitly- the wise mentor that through his own trials and tribulations is able to impart impeccable advice? I don't know what it is, but I've got to say that it's incredible to see.


I mean, he's so ingrained in popular cultural as this terrific figure, that when I came back from Dragon*Con and told a friend that after hearing him speak I wanted him to be my grandfather, she replied "You mean instead of your sex toy?" SEX TOY! He might not have been seen as a typical sex icon, especially at the beginning of his Star Trek career, but now he is! As Professor Xavier and through so many other roles, he has an almost George Cloony like image- except, of course, without the playboy reputation.

But what about you? Are you a Patrick Stewart fan? If you are, and are willing to share, do you think of him more in 'fatherly' terms or would you like the chance to get to know Mr. Stewart on a more 'personal' basis?