So since it's been a while since anybody except that Lezzie Porno dude wrote something, I thought I'd bring up this issue.  Perhaps it's redundant, but I don't wanna have the latest post on our community to be slash fiction.


Say you're a girl.  You date another girl.  The GLBT community welcomes and applauds you, you are a true bisexual free to fight for the Community and make educated decisions and views.
Now say you date a guy.  You're now straight.  You enjoy all the benefits of heterosexuality so you must be one and gawd forbid you want to get married.  Traitor!  GLBT matters shouldn't concern you anymore, breeder.

I had a lesbian friend say "What do you care?" when I was excited Idaho had allowed gay marriage.  I hadn't ever been as offended by a friend.

This is what I deal with along with many other bi girls who are with a XY.  This makes me furious for a few reasons:

1. So if I'm straight when I'm dating a man, am I asexual when I'm single?  No because sexuality is an inherent part of me.  It's like my shoe-size or my blood-type.  I get some people are more fluid but for me it's part of who I am and who I am is not who I am with.
2. I'm 90% dyke so when I hear that I'm straight all of a sudden it makes me furious to think of the barsexuals who get praised for making out with one girl once (Katy Perry anyone?). 
3. Pretend I was the straightest thing in the world.  I am still allowed to care about LGBT issues.  Where would any minority movement be without majority support?

back around 2002, i remember a couple co-workers discussing a book. from what vague memories i have of the description, the the book somehow involved a woman, possibly either mentally ill, or psychologically or neurologically different in some way, who makes these fantastical gardens (i think spiral?) in secret, that no one knows about. i'm also not positive but i think the garden involved glass, or shards of glass? does this sound familiar to anyone? i don't know how recent the book was when she described it, but i would think it was from around the window of late 90's-2002? thanks!

Ah, Christmas with my family. If it's not my dad screaming at my brother about what a stupid, worthless asshole he is because he left a single cup sitting out in the kitchen sink, it's my brother telling extremely tasteless, racist jokes or my uncle ranting about 666 and how evolution is a lie.

The one thing I usually don't have to worry about is my mother. We get along fairly well, better than most mother/daughter relationships I know of. We go to the movies, dinner and shopping together. We'll occasionally take a little mini-vacation, just the two of us girls. This Christmas, however, she decided to pull a pouty, passive-aggressive act about my atheism. At one point I was describing how incredibly complex reproduction is, and how each species has different mating habits, fertilization and zygote implantation unique to them. She says: "I know, and it makes me think that this all couldn't be an accident!" A couple more little jabs like that, and I was ready to just go home.

A friend of mine had a blog post about how the further she gets in her education and career (she's a biologist), the more alienated she feels from her parents. I'm beginning to feel the same way. I can't communicate with my family on the same level. With Don and Sean, we can sit on the sofa and have a conversation about population genetics, or the physics of the laser beam in the new Star Trek movie. At home I have to explain basic, evolutionary principles to my uncle because he says things like: "If we evolved from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys!"

I have three books I'm trying to remember.

The first was likely published in the late 80s, at a middle-school reading level. It was about a girl who went with her mom to visit her grandmother. In her grandmother's house, there's a creaky floorboard on the stairs, so when the girl tries to listen to her mother and grandmother talking downstairs, they hear the creak and know she's listening. The girl is given an old-fashioned doll, and when she sleeps at night with the doll in her grandmother's house, the girl dreams that she's one of her ancestors, back in pioneer days. Each night in her dreams, she gets to know the pioneer family, and she eventually saves them all from a fire, I think by sacrificing her own life. I think she douses blankets in water and covers her pioneer sister with them ...

The second was probably published in the late 70s, maybe 80s, and is a young adult/sci fi book. It's about two kids, a boy and a girl, who have special powers, and are chased by people who want to use those powers for themselves. One of the kids can see in the dark, and at one point when the kids are caught and carried in sacks, the kid can see through the sack and knows where they're being taken. I think it turns out that the boy is a long-lost cousin of the girl.

The third I can only remember a bit of -- there's a kid, or possibly several, who can make themselves invisible, and are escaping from somewhere, and they don't want to leave any tracks in the snow, so they climb from tree to tree. At one point soldiers who are looking for them come by, so the kids hold still in the trees and stay quiet and invisible until the soldiers pass. It would be a middle school/young adult that I read in the early 90s.

Thanks for any help!

I'm not sure when this book was published, but probably no earlier than the 70s? Though I think it was probably published in the 80s. I read it in the 90s and probably got lost in storage when we moved. It was like an anthology book of zenlike poetry, stories, sayings. I could have sworn it had a purple cover with no actual images in front.

The stories or lessons weren't longer than a few pages and overall the book wasn't too thick. I distinctly remember one of the stories/poems was about a boy who was born in the desert alone and because he had no one to teach him, ate the dirt, and I had a feeling it was about society.

Any help is much appreciated, thanks! <3

Okay, I most likely read this book back in 1999/2000, possibly a year or two before that.

The book is a mystery and is set in winter/Christmas time. The main character/crime-solving person is a nun (I think). I don't have much on the plot, but I seem to remember this nun being run off the road by another car.

The cover is black and has a picture of a decorated wreath on it with a winter scene in the middle. The author was female and had three names (like Mary Higgins Clark).

Please help!

So, Seth Godin posted a blog that declared that bookstores were dead. And 2009 sales proved it. Entry here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Er, Seth? Wither cometh the proof? I see no stats, other than the generic "the typical American buys one book a year for pleasure" statement.

For clarification, here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say about the year's bookstore results on 12/14/09:

Despite the severe recession, bookstore sales through the first nine months of 2009 are down by less than 1%, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Sales, which include results from college bookstores, were $13.56 billion through October, off just 0.7% from the same period in 2008. Bookstores have fared better than the overall retail market, which was down 8.2% in the nine-month period. Sales have generally been better in the second half of 2009, when comparisons with 2008 are easier as the recession deepened. In October, bookstore sales were a bit disappointing, falling 0.9%, to $1.03 billion, after posting a 7% increase in September and a slight gain in August.

Hmmm. So ... OTHER stores fell 8.2%, but bookstores were down by less an an overall 1%. Yet *bookstores* are dead.

Someone's facts are a little wonky here, and I don't think it's PW's.

For reference, check out the Zogby poll done for Random House in 2008:
http://www.zogby.com/random%20house%20final%20report.pdf

Not a huge sample size, but the statistics are certainly still trending heavily in favor of print vs. electronic delivery, and although about 50% of the respondents bought "10 or fewer books a year," that's still a far cry from "one."

Periodically, someone will declare the sky is falling, books are dead, and the New Hot Tech will inherit the earth.

I think this could be one of those times. And now I shall go buy a book.

-- Rachel

Blackest Night vs. Marvel Zombies: Who do you think would win?

Thank you to everyone who posted recs to my previous post ... I haven't had a chance to go through them yet, but I am sure they are going to be wonderful. Just wanted to pop in and say thanks, since I have to run shortly because there is yet another family dinner today :).

*hugs*

Edit: Found! The Secret of Dragonhome. Thanks, all!

Vaguely medieval-esque world. Girl and her younger brother - girl is early to mid teen-ish, brother is maybe seven? Their parents died. The kids are running scared because they have "talents" - pretty sure the girl can communicate with animals and I know the boy, we find out later, is a persuader and can get people to do things for him if necessary. (At one point he "persuades" his sister to eat meat (or possibly human meat, at any rate, she was squicked out) because he needs her to look after him. I think he gets gradually more self-interested and sociopathic as time goes on.)

I don't know if children with talents are killed or taken away to be "educated", but the two of them have the sense to not want any of that. Some of the people with talents are used in wars... I think there's one kid used to burn people up?

At some point in the past there were dragons, now believed to be all extinct. The kids get to some guy's castle (he wears gloves all the time) where they find out that "every child born in this castle has a talent". He has one son. This leads us to think the talents are genetic in origin, but the big reveal is that he has a dragon living in his castle and their scales do something to the water that mutates babies. The local governments are implied to have known this, and the extermination of the dragons is thought - by the few who know enough to realize this - to have really been a cover for ultimately eliminating the birth of children with talents, and the everlasting wars are a cover to keep talented children occupied (and hopefully killed) in battles so they can't do anything crazy like take over.

There may have been a romance between the guy in the castle and the girl, and they have to flee the castle by the end of the book. I think there may have been supposed to be a sequel, but I don't know if there ever was. I certainly never read it. The little brother chooses to be left behind in the castle, but his sister (who has been persuaded to take care of him his whole life) isn't too concerned, realizing that he's got the one talent that can keep him safe and alive no matter what.

Spoiler alert.

This one reminds me a whole lot of Neal Asher's runcible books, Tony Daniel's Grist books, John C. Wright's Golden Age books, Walter Jon Williams's Aristoi universe. Far future, people (and aliens) are all over the universe; some have modified themselves to be pretty alien. Technology is available to carry a unit (one character has a necklace) that will record you, such that if you die, you can be re-made from the recording. A married pair of the characters are in a war on a planet; one dies, one is saved and tries to find his partner's unit but can't. You spend time with those roles reversed (you thought the other one was going to die). Someone, possibly him, is sent on an assassination mission. Another (captured?) personality is loaded up into his brain, to keep him from sabotaging the attempt. The personality ends up sabotaging the attempt himself. Another character in a completely different part of the universe finds out the attempt, is destroyed in doing so, is re-created from the unit and tries to warn people, only to find out that it is one complete galactic rotation later, and his unit has been floating in space and only just now recovered by the same place he was on before.

There is a short story I can almost remember.
A group of people are trapped on a boat in the middle of the ocean, with no hope of rescue, and little water.
One of the stranded tells them all that he has a way out... he can help them all create a world. He has been searching for this path for years, and has found out how to use it.
He hypnotises them, controlling the creation and becoming a sort of god to this reality. Unfortunately for him, he is also not entirely in their created world; he still feels the effects of the real world, and is slowly going mad with thirst.

Can anyone help me find out what it's called?

1. Found! Being of Two Minds

I read this probably mid-late 90s. It's an older kids or young YA novel. An American girl and a boy (crown prince) from one of those backwards nations where a monarchy is actually important for more than just looking pretty share thoughts sometimes. They have shared seizures - if one of them has a minor one, they know the other just had a major one and is sharing their body right now. (That sounds a LOT pervier than it is!) They have auras before their seizures. The boy's uncle is scheming good-naturedly to remove him from inheriting the throne for the good reason that he thinks the seizures have made him stupid and a risk. The kids are in touch with each other through the method of writing notes or speaking aloud when they know the other one is seeing through their eyes, and they're thrilled that the boy's family is coming on a diplomatic visit to the US because they plan on actually meeting up in the flesh. They're like 13 - they seem to think of themselves as a cross between penpals and siblings, not as romantic partners or anything like that. They suspect other people may have had this problem in the past, but pride themselves on being smart enough to not be locked up for absolute insanity.

And they DO meet up, and shake hands, but there's a kidnapping plot and they find their little episodes get worse when they're not halfway across the world from each other and... I have no idea what happened next. SO frustrating, it was actually an interesting book.

2. FOUND! Mara, Daughter of the Nile

An Egyptian slave in the time of the Pharoahs, and she finds herself embroiled in intrigue and politics, getting paid on all sides to... something about the Pharoah. She's supposed to spy on this foreign wife of the Pharoah, and manages to convince her to go along with the main plot (the one we're supposed to root for) on the grounds that if she does, when the current Pharoah is deposed she'll be sent home. We see some scenes from the foreigner's point of view, she's very amused by the fact that the slave obviously has a sweetheart and is clearly lying about the sweet nothings he's saying by periodically turning to her and saying "Oh, he just said your customs are interesting and asked after your family" or whatever. (But we know he's not actually saying sweet nothings, he's giving her instructions as to her spying, and threatening her, although I think he never intended to carry anything out because awww they're so much in love ♥.)

AM I CREEPY?

No, literally.

2 Short Stories in Children Sci-Fi Anthology
-The story I remember better is about a drug that increases a person's intelligence. The society gave the drug on a small group of people first as a test, and then to everyone. For some reason the main characters in the story are immune to the drug. Their parents are in some type of support group, at least a magazine or something is mentioned. The kids want to prove they are just as good as a the smart people so they create a plan to disrupt some government, Madagascar's I think.
( Cut for length )

Found! "Was It A Dream?" by Guy de Maupassant
-It wasn't very long and in a supernatural/ghost anthology
-The plot is that a man is going to see his fiancee's grave. For some reason the skeletons come out of their graves and start writing on them. One man writes that instead of being a good husband, he was a horrible one. The man's fiancee writes that she got pneumonia (?) when she was walking to see another man and that is why she died. I think the guy faints in the end.

A Children Fantasy Story
-The premise is that the "real" world reflects a magical world. The main character is a girl and a boy from the other world talks to her through a mirror. The boy mentions he could see her through the bathroom mirror, but didn't watch when she was taking a shower or something (I remember this creeping me out). He takes her to the magical world.
( Cut for length )

Found! "The Obnoxious Jerks" by Stephen Manes
-The characters go to a really strict school. Part of the dress code is that guys must wear pants and girls have to wear pants or knee-length skirts.
-A group of guys make some kind of club. One of the things they do is wear skirts to school to protest. I remember that they had trouble finding skirts to wear. They got them from a used clothing store and there were only ugly skirts. One of the skirts had palm trees on it.
( Cut for length )

My mom was telling me about a book she wants both of us to read. I guess it's about a mother and daughter who own an inn, or bed & breakfast? And characters from novels come to life there? She mentioned _Little Women_ as an example of the characters who came to life. Any ideas? Of course she can't remember title or author. She thinks it came out in the last two or three years. We're in the U.S.

My darling husband bought me a BeBook for Christmas (for those who don't know it's an ebook reader :)).
Now I mostly read fanfic and I would like to upload some to it to carry around with me and read from time to time.

I have a set of macros in Word to format documents and print them to PDF for it, so I have that bit sussed, I am just wondering what to put on it. I have already downloaded the Big Bang fics to put on it, but I want more. I have a 4gb SD card desperate for content ;).

So, would you all mind doing me a favour and recc'ing me some fics? I am so behind on most of the fandom archives and comms.

My favouritest of all types of fic is creature fic and bonding fic (bet you never knew that :P), so some of them would be wonderful, but anything will do.

Any rating, any fandom, any genre. All I ask is that they are readable with decent grammar (doesn't have to be perfect, just not gouge my eyes out terrible :)), have a happy ending and contain no character death.

If you want to wax lyrical about a fandom I'm not in and think I will like, please do too :D. It's coming up to the New Year, so new ideas are good as well ;).

Thank you in advance for any help you can give me. *hugs*

Many apoligies for missing last week ... it's been a bit mad :)
Happy Birthday to:
pitchblackrose and lunamazes for the 21st,
laurac0re and fledge for the 22nd,
tartsweetheart and edahs_lanrete for the 24th,
lupin_spirit, corvidae9 and paraboobizarre for yesterday,
lady_addiction, malpomme and eponin10 for today,
sgcp90 for the 29th,
belelfmir and peki for the 30th,
scribbulus_ink, atiejen and thewantonvixen for the 31st,
legomymalfoy, missakins, midnightangel70, saigestar and angelofmercy for the 1st,
feygan and shellydkitty for the 2nd and
cocohufflepuffs, skytheuplight, colored_image and crestoinnocence for the 3rd

Many happy returns to you all.