Do over

I'm going to redo the book giveaway, as I haven't heard from Cassandra. It's a really fun book and a great escape from reality, should you be suffering from recession blues, or 'it's rained all week' blues, or 'why the heck am I not making any Etsy sales' blues - the book won't stop the rain, fix the recession or jump start your business, but it will give you a few hours of enjoyment that will make it easier to handle all that crap. It's called "Eating the Cheshire Cat" but there is no eating of cats in the book, in case you're squeamish about that. Here's the publisher's note:

Eating the Cheshire Cat lures us into a world of perfectly planned parties and steep social ladders, where traditional rites of passage take unpredictable and horrifying turns as three girls and their overbearing mothers collide. In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, beauty is as beauty does, with axes and knives and killer smiles.

Sarina Summers and her mother will stop at nothing to have it all. Nicole Hicks harbors a fierce obsession with Sarina, which repeatedly undermines Mrs. Hicks''s ambitious goals. Bitty Jack Carlson, a nice girl from the wrong side of the tracks, is caught in the crossfire but struggles to succeed outside the confines of this outrageous yet eerily familiar Southern community. It''s survival of the fittest. Which girl will come out on top?

Covering everything from summer camp to the University of Alabama''s Homecoming game, this fast-paced and unforgettable novel will keep readers guessing until the bitter end.

So, again, leave a comment and a way to contact you, and I will pick a winner on Thursday. And whoever wins gets to give it away again and keep it moving. Need an extra incentive to enter? Tell me what your favorite chocolate bar is and I'll try to include it. Just don't pick Junior Mints, because I couldn't find them anywhere in Montreal when I wanted to make brownies. We used 4 Peps, and they turned out fine, but sometimes you just want a Junior Mint.

Under the Blacklight

After two weeks of warm winds and melting snow, we're once again buried and chilly. It's -16, too cold for an aimless walk so we haven't been doing much of anything except cooking and eating. In the last 2 weeks, Gord has perfected fried rice, somehow managing to get it crispy and sticky and just right. And he's been fattening me up with his butter & cream chicken penne, oh my good god, can he cook.

It's reading week, so no school, but I have no books! No new books, at least. So I splurged on Linguality - they publish french books with a glossary of english on the left hand page, and the french text on the right, so you don't have to read with a dictionary and your computer open to Babelfish. I must be learning some french, because with the glossary I could make sense of the sample page I downloaded, but I had no such luck with the Italian. I think this will make it easier to learn the language, and if nothing else, I get new books!

I just finished Embracing the Wide Sky by Daniel Tammet. Gord ordered the book after seeing him on The Hour, and it was a really good read. I usually can't plod through nonfiction, but this book makes all the scientific mumbo jumbo easy peasy. If you've ever wondered how your brain works, this is a good book to start with. The author is an autistic savant, and once recited Pi to 20,000 digits or something insane like that. I can remember Pi to 2 digits. The difference is how he sees numbers, not as the dry, meaningless pencil scratchings from math class like I do, but as images, so reciting Pi is like describing a landscape.

Post title is from the song stuck in my head, it was pretty much the soundtrack of last winter and reminds me of driving up and down highway 2 over Christmas. You can listen to the whole album here.