“Jennifer’s Body” (official movie trailer) [HQ]

Ok, I’m a little bit overwhelmed by the amount of bile pouring out the fingers of t’internet peeps at the trailer for the new movie written by Diablo Cody. In case you have been living under a rock with no clear broadband signal (or just don’t give a fig about pop culture) the movie is called Jennifer’s Body and it’s due for release in September.

Here be the trailer:

more about ""Jennifer’s Body" (official movie tra…", posted with vodpod

Okay… my thoughts, it looks a bit like Heathers crossed with the original Buffy movie. Could be awesome, could be painful. I’m thinking it’s probably going to be best approached with an open mind.

Reading around a few message boards (and braving the you tube comments), there’s a heck of a lot of hate going on out there…and I can’t for the life of me figure out why.

I did mention, in an earlier post how there appeared to be some sort of backlash in progress after the script for Jennifer’s Body was leaked on the web (early draft…). Today there’s nothing but razzing on Diablo Cody’s use of language (”Nobody talks like that!11eleventy!!”) and screeds about “Not going to pay $12 to look at Megan Fox’s bewbs” (I censor) etc. etc.

Um, folks, it’s a damn trailer. Get over yourselves.

On the “nobody talks like that” front, I’d advise people to go look at Heathers, nobody talks like that either, but that didn’t stop it becoming a cult classic. The same way, like it or not, Juno is likely to (if it hasn’t already attained that status). As a linguist, I freaking love movies like Heathers and Juno, because they have the power to affect the way people talk. Seriously, I did my final year thesis on phrases being imported into Hiberno-English (English as it is spoken in Ireland) from US movies. It was around the time of Wayne’s World and the original Buffy movie (oh shut up, I know I’m old), and I had a wealth of catchphrases to choose from. People start off quoting from the movie, often in a US accent, and as the phrases gain traction, the accent is dropped and bingo! the phrase is in the lexicon. Mightn’t stay there very long, but it has made it off the screen and onto the streets.

Saw the same thing happen with Juno. Expect to see it again with Jennifer’s Body, and I thank Diablo Cody for it. I can futz around with the Urban Dictionary and learn all the new phrases as they materialize, but I won’t be half as entertained as I would be watching a movie filled with phrases that make my head spin, and render my inner word-geek dizzy with joy.

On the Megan Fox thing, can I just say, I prefer it when she’s saying stuff other people have written for her than when she is speaking for herself. She is a very pretty girl, but I’d go see this movie whether her bewbs were in it or not. A blackly comic horror movie with an excellent soundtrack (Ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry BOMB!) is always something to look forward to, at least for me. And I’ve already seen Drag me to Hell (it’s pretty darn good ), so this one’s on my must see-list.

Shouldn’t people wait til they actually see the movie before they rant and rave about how crap it is? I mean, they don’t actually know yet, right?

Trolls fail at pre-emptive criticism. That’s the issue right there, in a nutshell.

This is a rant…

Consider yourselves warned.

There has been much wittering of late on the interwebs about how “literary fiction” is dying out, and how genre writing and the readers of same are somehow to blame. Tonight’s post is inspired by a few pieces Stuart Neville linked to from his blog (the post is called “On Vicky Cristina Barcelona and other insufferable tosh”, scroll down a bit and you’ll find it), and also the epic whinefest that was the Militant Writer’s post about not being able to get published because her stuff is “too literary” (I paraphrase, I’m not linking to the site again, you’ll find a link to it in my piece on Queryday if you’re bothered). For an idea of the kind of silliness I’m thinking about, have a look at this then take some deep breaths and come back to me. If you see nothing wrong with that post, close the tab you have this open on, we’re not likely to agree on this front at all.

This nonsense about the relative value of literary versus genre fiction has been going around and around in my head for a long time now, probably since I attended an evening where two “literary writers” compared notes about “bevelling their sentences” (I kid you not, the phrase was used) and wafted their MFAs around in a none-too-subtle attempt at disparaging the genre writer that sat on the same panel as them (and sells way more books than at least one of them). They came off as pretentious navel-gazing idiots whereas the genre writer was down to earth and far more enthused about writing in general – and far more willing to encourage any wannabe writers in the audience.

During the Agentfail fracas I first came across the phrase “speshul snowflakes” being used to describe both wannabe and published “literary writers” and dagnabbit but those two exemplified the phrase. The “speshul snowflake” considers themselves to be unique, important, fragile, and put-upon by the nasty reading habits of the great unwashed book-buying masses. They are the ones who will claim that they can’t get published / their book failed because it was “too literary”, personally I tend to mentally translate “too literary” into “too purple” and move on…but what really gets my goat is the notion that one type of fiction inherently has more worth than another.

For the people who require credentials before reading further, I have a degree in English Literature and Linguistics (double major, both honours, ta for asking), and so it should be apparent that I love words, I love stories, I love reading. I have read deeply and widely across many genres. I am not, however a book snob. I love good literary fiction and I lap up good crime and sci-fi with equal enthusiasm, I’m not even particularly averse to (the nebulously defined) “popular fiction”, it it’s between two covers and has pages I can turn, I’ll give it a shot.

If I had a manifesto, it would be this:

1. Literary fiction is not a genre.
It is a pseudo-genre that contains everything that doesn’t fit into an established genre, i.e. it’s not crime, horror, romantic fiction, historical fiction, or any other sub-genre of the great Fiction bucket.

2. Bad literary fiction is exponentially worse than bad genre fiction.
Why? Because at least bad genre fiction will have a plot, some pace, and a hook that got someone somewhere to sit up and pay attention. Bad literary fiction is the equivalent of being trapped in a room with a stoner who insists on revealing the inner workings of their minds in excruciating detail, telling you a story that doesn’t go anywhere, and taking several aeons to do it.

3. Writing good genre fiction can actually be harder than writing good literary fiction.
She said what now? I’m serious. Think about this for a moment. If you’re writing in a genre (say crime) you have to (a) know how crime books work, have read a lot of them, and know what people expect from them, (b) establish (and sustain) plot, characters and pace in a way that keeps your readers hooked, (c) know what the tropes of the genre are and either abide by them or subvert them (the twist being a classic example) and (d) create something unique in a well-established and well-trodden field. You’re writing literary fiction? Well, there are no rules for that, no tropes, no demand for plot or snappy pacing. You can write something as excruciatingly tedious as Hotel Du Lac and even win prizes for it. Lucky you, eh?

4. There is no way to tell high art from low art unless you see a lot of art.
Again, how the hell can people dismiss genre fiction out of hand without reading a fair amount of it? The “I only read literary fiction” crowd know not what they disparage, by their own admission. I don’t know how they think they have the right to dismiss everything else as worthless. So many of these people trot out Stephenie Meyer, Dan Brown et al while they’re dissing genre-writers wholesale. Well, they aren’t what anyone would term paragons of genre-writing (or any kind of writing), but yeah, they sell. They have something to them that hooks people. If you want to champion good writing, you have to admit that good writing exists within genre fiction as much as it does outside of it. Because it does. To claim otherwise just makes you look foolish. Neal Stephenson? Tricia Sullivan? Stuart Neville? Gillian Flynn? Tana French? Brilliant writers all, genre writers all. Put them in your pipe and smoke some. If you want to complain about bad writing you should know of what you speak, and be prepared to cite examples (from your own reading, not quotes from bad reviews by Kakutani or Battersby or whoever your paragon of taste is).

5. False argument: “Literary fiction is worth more because we learn about ourselves and the world while reading it”.
Yawn. ALL good fiction teaches us something about ourselves and the world. Read some Ursula Le Guin and learn about gender politics, read Carl Hiaasen and learn about the environment and Florida. Heck even BAD fiction has learning attached – read Dan Brown and learn about something called the Gnostic Gospels (although you should probably read something else for real information on them), or Stephenie Meyer and get a window into the Mormon mindset.

6. False Argument #2: “Genre fiction is all about escapism.”
Ahem, for those not self-aware enough, ALL fiction is a form of escapism. That is what it is for. To claim that it’s more valid (or more worthy) to “escape” into a world created by Dostoevsky than it is to escape into one created by Joe R. Lansdale misses the point of reading altogether.

7. False argument #3 “Literary fiction doesn’t need believable characters or any sort of plot because it’s all about the beauty of a well-turned phrase.”
Now look, I love a beautifully turned phrase as much as the next person, truly I do, but the literary novels that I love the most combine beautiful writing with strong characterisation, believable and compelling dialogue, and an actual story (Dostoevsky anyone? Kundera anyone?). You may make the prettiest sentences in the world, ones that I’ll scribble down somewhere so I don’t forget them (yes, utter word nerd), but if you break my immersion by having all your characters speak in the same voice, regardless of background or personality, or if there is no tension or drama to your narrative, I’m not going to be a happy reader. I’m going to consider finishing the book as work, and I don’t like having one of the greatest pleasures in my life turned in to a hard slog. It makes me cranky. Also, as a bookseller, it makes me recommend other books over your book.

8. Finally: A good story well told, is a good story well-told.
That’s an indisputable fact, and whether your story is about the dying days of a failing marriage, the pursuit of a serial killer or the problems incurred in settling Mars, if it’s good, it’s good and it deserves to be read, period. One good book of any stripe is worth 20 bad ones. Truth be told, in and out of genre writing the ratio of good to great to utter duds is pretty much a constant.

Can’t we all just agree that good books are good books, bad books are bad books and lose the defensive genre-bashing and intellectual snobbery? It would make the world a much nicer place.

/end rant

This is how you open a door….

I know I have ranted and rambled about the annoyance of constantly being asked for the restroom key by our customers who do not bother to read the sign on the door telling them to ask for the key at the coffee shop.

What I did not go into in that rant and ramble was the (far, far) sadder fact that some of our customers do not seem to know how to operate doors. Several times we have seen people trying to put the restroom key into a dummy lock on the door into which it patently would not fit. We have had to rescue people from inside the restroom who could not get out due to there being two handles on the door. Yes, rescue. They bang on the walls and bellow for assistance.

I’m going to let that sink in for a minute.

You see, these are people who have managed to get up, negotiate the intricacies of putting on clothes, have exited their own home (presumably through a door…) and quite possibly navigated to the shop in a vehicle of some description, maybe even a car, which they drove. And yet…. they are defeated utterly by the necessity of pushing down on the push handle and twisting the twist handle simultaneously. And then pulling the door towards themselves.

Not rocket science.

The scary thing is, that there have been enough incidents to merit a further instructional notice being put on the door (presumably also to be ignored, but at least we’re trying…). When I first saw the sign I had to run off into the staffroom to catch my breath as I was laughing so much.

I’m sharing it here, because I think everyone could use a good smile.
Here, in all its glory, is (one of) the exterior restroom door signs:

*headdesk*

It’s a bumper year…

…for crime books. Good, even great crime books that is.

If you’re a regular reader of crime fiction blogs you will no doubt already have heard people lauding The Twelve by Stuart Neville. I finally got my hands on a proof copy of it (bookselling is still good for something!), and can tell you that the plaudits are completely justified.

It’s interesting that the proof has a cover endorsement from John Connolly, since The Twelve manages to do something straight out of the gate that Connolly (to this reader at least) has not always managed to do – and that is integrate the supernatural into a noir thriller without any feeling of shoe-horning or OTT-ness. I always found Connolly’s early books to be uneasy hybrids of crime and the supernatural, the two elements never quite meshed properly, and his writing style seemed to jump all over the place to accommodate them . That Neville has managed a seamless mix in his début is no small feat. That he does this with tight plotting and excellent characterisation to boot is (and I don’t say this lightly) stunning.

The Twelve of the title are twelve ghosts that accompany the central character, Gerry Fegan, a former paramilitary in Northern Ireland. They are the ghosts of the people he has killed, spectral embodiments of his own guilt, and a finger-pointing morality-play chorus that are bent on exacting revenge against those who issued the orders that led to him killing them.

The book is set in modern Belfast, Stormont is active, there is a supposed peace, yet old habits, prejudices and thirsts for blood, power and revenge live on. It’s a credit to Neville that nowhere is there a stance on Northern politics or the troubles that could be considered in any way naive or romanticised. The book is politically astute, and for that may not be to everyone’s taste (I loved a piece about how the Americans don’t donate to “the cause” anymore since 9/11, but I wonder what American readers will make of it), the hard-bitten cynicism of it is more than another noir trope, it’s considered, reasoned and of relevance to the plot. There’s no heaping on of politicized hyperbole here, it’s a constant drip-feed of harsh reality.

Gerry’s Twelve want to be avenged, but the trouble is that poor Gerry just wants to get on with his life, which won’t be easy since circumstances conspire to make that even harder than the baying of ghouls that keeps him awake at night.

Working against Fegan is Campbell, a deep cover former Black Watch soldier who is working to preserve a precarious political status-quo, or more honestly, working to preserve his own bacon, since he doesn’t seem to be troubled by any sort of moral considerations. He is a volatile, unpredictable rogue card, and the weaving of his and Fegan’s contrary missions is nothing short of masterful.

I don’t want to go into the plot too much, because this is a book that should be read, not read about or around. There will be much written about how the book deals with guilt, morality, revenge, prejudice and more, but to my mind the best way to understand how that is dealt with, and grasp Neville’s take on all of it is simply to read the book.

I know it’s slightly unfair for me to post a rave review a month before publication, but I want to give anyone who has missed out on the advance buzz a heads-up. The book is out next month. You have been fore-warned.

Good books, I have found some…

After the unlucky reading streak, a joyful, curl-up-with-these-and-lose-track-of-time streak.

In my top books of last year, Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 ranked highly among the crime novels, because I felt the same way while reading it as I did when I first read Gorky Park. Not just because of the setting, but because here was someone doing something wholly original, and in a way that just knocked my socks off. His second book The Secret Speech (which I’m assuming went under the working title of Gulag 57, but for some reason got switched along the way) has the same lead character, Leo Demidov, who is now working for the newly formed (and highly secret) Homicide department in Moskow. His past in the MGB soon comes back to haunt him, with his recently adopted daughters and his marriage in peril, he finds himself on a mission to break someone out of a gulag – something which no-one has ever succeeded in doing – and that’s just the start of it. The scope is every bit as big and every bit as historically aware as Child 44 was, the writing every bit as good, the characters are completely believable, and in places the finely tuned plot is simply breath-taking. Yes, it is good. Damned good.

Next up was the second Evan Delaney book, having read (and loved) China Lake a few weeks back (around the time it won the Edgar), I figured more Meg Gardiner wouldn’t go amiss. I wasn’t wrong either. There are books that I dip in and out of, and there are books that I snaffle down in one greedy gulp. This fell firmly into the latter category. I do not know how it is that I missed this series, but I know from doing a bit of reading around that for some bizarre reason Meg Gardiner has been flying under the radar in a way that is completely undeserved. I’m ashamed I’m only getting around to reading her now.Hopefully the Edgar win will change that.

Evan Delaney is a character that any crime reader would enjoy passing the time of day with. She’s sassy, loyal and dogged, comes out with the kind of put-downs we all dream of having had on the tips of our tongues after the fact, and is hella smart. She also writes sci-fi novels, which makes her even cooler than your average kick-ass female heroine (at least I think so). The other series characters are no slouches either, Jesse her boyfriend is a trial layer, champion swimmer, and, oh yeah, a paraplegic. Her brother Brian is a hot-shot pilot, her cousin Tater is a laugh-riot of a lingerie-flogging nymphette of a loon, and there are unlikely allies such as the hilariously funny (and rather scary) Jax and Tim, former black-ops agents who take a personal interest in Evan.

Mission Canyon, the second book in the series, hits the ground running (wearing a Supremes costume) and doesn’t stop. As with China Lake, there is humour aplenty, but the story itself is dark and hard-hitting. At times, reading conversations between Jesse and Evan I found myself wincing, and not because the dialogue was bad (hell no!) but because the scenes were so raw and realistic. What starts out as a mission to catch the bad guy who put Jesse in a wheelchair and killed his best friend, turns into a whirlwind of high-tech blackmail, federal harassment and betrayal. Nothing turns out quite as you’d expect, even though one of the baddies is quite easily identified (possibly only to people who’ve read their JG Ballard though). No plot thread is left dangling, which is saying something considering there are so many of them. It’s a smooth, addictive and affecting read.

Bookseller resolution of the day: read every other Meg Gardiner book, and ensure that our crime-reading customers are introduced to her post-haste. And if my word isn’t good enough for you (and why would it be?) see what Stephen King has to say about her.

Oooh look, a fresh new internet meme!

I’ll have me some of this one!
Look here, here and here for the genesis.

Brilliant idea. I <3 30 Rock, and Tracy Jordan's wonderful non-sequiturs and insane "wordplay" liven it up immensely, to the extent where I have to pause the dvd to recover from a giggle-fit that has ambushed me. This happens with astonishing frequency whenever the character opens his mouth.

My top ten:

10: “They ran out of white makeup because I insisted they do my buttocks.”
Tracy Jordan as method actor. It only gets funnier when you see the result of his deep method immersion.

9: “You are my Radar O’Reilly, Ken. Now get in here and rub my feet til you hear a chopper coming.”
Because it’s MASH and Kenneth IS the Radar of 30 Rock. Albeit a foot-massaging “office-wife-y” kinda Radar O’Reilly.

8. “We’re going out tonight, Jacky D, and we’re going to be tempted like Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus is my stereo guy and the Wilderness is a club I took him to once.”
I love when Tracy takes something we’ve all heard before and makes it about him, and makes you wonder what happened to Jesus-the-stereo-guy in The Wilderness nightclub.

7: “And the community center is thriving. Do you know Kenneth’s eighty dollars bought a chess set and a crate of condoms?”
I’m sure Kenneth will be very pleased….

6: “Just be yourself and I guarantee you every single person in this room will one day be President of the United States.”
Just going that little bit too far….with the best intentions.

5: “To use as a decoy. So my greedy children will murder it and I’ll be able to escape un-Menendezed.”
The decoy being a Japanese Tracy Jordan sex toy. This is one of those lines that is it’s own self-contained comedy goldmine.

4: “Ahhhhh. I renounce everything. Cover your brain.”
I have actually said this more than once.

3: “Devil’s avocado here, Larry. I think people should freak the geek out. Withdraw all your money and hide it.”
The devil has the tastiest avocados. A readily quotable malapropism, Michael Steele-esque slang and a run on the bank, in one fell swoop. Genius.

2: “What is this, Horseville? Cuz I am surrounded by naysayers. Wordplay!”
God-awful pun that actually works. Must be the delivery – or the snappy “Wordplay!” directly after it.

1: “I’ve been hearing, but I haven’t been listening.”
Mmmmhmmmm.

These are all from Season Three, as Unlikely Words haven’t done seasons One and Two yet. But when they do…. there shall be more.

Silence is not always a good sign…

Lack of posting due to (a) Back of Evil and (b) a seriously unlucky streak of reading.

I’m not going to go into too much detail here because I’m fully aware that the Back of Evil (and the pain of it) may be contributing to an air of general crankiness that makes it harder for books to impress me. Or for me to persevere with books that grate on me for some reason. Please bear that in mind when reading what follows.

At present I am still trying to make my way through More than it Hurts You by Darin Strauss and am hopelessly stuck at the start of part 2, having taken a week to get through a particularly nasty sequence at the end of part 1. Part of the problem is the horrible subject matter (Münchhausen by proxy) and part is the emotional manipulativeness of it all. I loved Chang and Eng but this is one I may have to put aside unfinished.

It also has taken me quite a bit of time to get through Tethered by Amy MacKinnon which I almost bought based on the blurb, and then discovered I had a proof of at home (they mount up those proofs). As it was an uncorrected proof, I’m going to posit that the finished version might be a bit less purple and the clunky bits have been smoothed out some. Still, it wasn’t great.

I did fly through reading China Lake by Meg Gardiner which is every bit as good as you’d expect an Edgar winner to be. And later today (on the way to get my MRI, lying around in bangy tubes FTL) I’ll be starting Tom Rob Smith’s The Secret Speech which, based on how much I enjoyed Child 44, should also be a fast and enjoyable read.

At least I hope so.

Books, I have been reading them…

Round-up time.

I’ve been reading quite a bit lately as the back of evil is not allowing me to do anything other than lie flat on it, hence no gaming, little computer time in general and a need to while the day away in between drug-induced naps.

So here follows a break-down of what I’ve been reading, and what I’ve thought of it. I’m sure I’ll leave stuff out, but these are the ones that stood out in my head.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters: Hmmm, it’s good, but it’s rather longer than it needs to be, and while it has effective chills in parts it is no The Haunting of Hill House (the book I measure all house-with-a-mind-of-its-own stories against). Also, I really did not like the central protagonist, who has a rather pronounced chip on his shoulder. Parts of the book reminded me of the original Grey Gardens (haven’t seen the recent HBO remake yet, seems weird to remake a documentary…), a house falling down around the ears of an odd family who seem to carry on oblivious, so in summation, good, but not Shirley Jackson good.

The Lovers by John Connolly: massive improvement over The Reapers, I still am not wholly convinced by his somewhat old-fashioned style, but this book has (genuine) scares aplenty and deals with Charlie Parker’s past, mixing in false memory with esoteric mysticism and bringing odd allies out of the woodwork in such a way as to produce a stonking great read. Me like.

Dark Times in the City by Gene Kerrigan: genuine, real-feeling Dublin thriller. Full of grit and tension. His writing is unfussy, never getting in the way of plot or pacing. His characters (even the ones we see least) are fully-drawn and memorable. It’s no fairytale, people are people and their outcomes are not always what you’d expect. A wonderful read.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith: Braaaaaains! Not only does this have an injection of zombies (variously: the sorry stricken, unmentionables etc. etc.) but there’s a lot of puking and ribald punning added for good measure. It really is a lot of fun, and I was only distracted by the confusion over whether Lydia and Wickham were off to Kilkenny or Kirkerry (keeps changing in the text), and in any case neither is in “the northenmost part” of Ireland. This, I assume, is a uniquely Irish quibble.

Soul Circus by George Pelecanos: a re-read, and still every bit as good as the first time. Derek Strange and Terry Quinn are hired to find a woman by the luckless elder brother of a B-more dealer. When the woman turns up dead, they feel bound to bring her killer to justice. Strange is also working for the defense of another dealer who is up on trial (and likely to get the death penalty), and is trying to do his job while witnesses, and even himself, are being intimidated. Nick Stefanos has a cameo, and Pelecanos, as ever, has a way of building a world so complete that it’s almost like you’re there when you’re reading him. For anyone who misses the Wire and hasn’t yet read him, do so, you’re in for a treat. There aren’t many authors I’ll happily re-read over picking up a new book.

All the Dead Voices by Declan Hughes: Hmmm. Val McDermid says in a blurb on the front cover of this “If you don’t love this, don’t you dare call yourself a crime fiction fan”, er, okay, that’s me told then. Declan Hughes is a lovely man, but I really never warmed to Ed Loy. I’ve tried, I’ve failed, and I’m fully aware that this is a personal thing, and that I’m very much in the minority here, so there’s not much point in writing any more, since if you can’t warm to a series protagonist, then you’re going to have a problem with the series. I will say that there’s some great writing in there, the plot is sharp, and the gangsters are interesting, if a bit less credible than the ones in Gene Kerrigan’s book. In short, if you like Ed Loy, you’ll love this, if not, you probably won’t.

And that’s all evil back will allow me to type for now. Back to the couch I go….

Retail frustration #18464731

…or thereabouts.

I work in a bookstore. We sell books. Therefore one would assume that most people who come into the store like reading, from this comes the not-too-unreasonable assumption that they can read.

It may be a bad assumption.

Several times a day I see people standing in front of the locked bathroom door, staring at the sign that tells them the bathroom key can be obtained from the coffee shop. If I’m shelving in that area they inevitably ask me for the key (not just me, any bookseller in the general area can be swooped upon). When we point out that we don’t carry the key, they get narky. Refer them to the sign they’ve just been staring at and you get called a “smartass”. I had a woman yesterday tell me to “get the key” for her. I advised her to go to the coffee shop and she glared at me. I didn’t doubt she had read the sign, and it occurred to me afterwards that this is yet another example of the entitlement problem; she didn’t feel like walking all the way to the coffee shop, so I should have obliged and skipped off there to get a key for her. Er, nope.

Add to that the number of people who stare at the sign at customer services, advising them to go downstairs to pay, and then say “Can you take for these books here?” and we’re looking at serious reading comprehension failure. Either that or they think the signs are an elaborate ruse we’ve cooked up to entertain ourselves…

And one from a co-worker who was working the customer service desk when a woman came upstairs and made a beeline for her and a colleague, blurting out as she reached them, “I’m looking for a book that’s downstairs at the till, where can I find it?” (I kid you not). Co-worker one was busily trying to think of a way to explain politely what that meant, when co-worker two asked, with arched eyebrow; “Downstairs at the till maybe?” From what I heard, that customer at least had the grace to be embarrassed for not having listened to what she’d been told in the first place.

People, seriously, there’s no point in getting all cranky with booksellers when you refuse to believe clearly printed signs, or even listen to what we’re telling you.

Hmmm, interesting…

Two big books coming out this summer (of those I’ve read in the past fortnight) have characters in them with the surname Faraday (Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger and John Connolly’s The Lovers).

I’d suggest that anyone currently mid-draft (or editing), change out any Faradays they might have for something else.

Besides, the name Faraday always makes me think of Faraday’s Flowers; the original title for that train-wreck of a movie with Madonna and Sean Penn that came out in the end as Shanghai Surprise. I have tried to retrain my brain to think of Faraday cages, but it hasn’t worked.

Bad brain.

Weird the things you notice when you read so many books….