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They got the same response I got when I emailed – first I got the “It’s a glitch and it’s being fixed” email. The next one said:
It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search.
Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.
Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.
Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:
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Katikara Venkatesh
Amazon.com
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Do they even bother to have actual customer service reps, or do they have an “automatic name generator” attached to a stock email responder?
Nasstoys Taylor Wane Vibrating Ass & Pussy: Appropriate for a family-friendly business. Ranked.
Heather Has Two Mommies: Adult material. Inappropriate for family eyes. Now unranked.
So a keyword for “pussy” comes up… yeah… while a keyword for “homosexuality” offers a “cure.” Great. What a great standard to set. I hope all the little children looking for pussy-cats are prepared for the shock of their lives… Amazon FAIL.
Even worse – search Amazon for “homosexuality” and see what the first listing is. Somebody paid off somebody, because the category listing comes SECOND. Look what comes first.
Attention, Barnes & Noble members! From now until November 30, you can use coupon code V7E3F7F to take an additional 40% off a single book item, on top of your regular member discount, when you use your Mastercard to make the purchase. If you click on the coupon code number, you can read more information about the deal. Note that you can use it once in stores AND once on the website. Awesome!
Now, the trick with these coupons is to go for the MAXIMUM discount. Of course you can get a little paperback for a few bucks and be happy that you didn’t pay a few bucks more… but the real savings comes when you buy the bigger-ticket items.
Unfortunately, this discount code doesn’t work on textbooks – but apparently it DOES seem to work on box-sets. For example, want to replace your old, battered Harry Potter volumes for a shiny new collection? Check it out:
List price: $195.00
Online price: $136.50
Member price: $122.85
Price with coupon code: $85.19
HOLY MOLY! Now that’s a deal! BN members, start shopping at Barnes & Noble now, and don’t forget to copy the coupon code – V7E3F7F – and use your Mastercard to get the discount! Expires November 30.
In 1969, Anthony “Ace” Bourke and John Rendall rescued a lion cub from the “exotic animals” department at Harrod’s Department Store in London. They named him “Christian” and raised him in their apartment, exercising the cub on the grounds of the local church. After a year, though, Christian the lion became too large to keep in their home.
As luck would have it, the two men coincidentally ran into actors Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, who had recently starred in Born Free, the 1966 film about another domesticated lion who had been reintroduced into the wild by the couple whom the actors had portrayed, George and Joy Adamson (author of Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds). They suggested that the two men contact George Adamson in Kenya.
Bourke and Rendall eventually brought the lion to Kenya, and after a few years, they returned to visit him. They were informed at that point that Christian was the leader of his own pride and was fully wild now, and that he would not remember them. See for yourself what really happened when the lion and the men met again.
You can purchase the DVD made about Christian the lion at the Born Free Foundation website.
Barnes & Noble Coupons For All Customers:
15% off one item – coupon code H7M4M9N [Exp. 07/21]
15% off one item – coupon code N7N3V9B [Exp. 07/21]
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Barnes & Noble Coupons For Members Only:
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Over the past several weeks I have seen a huge number of articles spring up in protest of last month’s CA Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriages. I want to address some of the arguments and claims that I’ve seen in those articles.
Myth #1: Four liberal activist judges overruled the will of the people.
What You Should Know: The California Supreme Court, a conservative court, struggled with the issue, looked to the CA Constitution, and concluded that equality means equality for ALL – and that includes those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
Many have argued that legislatures, not judges, should be responsible for making marriage law. The CA legislature has twice passed the Religious Freedom and Marriage Equality Act, which equalized civil marriage rights among couples but explicitly stated that no religious institution shall be compelled to preside over a same-sex marriage. The bill was passed by two different assemblies of the legislature, since one passage was prior to a major election and once occurred after. The bill was twice vetoed by the Governor specifically because he believed it WAS an issue for the courts, not for the legislature.
Of the seven CA Supreme Court Justices, six were appointed by Republicans. The CA Supreme Court is traditionally known for being fairly conservative. If you think “CA” and think “liberal judges,” you might be mistaking the CA Supreme Court for the United States Court of Appeals for the Circuit. They are two very different courts. Incidentally, one of the dissenters is personally in favor of allowing same-sex marriage. Judges can and do go against their own personally-held beliefs in favor of upholding the CA Constitution.
The Supreme Court decision did not create a “new right” – rather, it acknowledged prior decisions stating that every person has a right to choose his or her life partner, and determined that this right cannot be abridged based solely on sexual orientation, which the Court views as akin to race and religion as far as discrimination practices are concerned. The judges did not come to their decision easily; they struggled with it, and that struggle is documented in the extremely lengthy opinion released last month (most court decisions are NOT this long – the Massachusetts marriage decision was less than a third of this length). If you think all it took was a stroke of a pen, I challenge you to read the 172-page opinion. I did.
Myth #2: The people of CA already spoke on the issue of gay marriage by passing Proposition 22
What You Should Know: Only 29% of registered California voters (21.5% of eligible voters) voted in favor of Prop 22. Is that an overwhelming majority?
In Re Marriage Cases (CA, 2008) (PDF only, due to length)
While Proposition 22 was a statewide ballot initiative, it was not an accurate reflection of all of CA, for two major reasons:
First, contrary to popular belief, Prop 22 was not approved by an overwhelming majority of CA voters. Prop 22 was passed by an overwhelming majority of the voters who came out in March of 2000 to pick between John McCain and George Bush, since there was no true competition in the Democratic race, with Vice President Al Gore being the assumed winner. True, more Democrats than Republicans voted in the election, but if you count by who they voted for instead of their party identification, you get 2,654,114 voting Democratic and 3,702,487 voting Republican. In a consistently blue state, these statistics are not representative of the true population (about 30 million people). Overall, the election had a pretty low turnout rate. That primary election had around 7 million voters out of about 15 million registered voters. This past February primary (2008) had about the same number of registered voters, but more than 9 million actually turned out – and THAT was with closed primaries, which we didn’t have before, and no real contest in the Republican race.
In a state of more than 30 million people, only 4,618,673 voted in favor of Prop 22, and 2,909,370 voted against it. With only about a third of eligible voters, and barely half of registered voters, having voted on Prop 22 (that’s overall, not just in favor), it’s hard to use the word “overwhelming” to describe the outcome. Basically, 29% of registered voters (21.5% of eligible voters) voted in favor of Prop 22 – and that was eight years ago. The world has changed since then. People have changed since then. I know a LOT of people who voted for Prop 22 and are, in retrospect, utterly ashamed of themselves for it.
Second, Proposition 22, while appearing simple, was actually quite misleading. It came as a response to DOMA, which allowed states to refuse to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages, and the entire campaign was centered around the notion that CA should not be forced to recognize other states’ marriages. The argument was framed in such a way that many people who had no particular opinion on same-sex marriage voted for Prop 22 because they believed CA should be allowed to make the decision for itself and not be forced into it by another state. While this same Supreme Court ruling ultimately determined that Prop 22 did apply to all marriages and not just those performed out of state, the “yes” campaign intimated otherwise, and countless voters were duped in the process.
Even if Proposition 22 HAD passed with the approval of most Californians (which it didn’t), the CA Supreme Court had the responsibility to ensure that it complied with the CA Constitution (which it didn’t). The Court here didn’t ignore Proposition 22; it attacked it head on and found it to violate the spirit of the California Constitution. Courts have declared other initiatives unconstitutional as well, and in the 1960’s the US Supreme Court even invalidated a voter-approved CA constitutional amendment which sought to overturn a recently-passed legislative act banning housing discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, sex, marital status, physical handicap, or familial status. Propositions don’t just glide into law just because the voters approved them. They still have to meet the rigorous standards of our great state and federal constitutions, and Proposition 22 violated what both the CA and US Supreme Courts have called a basic human right, the right to marry and create a family with your chosen spouse.
Myth #3: Marriage is a sacrament and has always been between one man and one woman.
I could go on for pages about the ways in which marriage has changed over the years. One man can no longer have eight wives. Women are no longer subsumed by their husband’s identity and viewed as property. Couples are no longer barred from marriage based on their racial makeup. Most importantly, however, couples do not have to have their marriage blessed or sanctified by a religious institution, and they do not have to be married by a member of the clergy. This is the key to the constitutionality argument for same-sex marriage. The court cannot, and must not, and WILL not force religious institutions to officiate marriage for same-gender couples. Religions have the right to dictate their requirements for marriage, and the government may not interfere.
However, the state does not “recognize” religious institutions’ marriages; it creates the official status itself, and it officiates marriages outside the religious sphere. We call this civil marriage. It is an entirely different institution from religious marriage; it just happens that the state grants clergymen the status to officiate civil marriages at the same time as religious ones, for convenience’s purpose, so that a couple can be married in a single ceremony. A couple that goes to church and exchanges vows before witnesses is NOT married unless they fill out the necessary paperwork for a civil marriage. Likewise, a couple can obtain a civil marriage license and be married by a judge, a marriage deputy, or other civil servants acting as agents for the state, and never even interact with a religious institution.
Religious institutions can discriminate against certain couples; for example, most rabbis will not officiate at a marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew, because Jewish law only recognizes as valid a marriage between two Jews. However, the STATE cannot discriminate in the same way and purport to be upholding the Constitution, state OR federal. If the STATE offers civil marriage, it must allow it to all adult couples, not just those who fit religious descriptions of propriety. After all, can you imagine the chaos if the state refused to issue a marriage license to a couple because one of them was Jewish and one was not? It is not the state’s business to uphold or enforce religious restrictions on marriage. (In fact, considering the VAST number of religious institutions and clergy who submitted amicus briefs to the Supreme Court in support of same-gender marriage, I would argue that the state would have been in violation of the Establishment Clause had it NOT allowed the marriages to take place, since barring same-gender couples would have been equivalent to expressing a preference for some religions over others, at the expense of individual civil rights.)
If you want Biblical proof that it hasn’t always been about men and women, read I Samuel, not just the lines I have provided below, but the entire story – and read a translation that is as close to the original Hebrew as possible, as modern versions have diluted the story, often explicitly changing words entirely to tone down the relationship. Think about what it means to make a “covenant.” In nearly every other case in the Bible, the word “covenant” refers to the relationship between God and people, or to people promising to serve God. A covenant is an eternal promise – why else would some states institute “covenant marriages,” which are not as easy to dissolve?
1 Samuel 18
1. And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
3. Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.
1 Samuel 23
18. And they two made a covenant before the LORD: and David abode in the wood, and Jonathan went to his house.
Myth #4: Allowing same-sex marriage will lead to legalization of incest, pedophilia, and polygamy! Next thing you know, people will be marrying their dogs!
What You Need To Know: It’s far too late for that.
Let’s get this one over with: A dog is not and will never be a consenting adult. Nor will a goat. In addition to being morally and utterly repugnant, sex with animals is always rape, because an animal cannot consent. Likewise, a paw print does not suffice as a signature on a marriage license – and no matter how sure you are that your dog is trying to tell you something, absent a licensed dog-to-human translator, “Arf arf” cannot be properly construed to mean “I do.” Get your mind out of the gutter and stick to the issue at hand.
Incest is already legal in the 26 states where individuals can marry their first cousins. Cousins are the next degree of siblings; they are the children of your parents’ siblings. The great irony of today’s marriage laws is that I can marry my black cousin, the son of my aunt, but I can’t marry my wife. Or rather… I couldn’t. Now I can.
Pedophilia is already legal in the 1/3 of states that allow children under age 16 to marry, with some allowing marriage as early as age 13 with permission from the court. I’d be willing to bet that in most cases the men marrying adolescent girls are not also in their teens. If you want to protect children, you can start by lobbying states to prohibit children from getting married before they are old enough to see R-rated movies.
Polygamy is a separate issue because it doesn’t involve marital prohibition so much as it involves individuals trying to “double-dip” on the marital property and tax systems, among other things. A marriage is a union of two individuals into one economic unit. You can’t “become one” with one person if you’re already “one” with another person. There’s an argument to be made for allowing “threesomes” of people to marry, but I highly doubt anybody would take the economic risk, considering that one individual could wind up paying alimony to everybody else in the group if s/he decided to leave. I think the specter of alimony would be enough to prevent anybody from seriously raising this concern – not to mention that it’s an extremely rare arrangement in the first place.
Myth #5: Gay couples don’t need marriage in order to get their legal matters in order. Calling it “marriage” does nothing but devalue the sanctity of marriage.
What You Need To Know: Allowing committed couples to marry encourages and promotes monogamy and family responsibility, two crucial family values. As a result, federal and state governments have instituted a system of rights and responsibilities that have become necessary and irreplaceable for two people sharing their lives together. These rights are not replicable in private legal arrangements since most of them have to do with third-party or government recognition.
First, I have to point out that same-gender couples can’t possibly do more harm to the institution of marriage than that already inflicted by the heterosexuals who have held a monopoly on it for so long. (Hello Britney; hello “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?”) With more than half of all marriages ending in divorce, marriage needs all the good role models it can get. Many of the couples that are getting married in California this week have been together longer than most heterosexual marriages ever last. In fact, some social scientists believe that studying the way same-sex couples communicate and deal with conflict may actually help decrease the divorce rate among heterosexual couples by helping them overcome conflict.
Whether you like it or not, same-sex couples will have children. Children fare better in life when their parents are married. Why would you deny these children the right to be raised by married parents? Studies show that there is no substantial difference between children raised by gay parents and those raised by straight parents. They do, however, show that two parents are better than one. Marriage encourages two-parent childrearing, and provides economic safety-nets for situations where one parent abandons the family. Without marriage, the protections are substantially reduced. Marriage also encourages personal responsibility and shifts economic support responsibilities from the government to the individual and the private sector; with gay marriage legalized, many people will no longer have a need for state-provided benefits because they will be eligible for benefits through their spouse.
Children tend to thrive when they have one parent at home and one parent working to support the family; in an ideal world, families could afford to live on the salary of only one working parent (this is becoming less common as the cost of living skyrockets). Federal marriage recognition encourages parents to stay home with their children; spouses are entitled to their deceased spouses’ Social Security benefits if their own are insufficient. Gay couples do not receive this benefit, effectively removing this incentive to keep one parent at home. Additionally, federal marriage recognition keeps families from being uprooted in case of the death of a spouse; the property passes from one spouse to the other without tax repercussions, which means that in the tragic event of one spouse’s death, the other spouse and their children will not be forced to sell their home to pay estate taxes. Gay partners are taxed on bequests as though they were granted by any acquaintance; a partner of 55 years could be forced to sell her home to pay the taxes on property inherited from the deceased partner. Finally, the federal tax system actually penalizes gay couples who choose to have one partner remain at home to care for the children; the wage-earning partner is taxed on her income as a single person even though her salary is supporting both partners and their children. Stay-at-home moms should relate to this – imagine if your husband had to pay taxes as a single person!
I could go on forever, but I think it’s time to wrap up this article. However, I am happy to answer any questions you might have. As for me, my wife and I got married this past Tuesday, on the one-year anniversary of our religious wedding. We were already married in the eyes of God – it was time for the state to catch up.
I don’t know about you, but I’m just dying to read Scott McClellan’s tentative “expose” of the Bush White House, entitled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. I’m sure Mr. McClellan has lots to say – just be wary of how he says it; the man is still a conservative and he still lied to Americans on a daily basis for nearly three years. Whatever he says about his own lack of information, you KNOW there were countless times when he looked the White House press corps in its zoom-lens eye and flat-out lied.
As a self-proclaimed shopaholic, I have to praise Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic series for its realistic portrayal of the inner clockworks that make up the brain of a born shopper.
The tone of the books is very Bridget-Jones-eque, but Becky Bloomwood is far more entertaining a character than Bridget Jones, and while I won’t spoil anything for you, I will point out that there are certain storyline elements in the Shopaholic series that make it more enjoyable than many books, especially for fans of the “chick-flick” genre. I guess it’s no surprise that people have started calling books in this genre “chick-lit.”
In the first book, Confessions of a Shopaholic, we meet Becky and her debt. Becky is a shopaholic. Becky can find a great bargain, thrives on sales, and understands that three for $10 is so much better than $4 each, no matter what item and regardless of whether or not you actually need three of them. It’s a bargain; what more do you need to know?
The best part of these books is that if you’re a spender, as I am, you’ll recognize the lunacy of the credit card system; one company demands that you pay them back, a second company reminds you that credit card debt is dangerous and you should avoid it, and a third offers you a $3000 line of credit at the local department store. While I don’t have a personal relationship with my banker, it’s entertaining to follow Becky’s amusing efforts to explain to her bankers why she needs a higher overdraft limit.
In the second book, Shopaholic Takes Manhattan, Becky discovers the joys of New York shopping and the wonder that is foreign currency.
Up to now, everything’s been in pounds sterling, but when you’re shopping in America, it’s like everything’s half off!
I have the same experience when I go to Canada; it doesn’t matter that things are more expensive, because after the conversion it’s like a giant sale!
In the third book, Shopaholic Ties the Knot – well, I don’t think it’s spoiling anything for me to tell you that in the third book, Becky gets married. Married! That means… yes! A wedding! Even better: shopping for the wedding! The following book, Shopaholic & Sister, is a fun story, if a little bit melodramatic. (No spoilers here!) The latest book, Shopaholic & Baby, JUST came out, and I’m looking forward to reading it!
If you read one book, you should read all five; they’re fantastic and each book flows into the next. In the time it takes you to read the five books, you might have spent a dangerous amount of money had you chosen to go shopping at the mall instead. You’ll also raid your refrigerator instead of eating out, since you’ll be so engrossed in the novels that you won’t want to leave your house. So in the long run, buying all five books will save you money, won’t it? What a deal!
We have friends over fairly often, and the game of Cranium is definitely one of our favorites to bring out. The game is terrific because it relies on teamwork and a variety of creative and intellectual tasks.
This is no “Candy Land“; if you want to win, you’re going to have to use your… cranium, as it were. You can get the basic board rules from the game’s instructions; the more important information you need to know is about the different tasks you could be assigned.
The Basic Stuff
Each space on the Cranium game board is marked with a color, either red, blue, green or yellow. At the four “corners” of the gameboard (actually located in the middle of each side) is a purple “brain.”. Regardless of how many spaces a player is supposed to move, they must stop when they reach each brain, even if their roll would have taken them further. Between each “brain” spot is an inside track and an outside track; the inside track has fewer spaces, so you get to the next brain more quickly. The team that goes first is the team including the player with the next birthday. I’m not kidding; this is in the rules!
At the start of the game, every player is on the initial “brain” spot, and therefore they get to pick their first task. If they are successful in their first task, they get to roll the dice and move to the appropriate color via the inside track, and on their next turn, they will draw a card from the deck of this color. If they do not succeed in their first task, their turn is over. When they do successfully complete a task, they must go along the outside track until they reach the next brain. The inside-outside path resets at each brain, so you can still catch up even if you miss your first challenge.
Once you’ve made your way around the board, you enter the center “brain” – the big brain, if you will, and you must answer, on each of your subsequent turns, a question from each of the four categories. Once you finish the fourth, you move to the middle of the brain, and on your next turn, all of the other teams get to pick a card for you. That’s all of the teams, not each of the teams. They will have to agree on a category. Usually this category is red (Data Head), unless your team includes one of those people who just knows everything about everything. In order to win, your team must successfully complete this last task.
So What Are These Challenges?
The game’s challenges are broken up into four key categories: Word Worm (yellow), Creative Cat (blue), Data Head (red), and Star Performer (green).
Yellow is “Word Worm,” and contains such wacky tasks as:
Gnilleps: One player from the team must correctly spell a word backwards on your first attempt, and without writing anything down.
Spellbound: The same as Gnilleps, only you get to spell it the normal way!
Zelpuz: The team must unscramble words using a very vague clue.
Lexicon: Multiple choice definitions. Be careful – these aren’t SAT questions. Here, they ARE trying to trick you; watch out for homonyms, because inevitably both words’ definitions will be potential answers
Blankout: These are the hardest; you must complete a word with letters whited out. You do get a clue, but the clues usually aren’t too helpful.
Green, “Star Performer,” is my favorite; it involves various physical performance skills, including:
Humdinger: One team member must hum the song on the card, while the other members attempt to guess the song. Generally when we play, we allow the team member to hand over the card to another teammate if she doesn’t know the song; she is forbidden to guess. If no player knows the song, then we allow them to pick another card.
Cameo: Basically, charades. In theory, you’re not supposed to be allowed to give any indication of how many words or whether your team is on the right track, but we generally just follow the rules of charades instead.
Copycat: The performing team member must get her teammates to guess which famous person she is imitating by mimicking the person’s speech, actions, characteristics. No names of people or places are permitted, and the team member cannot respond to anything the guessers ask. This challenge can either be really boring or absolutely hilarious, depending on how strictly you adhere to the rules. Given “Elvis Presley,” some people will say something boring like, “I have left the building,” or “Thank you very much.” More creative performances will involve hip thrusting and curled lips. It’s up to the game’s players to decide what they will and will not allow here.
Blue, “Creative Cat,” is my other favorite; it involves artistic tasks such as:
Cloodle: Basically, Pictionary.
Sensosketch: Like Cloodle, except that the drawer’s eyes must be shut. This can be extremely entertaining, and I like to hold on to the most brilliant “Cloodle” masterpieces for reminiscing in future games. If you do this, you might want to label it after the turn is over; some of them will be pretty unrecognizable later on!
Sculptorades: The player has to translate the answer into sculpted form. No gestures/acting/pointing is allowed; this isn’t charades!
Red, “Data Head,” is my least favorite, although some people are freakishly good at this. The tasks include:
Factoid: Random trivia questions. No list to choose from. These can be ridiculously hard.
Selectaquest: Trivia, but with multiple choice answers.
Polygraph: True or false trivia. The logical answer is rarely the actual answer.
If you were a teenager in any American high school when the Columbine school shooting took place, you know that times have changed compared to “the good old days” (read: before Columbine). School shootings have become more common, but school security has also risen, as has the level of awareness about the potential for student violence against other students. Schools no longer trust students, and students no longer view school as a safe haven.
This type of tragedy continues to occur. The story is so often the same – a young white boy, tormented for years by “the popular kids,” decides to take control of the situation in the most unimaginable way. Sometimes he shoots himself as well, and sometimes he doesn’t – but regardless, we do not usually gain much deep understanding of the student and what drove him to this extreme. We always have hindsight, but never foresight, and rarely insight.
Jodi Picoult’s newest novel, “Nineteen Minutes,” is a start. It isn’t based on a particular school shooting, and yet you can sense echoes of each of them in this page-turner (or in my case, an absolutely unpausable audiobook). It’s clear from Picoult’s detailed accounts that she did her research; you can feel the ghosts of real young victims as you read about each fictional fallen child. You feel their peers’ and parents’ pain – and yet you find yourself torn between grief for their loss and sympathy for Peter Houghton, the young shooter who has suffered for years at the hands of some of his very victims. If you have ever struggled to understand the reason — not the excuse, mind you, but just the *reason* — some teens feel that they have to resort to violence in this manner, this book will open your eyes.
“Nineteen Minutes” refers to the duration of the shooting. However, the bulk of the book focuses not on the shooting itself, but on the periods before and after. Like many Picoult novels, the novel centers around a court trial, but the bulk of the book, written outside of any chronological order, details both the aftermath and the years, weeks, days and moments leading up to the tragic event.
The book chronicles the young Peter’s development over the years, telling stories from his point of view (from age kindergarten to eighteen). It also shares the thoughts of of other key characters in the novel. That is one of the things I love about Jodi Picoult novels; none of her characters are omniscient, but from sharing each of the actors’ limited perspectives, the reader can develop a more complete sense of the story. You see Peter through the eyes of his few friends, his classmates, his parents, his lawyer, and his victims, and you look back at them through Peter’s eyes. Most importantly, you see Peter as he sees himself.
Jodi Picoult has once again funneled a seemingly black and white situation through the prism of her storytelling genius, and repainted it in shades of grey on a paper canvas (with the usual Picoult-style surprise ending that just might make you drop the book in shock). If you ever wanted to understand how such a young person could feel so helpless and hopeless that he might resort to violence, pick up Picoult’s book. If anything, an understanding of this helplessness may help us to reach these students before they reach their own limit.
I am SO excited to be linking to Things From Another World (TFAW), partially because they have a TON of really awesome merchandise, but at least for now, mainly because they’re a retailer for the new Buffy comic.
I’m very excited about the pending arrival of this new comic. If it could just come five minutes ago, that would be good. Did I mention I’m excited? More Buffy! Buffy Season 8! An eighth season of my FAVORITE show ever! It’s supposed to pick up where the television series left off. Not that this gap hasn’t been filled by a million fanfic writers, but still – this comes from the TOP: Joss Whedon himself (well, in concept anyway).
Through TFAW you can preorder the next few issues, and see the cover art, which is already posted. They also have lots of Buffy memorabilia and other fun stuff, including the DVD box sets of Buffy AND Angel.
Sophie Kinsella’s “Shopaholic” series is lots of fun; we listened to the entire series on audiobook, and let me tell you, it’s addictive! If you’re a shopaholic like me, it’s even more entertaining. The last one was a little bit melodramatic, but still fun.
If you’re a student like me, odds are you’re spending obscene, insane (ha, obscane!) amounts on textbooks. I’m in law school, so you can imagine what my textbook bills are like!
Luckily, I figured out early that there are ways to get your books at low prices without having to buy a torn-apart used copy – not that used books in good shape aren’t great! Sometimes, though, you just can’t find one in decent shape, and you have to buy new. Do what I did – get a Barnes & Noble membership!
For $25/year, you’ll get in-store and online member prices ranging from 10%-40% off the list price, but the real paydirt comes around the various holidays, when you check your email and find online coupons offering 15-25% off a single item in addition to your member discount. Friends, fellow students, THIS is what you really signed up for. Use those big chunky coupons to buy your big chunky textbooks. It’s SO WORTH IT. You’ll get them particularly often around the holiday season, but they still show up throughout the year. I was able to get all new books this semester, for LESS money than it would have cost me to get used books. Granted, you won’t always get one JUST when you need to order books, but especially for the winter/spring term, you’re generally in pretty good shape.
Hello, is anybody else getting impatient for the upcoming release of the final Harry Potter book??? I know I certainly am. I still need to reread the fifth and sixth books. Every time a new HP book comes out, I reread the entire series beforehand. I don’t think I’ll have time to do that this time! LOL. I’ll still read the last couple, though.
Want to avoid waiting in loooong lines? Preorder it now, from Amazon or from Barnes & Noble.
In the meantime, come on, out with it – who has theories or predictions? There are book 6 spoilers here so I’ve made the text white: I think a lot of us think Snape did kill Dumbledore, but that Dumbledore told him to, if it came down to it. It’s possible Dumbledore was actually wrong in trusting Snape, but it would seem like such a waste otherwise… More commentary after I read book 6 again. I tend to tear through it the day it arrives, so it’s been a long time since I read it!
EDIT: Possible spoilers in the comments too! Just so you know!
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, the 1966 film about another domesticated lion who had been reintroduced into the wild by the couple whom the actors had portrayed, 
). They 
. I’m sure Mr. McClellan has lots to say – just be wary of how he says it; the man is still a conservative and he still lied to Americans on a daily basis for nearly three years. Whatever he says about his own lack of information, you KNOW there were countless times when he looked the White House press corps in its zoom-lens eye and flat-out lied. 
[Cross-posted at my epinions account.] 
, Becky discovers the joys of New York shopping and the wonder that is foreign currency.
– well, I don’t think it’s spoiling anything for me to tell you that in the third book, Becky gets married. Married! That means… yes! A wedding! Even better: shopping for the wedding! The following book, 
is a fun story, if a little bit melodramatic. (No spoilers here!) The latest book, 
, JUST came out, and I’m looking forward to reading it!
[Cross-posted at my epinions account.] 
“; if you want to win, you’re going to have to use your… cranium, as it were. You can get the basic board rules from the game’s instructions; the more important information you need to know is about the different tasks you could be assigned. 
[Cross-posted at my epinions account]
]
Hello, is anybody else getting impatient for the upcoming release of 