Our library has a neat online feature that allows you to search for any book within its sprawling system, no matter the branch location, and then request that it be put on Hold for you. What this means is that any book, no matter where, can be waiting for me at my close-by library branch; all I have to do is wait for an email notice saying the book is ready for me, then go pick it up. It's wonderful.

I'm currently readeing All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones and highly recommend it. His style is so rich and rewarding. But what made this book doubly interesting was that at about page 20, a slip of paper fell from between the pages. It was someone's Christmas shopping list. And I think it confirmed what I've thought all along: everybody gets (and needs?) a set of PJs for xmas, a Bath and Body Works gift certificate, and a Blockbuster one, too. It's such a common thread.

I also recommend Dark Angels by Kathleen Koen - especially for people who love lavish, sensuous, exhilerating prose. Now, I'm no Fabio-lover, but many passages of this book did give me the chills, and Koen's dialogue is masterfully seductive. The characters - especially the King - all seemed so real, and the philosophy behind the then-existing class systems and such now makes perfect sense to me, in that I understand why people liked to think it existed.

And last but not least, if you must go to the dentist and the thought of sweating your way through someone shoving their hands in your mouth kinda makes you ill, may I recommend sedation dentistry (I'm not providing a link because most are direct links to specific dentists of whom I have no knowledge or experience). You take a little pill, go to sleep, and wake up with, say, all your wisdoms having been pulled, or a deep cleaning plus fillings administered, etc. It is wonderful - no tongue cramp from holding it back, no worries at all. Give it a try - only, don't do anything that day that you need to remember doing; the drug administered gives many people giant black holes in their memory (myself included). I don't remember being driven home, or laying down on the couch, or of somehow finding and forcing my kitty Poopie to snuggle with me. And apparently I was completely awake. Not a single memory. And my memory is like a freaking digital camera it is so precise and aware. So take that into consideration. Otherwise it is a total blessing; you can have three or four visits' worth of work done in one sitting.