Miscellany – Page 18

It’s out!!!

Squee! It’s finally out — my review section for a local travel magazine!

I now review travel books for the bi-monthly publication TravelPlus magazine, and I’ve finally seen it in print, in the current (January-February 2010) issue. The section is entitled “Reads and Views” and it’s on the back page of the magazine.

Here, I review Connecting Flights and A Year in Provence. I also have a section on Book Gadgets, and I feature the ThumbThing (maan, I do not know where I last set it down… I haven’t seen it in months!).

This is the first issue I appear in, and I’ll be writing for the succeeding issues as well (woot!), which means I’ve got to stock up on travel books (and read more of them as well).

Yay! Thank you to consulting editor Chris Datol for getting me to write for TravelPlus.

Get your copy at bookstores and magazine stands nationwide, and watch out for the next issue, where I review a cookbook, a flash fiction anthology, a travel mystery, and another book gadget. I also have another book review (full length this time) for TravelPlus’ sister magazine, ZenHealth in its March-April issue.

It really isn’t over! (the Great Book Blockade… again!)

block Just got back from the post office. Apparently, the rumors that have been swirling around for some months now are true — they’re taxing books again. The Great Book Blockade is truly not over!

I haven’t been to the post office in a while so my parcels had piled up this week– I had fourteen packages waiting for me. I had no problems with the other parcels, but as the customs official was going through the packages, they found one with a declared value of $60.

Continue reading “It really isn’t over! (the Great Book Blockade… again!)”

What I’ve been busy with

You’ve probably been wondering about the sporadic posting for the past couple of weeks… Well, on top of other things going crazy as the holidays draw nearer, I’ve been busy working on a piece for a special group exhibit with the most awesome illustrators ever!

Lookee — it’s Blowing Boxes!

Continue reading “What I’ve been busy with”

My Christmas Wishlist

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Just a little over a month before Christmas, and there are oodles of great books out! I’ve been trying to avoid bookstores for a past few weeks because the temptation to do some early Christmas shopping (for myself) is too overpowering.

But just in case you want to make this old bookworm really happy this Christmas, here’s the wishlist:

Continue reading “My Christmas Wishlist”

Postmark Paris

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When I was young, it drove my parents crazy that all their letter envelopes had ragged rectangular tears around the top right corner. I was the likely culprit, as I was the only one in the house who collected stamps. I didn’t get a lot of mail as a kid so of course I was always into the family mail, tearing into my mom and dad’s letters, their business correspondence, and holiday greetings from relatives all over the world. I also enjoyed going to the bookstore during weekends to buy sets of stamps (I don’t think bookstores have them anymore today) with my weekly savings.

I forgot about stamps until recently, when I was reorganizing my displaced stuff that survived the flood and found my old stamp albums with my old collecting still safely intact. Best of all, I had a thick wad of stamps to add to my collection, as for the past year that I’ve been on BookMooch, I’d been mindlessly clipping out stamps from the inordinate amount of packages I’d been receiving and I now had a whole ziplock bag filled with stamps! Continue reading “Postmark Paris”