Bleak House

Once again the Bolivian hat has retreated to its resting place, on the wall to the right of the window in my bathroom. I've e-mailed everyone whose name I pulled out of the hat. Thanks to everybody who expressed interest in an ARC of the dead & the gone. I wish I had copies for all of you, but demand exceeded supply yet again.

I feel a little funny about something, so I'll offer a kind of apology. I'm so used to the terminology of this blog- sandwich bag holding area and Bolivian hat, that I forget people reading the blog for the first time may have no idea what I'm talking about. I refer regularly to my beloved newly gained readership (another blog term), but I don't always remember that the newly gained readership hasn't been around for the initial explanations of all those silly terms.

So if any of you (and you are all beloved) didn't understand that the d&g ARCs were being disbursed lottery style, and thought they were there for the asking, I apologize for not being clearer in my explanation. Again, I wish I had copies enough for everybody. I also wish it was June 1 already, but that's in part because we've had such nasty weather for early December.

My brother called me during the weekend to say he'd finished reading d&g. "It certainly was bleak," he said.

He isn't the first person to point that out, and when you realize that hardly anyone has read the book, it's likely lots more will call it bleak in the months to come. I kind of like the word "bleak." It's like "gaunt," my absolute favorite word in the English language. As it happens, in my entire not getting any younger life, no one has ever described me as either bleak or gaunt. I get more of the Santa Claus words- fat and jolly (although not bearded).

Another thing I'm coming to grips with is people who read d&g are going to compare it to Life As We Knew It. Okay, intellectually I've always known that. But two years went by between when I wrote LAWKI and d&g, whereas (another one of my favorite words) a year or less has gone by since the people reading d&g have read LAWKI. So LAWKI is, in some ways, fresher in the minds of the readers than it was in my own.

Here's the last part of a review of d&g written by Jennifer Hubert, whose wonderful review of LAWKI greets me every time I check its number on Amazon:

While I throughly enjoyed this novel, I have to admit that it didn’t strike the same chord in my heart as LAWKI. It may have something to do with the fact that in LAWKI, Miranda’s story is told in first person (”I said, I did”) and in TD&TG, Alex’s story is told in third person (”He said, he did.”) And maybe it strikes a little too close to home–living in NYC, it’s not fun imagining myself in Alex’s shoes and having to scavenge in my neighbor’s abandoned apartments for food! However, I still recommend you go out and read it as soon as it’s available–which will be June 2008. Just re-read the very excellent LAWKI while you’re waiting.

http://www.readingrants.org/2007/12/09/the-dead-the-gone-by-susan-beth-pfeffer/

The complete review is a tiny bit spoilerish, in case you care about such things.

Lest you worry I'm descending into some dark night of the soul, consumed with bleakishness and heart unchordity, here's a quick review from fellow YA author, Elizabeth Scott:


I ended up taking an unexpected vacation last week, and it was fun because I got to catch up on my reading, including Suzanne Berne's The Ghost At The Table, which was brilliant, and an ARC of Susan Beth Pfeffer's The Dead and The Gone, which is coming out in June and WOW! I *still* can't stop thinking about it.

http://elizabethwrites.com/blog/index.php

Even the bleakest of Decembers has things to celebrate. Tonight's the last night of Chanukah, and except for the fourth night, when my cat Alexander bumped into the menorah and caught fire, the holiday has been quite pleasant. And Friday will be my brother and sister-in-law's tenth anniversary. They met on the internet and I'm delighted to report that all my concerns and hysteria at the time were groundless. I wish them many more decades of happiness.