Names And Numbers

The countdown has begun!

Of course, since the countdown is in German, I'm not sure what we're counting down to. But whatever it might be, I'm very excited that it's begun.

I have a particular fondness for countdowns that end with ice cream, cake and fireworks. None of which I'll expect, especially because if the countdown does end with ice cream, cake and fireworks, they'll all be in Germany and I won't.

I took a train ride in Germany a long long time ago, during my cute years, and the customs inspector, or somesuch person, tried to seduce me. He positively leered (my recollection of the dialogue was something like my saying, "I'm cold," and his saying, with a leer, "I'll keep you warm." Which he had to have said in English, since the only German I know is pfeffer. Also, I shared a compartment with an actual smuggler. What a trip).

On a totally different subject, I really wish my three books, Life As We Knew It, the dead and the gone, and This World We Live In had a unifying label. Amazon has taken to calling TW,
The Last Survivors, Book 3 (Hardcover). The Last Survivors is the UK title for the trilogy. Amazon calls the hardcover of d&g The Last Survivors, Book 2 (Hardcover). In paperback, it's just The Dead and the Gone (Paperback). LAWKI, in hardcover and paperback, doesn't rank as a survivor first, last, or always.

Meanwhile Barnes & Noble thinks of LAWKI paperback as Life As We Knew It Series #1 and d&g paperback as Life As We Knew It Series and TW as nothing but This World We Live In.


To further muddy the waters, Wikipedia refers to LAWKI and d&g as being part of the "Moon Crash Trilogy." That's the name I came up with, but I absolutely swear on heads of German customs inspectors that I didn't write either article. I didn't even ask anyone I know to write them.

And some people just call the books, "the moon books" or "the moon trilogy." Or don't call them anything at all.

Speaking of names and numbers, thanks to all of you who've answered my poll questions about bookplates. It's looking like I'll be ordering more plates, but I won't make the official announcement until I have them to mail out (and that will take a little while). So hold off on the email requests until I have something to send (and the stamps to send it with).

I am now going to return to my very own countdown and guess some more about what it's counting down to. If ice cream, cake, fireworks and pfeffer are involved, I'll certainly let you know!

Blue Plate Special

Over in the New Year's wishes comments section, Fear Death By Water asked about autographed copies of This World We Live In. In lieu of answering directly, I set up a poll.

What I did for Life As We Knew It and the dead and the gone was have bookplates created and printed, which I signed in red ink for anyone who wanted one. I distributed more than 2,000 of them and sent them all over the world. Most went to individual owners of the books, while others were given to book discussion members or placed in copies for sale at independent bookstores or given to classes who read one or the other book.

I have to order them 500 at a time. I did a couple of re-orders and then I stopped.

But now with d&g in paperback and This World We Live In soon to come out, I'm giving serious thought to reordering plates for the first two books and getting a new one designed for the third. The latter will probably say Trust In Tomorrow. I don't know what the moon will look like though, but of course there'll be a place for me to sign it (in red ink).

The way it would work is that you would email me if you want one or more of any or all of them. Then I sign them and stick them in an envelope and put on the appropriate amount of postage and off it goes.

Once you get the bookplate(s), you do whatever you want with it, which could include putting it in the book it was designed for and thus making it a pretty much autographed copy.

But I have no way of knowing if there's an interest in any of this, which is why I put the poll up. Like all my polls, it's totally non-binding, and there's no need for you to email me just yet, especially since I don't have any bookplates to mail out right now. The poll is there to guide me in my future plans.

You let me know what you want, and I'll have a much better idea of what to do!

Happy 2010!

Scooter and I want to wish a happy, healthy, prosperous and productive new year to abbyscam3, Alex, Alice, Amanda at WEL Anande, Anne, Anne M, Ann Marie, Anonymous, Anonymous Person, Anonymous Santa Fe, Aoife (aka wild-force 71), April, April Henry, ashlee marie ;), Ashley, barking owl, Becky, bestbookihavenotread, Bethany, Billy, Brenda Nepomuceno, Bri, Bryce (anon), Candice, Caroline, Carrie, Charlotte, Cindy, Chris, C.K., Corey B, Courtney, Courtney Milan, Crystal, Crystal (anon), Cynthia V, Dawn, Debra Moffitt, Derrick, DeviouslyCartoonified, donna, Donna M., Donura, Elaine Marie Alphin, em.ily, Emily, Emily (anon), Emily Koskey, Erin, Esoterica, Fear Death By Water, forever2693, Gabby, Gary, Glen, Gretchen, grrlpup, Hailee, Hall Monitor, Heather, Heather Doss, heather t, holdenj, Janet, Jean, Jean (anon), Jen, Jenna, Jenni, Jenny, Jen Robinson, Jen's Quilts, Jessica Claspill, Jill, jmaster1324, johnsol, Jon, Judi, Judith, Julie Robinson, Karen, Karen Strong, KATE COOMBS, Kathy, Katie C., Katie Oz, Kats,Kelly (anon), Kelly G, Kelly Geraghty, Kelly S., Kelsey, Kelsi Parker, Kenzie (anon), Kerry S., Kirsten Hubbard, K. L. Howard, KMV, Kristi Nommensen Dorson, Kristina Springer, Laura Ludwig Hamor, Lee, Libby, Librarina, Library. Lil, Linda Jacobs, Linda Joy Singleton, lisa-marie, Livz ], Lizzy, Lorelai, M., M. (anon), Maddy Myers, Mady, Mallory, Marci, Maria (anon), Mariana Soffer, Marianne, Maria T (anon), Maria Touet (anon), Mariel M, Maryann, Marry, Meagan (anon), Melissa @1lbr, Melody Marie Murray, mikaroni, Milka, miranda (truly and honestly), Misrule, ML,Mr. Cavin, Mrs. Corbett, Ms. Vasani, Nancy, nate 04, nateh, Nathan KP,Niko (anon), Nina, Nora, 100% Pure, Otessa, Ozziegirl, Paige, Paige Y., Pam M,, Paula, pdj, Phebe H. L., PiLibrarian, Ranson (anon)Rebecca Herman, readerchick12, Reading Fool, Ryan (anon), Sammy Belliard, sakio525, sarah, seyoung777, shelley, S.M.D., Stephanie, student, Susan, Syd, Tennislover, Texas Pixie, Tez Miller, thereadingzone, todd, Tomer, tOty (anon), Vanessa, Wanda V (anon), Wendy, writerross, W. Slezak (anon), XMas Giggler (anon), Yvette, :), and everyone else who has popped in on this blog or thirdmoonbook over the past year-

We hope to see even more of you in the year to come. Happy New Year!

A New Piece Of News That Makes Me Very Happy

I am absolutely delighted to report that Emily Bauer who did such a wonderful job reading Life As We Knew It is the reader for the Listening Library version of This World We Live In.

I'm so happy about this I'm going to boldface her name.

I've been really eager to hear it, and now I'm even more impatient. I know she's going to do a great great job with Miranda and all the other characters.

Yay for Emily Bauer! Yay for Listening Library! Double Triple Yay for my great good fortune!

A Nice Piece Of News To End The Old Year With

I know 2009 has been a very difficult year for most of America, but for me it's been pretty wonderful.

As penance, I spent most of yesterday doing tedious but necessary jobs. Post office/motor vehicle/bank/supermarket to use up about to expire coupons. And that was just before lunch. In the afternoon I went to the Village of Goshen town hall to renew my mother's handicap parking permit, only to discover her paperwork was at the Town of Goshen town hall. Lucky for me, the Village and the Town both have very nice people working there, and the necessary papers were faxed over and the permit renewed for another five years, at which point my mother will be 103.

I also made a number of boring phone calls yesterday to let various businesses know my charge card expiration date had changed, and I found out what to do about the dvd of The Dead I'd bought in November. The Dead, which is one of my favorite movies ever, is 83 minutes long, but the dvd was only 73 minutes long. Sunday's New York Times reviewed the dvd, and while I didn't much care for the review, it did say the manufacturer of the dvd had learned of its mistake, and had reissued it with the missing 10 minutes and here was the phone number to call. Which I did Monday, along with all those other phone calls and tedious errands.

If doing boring jobs qualifies one for sainthood, I should be polishing my halo.

Last night, as a reward for getting so many things accomplished with a minimum of whining, I bopped around the Google listings of Pfeffer "Life As We Knew It" . And it was a good thing I bopped, because I discovered that the state of Idaho has named Life As We Knew It as their 2010 Idaho Kids Read The Same Book teen selection.

Naturally, I am thrilled about this. But I waited until this morning to tell my mother. I figured she'd had excitement enough yesterday learning her handicap permit had been renewed!

What I Read In 2009

Scooter's only been reading for a couple of months now (and already he's picked up that nasty habit of licking a page before turning it), but I've been reading for a whole lot longer.

This year I kept a list of the books I'd read, something I hadn't done for decades. I don't remember what my reasoning was (maybe that I'd read more if I wrote everything down), but regardless of motivation, this was one resolution I stuck with (what a shame that eating too much and wasting time weren't resolutions, since I had great success with both).

There's a chance, of course, that I might read another book between today and Friday, but on the assumption that I won't or that it won't matter if I do, here is the Susan Beth Pfeffer 2009 Reading List.

(n) stands for non-fiction, (f) for fiction (I bet you would have figured that out all on your own). A handful of books on the list are rereads.

Oh- I did reread This World We Live In, but it's not on the list. I had intended to reread Life As We Knew It and the dead and the gone first, but I'd gotten so impatient waiting for the ARC that when it finally came, I skipped straight to it. At some point in 2010 I'll reread all three in combination.

Another thing- this is not the most impressive of lists, in quality or quantity. Then again, it's not like you have any illusions about me.

Without further ado (unless I can think of something to ado over):

1 The Great Pretenders- Jon Bonderson (n)
2 Bone By Bone- Carol O'Connell (f)
3 The Associate- John Grisham (f)
4 Murder of a Medici Princess- Caroline P. Murphy (n)
5 Sins of the Fathers- Susan Howatch (f)
6 The Great Crown Jewel Robbery of 1303- Paul Doherty (n)
7 The Water's Lovely- Ruth Rendell (f)
8 Society's Scandals- Bridgeman and Drury (ed) (n)
9 Devil's Gate- David Roberts (n)
10 Nathan Hale- M. William Phelps (n)
11 Testimony- Anita Shreve (f)
12 Mistress of the Monarchy- Alison Weir (n)
13 Cashelmara- Susan Howatch (f)
14 The Killings on Jubilee Terrace- Robert Barnard (f)
15 Emily Post- Laura Claridge (n)
16 Pauline Bonaparte- Flora Fraser (n)
17 The Longest Second- Bill S. Ballinger (f)
18 Vanished Smile-Mysterious Theft Of Mona Lisa- Scotti (n)
19 The Murrow Boys- Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson (n)
20 Bracknell's Law- Wallace Hildick (f)
21 Thunderstruck- Erik Larsen (n)
22 The Deceivers- Egon Larsen (n)
23 The Wrong Mother- Sophie Hannah (f)
24 Devil In The White City- Erik Larsen (n)
25 Children's Party- Arthur Lewis (f)
26 What The Dog Saw- Malcolm Gladwell (n)
27 The Sisters Who Would Be Queen- Leondra deLisle (n)
28 Into The Wild Nerd Yonder- Julie Halpern (f)
29 Hound Dog- Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (n)
30 Keeping Faith- Jodi Picoult (f)
31 Edge Of Evil- J. A. Jance (f)
32 The Hour I First Believed- Wally Lamb (f)
33 This Republic Of Suffering- Drew Gilpin Faust (n)

The most interesting of the books for me is Children's Party. This is a very short novel from the 1970s that I'd read a very long time ago (probably in the 1970s). It stuck with me (or at least the premise did), and I was thrilled to stumble upon it at The Friends Of Middletown Thrall Library Used Bookstore, where I used to volunteer (along with Marci and Carol, who still do). I took it home and kept planning on rereading it, until finally on one of my fall trips, I threw it into my pocketbook for an easy airplane read.

It's about a man who overhears the sounds of a children's party in a place where there don't seem to be any children. He takes it upon himself to solve the mystery, and in doing so, learns about people he'd known once and what had become of them. It's kind of a realistic gothic psychological traveling ghost story of its time, and it remains an effective and haunting (and perfect for airplane) read.

My goal for 2010 is to read 36 books, since that would average out to 3 books a month, which sounds better than 2.75 books a month. Of course I also want to read less fiction, since it almost invariably disappoints me, but fiction does read a lot faster than non-fiction, so I don't know.

Once Scooter finishes reading How To Take Over Teh World, by Professor Happycat and icanhascheezburger.com, he's planning to start Dickens. He's particularly interested in A Tail Of Two Cities!

Because Nothing Says Christmas Like The Dead And The Gone

I'm happy to report that Amazon has the paperback of the dead and the gone available for purchase and shippping.

I assume if it does, other places do too.

Scooter will be very excited!