A quote from an email interview I gave on using Twitter in my writing career is up at The Adventurous Writer. It’s a quick quote about how I got my book deal, but I thought I’d point you all to it anyway since there are lots of quotes from other writers in there too with interesting stories and ideas for using Twitter for writing.
The website for “Library Mashups” has been created and is available to peruse, just to whet your appetite for the actual book itself – due out sometime this year. I contributed a chapter to it – the LibraryThing Mashups chapter – and it looks like a lot of other folks contributed a lot of other really interesting chapters to the book as well. Check it out and send it on to your library’s collection development folks for inclusion in your professional collection. That’s what I’m about to do!
I haven’t listened to the audio portion of the interview yet – I’ve just read the text part. I’m a little scared to listen to the audio – I always think I sound like an idiot… Anyway, MaintainIT has chosen little ol’ me as the Library Spotlight for this month. Very exciting stuff!!
Update: I just listened to the audio and I actually don’t sound like as much of an idiot as I thought. You all have my permission to listen to it now…
For Christmas this year, I got inspired to do some cooking! My BF’s mother gave me How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman (who also does the Minimalist TivoCast, which is great fun) and I’ve been reading it cover-to-cover. So far, I’m through “everything you ever wanted to know about noodles” and getting ready to find out everything about bread. I’ve already been through the veggies, fruits and seafood chapters. It truly is a bible for folks who want a cookbook that gives them more than just static directions on how to make a single food item – there are almost no recipes in the book (so far) that don’t have multiple variations so that you can take the basic recipe (of which there are 2000) and make up to 20 different foods using that one recipe, with just a few variations. My friend Tab also got me the Better Homes & Gardens “pink plaid” edition of the kitchen essential cookbook. My mom has one of these (though I think it’s the original edition – it’s really old and “well-loved”…) and it was the go-to cookbook when I cooked at home with her. Now I have one of my own!! Yeah!
My boyfriend got, also from Doug and Tab, the Alton Brown salt cellar and a set of Alton Brown Plunger measuring cups. Since I got Tab the Gear For Your Kitchen book by Alton Brown, we’re thinking that Alton did pretty well this year…
So far, from the “How to cook everything” cookbook, I’ve made an asparagus and parmesan risotto, a lentils and potatoes with curry dinner and fried zucchinis. Yum! I also noticed a recipe for truffles in the BH&G cookbook last night that I might have to try out…
Also – and you thought I was done – my BF’s mom got me a year’s subscription to the Taste of Home magazine, something that I regularly “borrow” from my Mom. Mom is happy to know that her issues will be staying put from now on!
It wasn’t a *completely* foodie Christmas, though – my family got a Wii (which has inspired me to get a Wii Fit for it – I’m going to have to make up for all the cooking I’ll be doing somehow) as well as a bunch of Wii games. I got some clothes and some cash, which was nice. Alex got mostly cash, so we spent a lovely afternoon at the Columbia Mall last weekend, spending $241 on new clothes for my little clotheshorse… He left the mall with $9 in cash and a beatific grin on his face, so I think he was happy with his Christmas as well.
I hope all of my readers had a wonderful holiday season – while it is fun to play with all the new stuff that the holiday season brings, I hope that everyone also got some rest, some time with their loved ones and a new outlook for the new year!
