TGIF

This has not been a great week for me, to be honest. I may end up needing to take a break from blogging, soon, unless I can work something out. The thought makes me very sad, because I love doing this.

On to some happy news - new books!


My awesome husband (sensing that I needed some cheering up, I think) got me the Buffy The Vampire Slayer Omnibus: Volume 6. Thanks, honey!


Via LibraryThing, I received The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.

In his first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces ... eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950—and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia’s family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”

In other book news, Happy Birthday, L. Frank Baum! Check out mental_floss's interesting post about Baum. I like this factoid:

When the costume designers for the movie [in 1939] were looking for a coat for the Wizard to wear, they went to a secondhand shop and bought a bunch, then brought them back to the set for the actor to try on. He tried them all and made his choice, but it wasn’t until a few weeks later that he discovered a label inside the coat with the original owner’s name in it – L. Frank Baum. Everyone was understandably skeptical, but the story checked out – the coat was specially-made for Baum by a tailor in Chicago and his widow Maud recognized it from his collection.

Happy Friday!