Notes From the Bedside Table

Tuesdays are fast becoming one of my favorite days of the week: I go to work late because I stay late. That gives me a morning to write and make soup, do an extra load of laundry, and listen to the garden show on KUOW.

I love getting up just a little later than usual and finding a new book to sample during breakfast, having a little more time to enjoy the book if it's good, a little more time to find something different if it isn't.

Today I've discovered The Dark Divine, by Bree Despain. My friend, Deanna, with Random House, handed out copies at Seattle Bookfest on Sunday and it definitely looked like something I would read. I didn't want to stop reading so it is obviously the new book du jour.

Today is another beautiful October day, blue and gold, cold and filled with color. Sunrise was at 7:46. Sunset is at 5:59! It's officially night before 6! Yesterday the rain just poured during the morning commute, one of the most un-fun things to be a part of. It is a most stressful beginning to the day.

Our landscapers are here a little earlier than usual. We are so excited to have a yard we will actually be able to use! Our landscaper said that, to start, they'd roll up the sod and then put down the mulch and things that we wanted. And then she looked at the ground and said, "Although, this isn't sod. I don't know what it is, but it isn't sod." This project is a really good thing, not just for us, but for our neighbors.

The yard was filled with little weedy hillocks left over from going out and weed-whacking. The weed-whacker twirls the high, high "grass" into twisty ties of weeds. Short weeds, now, but weeds. Ah. The project should be done this week (barring any more downpours).

I read Will Grayson, Will Grayson and it was so great! Thank you, John Green and David Levithan, for writing another really good book about friendship. About friendship between boys and girls, and friendship between boys and boys. WG, WG is about a boy named Will Grayson and his best friend, Tiny Cooper, who is a really big gay boy who makes the world more fabulous. It is also about another Will Grayson who has only recently admitted to himself that he is gay.

Late one cold and windy night in Chicago, the two Will Graysons meet and, like balls meeting in the middle of a pool table, their lives spin and twist in directions they don't expect. I absolutely adore the characters in this book. I would like to see them again.

This is a wonderful book about looking for, finding, and losing love and friendship. It also reminds us that we should let people know we love them. Often.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson will be published by Dutton and is for teens, 14 and up. $17.99, available April, '10.

I am going up now to read the rest of The Dark Divine.