Scholastic Authors' Favorite Books

Scholastic has a wildly cool video of me, Micheal Northrop, Siobhan Vivian and a bunch of other folks talking about our favorite books and how we ended up being writers. And, bonus!, me imitating Hermione Granger right at the beginning.

Coe Booth was going to do it, too, but she got stage fright and chickened out, and I am only telling you this so that you realize the huge glowing ball of inspiration that is Coe and Facebook her right now and tell her she needs to let people film her more. Especially good-hearted folks from the Scholastic blog who are scarcely rude enough to qualify as paparazzi. (Even if they whittled down my 5-minute-long answer to "what's your favorite book?" so that now I just say "Where the Wild Things Are." Although, actually, I probably just took 5 minutes to say that exact thing.)

What Makes You Happy

Hand-written scrawl on a bright orange piece of photocopy paper hanging on the street in Crown Heights:

ADAR IS NOT
OVER YET

WHAT ARE YOU
DOING TODAY
TO BE HAPPY?
For all my misgivings about living in the seat of religious Brooklyn, there are things which make me happy. Wildly happy. For all the weird and sometimes uncomfortable social things that happen -- I grew up secular, and yes, I still sometimes extend my hand to shake when meeting women (some of them in my family-in-law -- double ug), I will never tire or de-inspire of seeing these simple, devotion-motivated, joy-inflicted singularly happy testaments to God. Like remembering the commandment that we're supposed to be happy for all of Adar.

So, full disclosure: Yesterday, I danced with my daughter and invited a friend over for sushi when I ran into him in the street and watched the Muppet Show before bed. What can I do to top that today? I'd love to go to the NYC Teen Author Festival, but my #1 contender makes me sound like a total loser: get to bed early.

TV Stuff and Free Stuff

First, the free. Courtesy of SimonPulse, by way of Cupcake Witch -- email your favorite fictional couple to pulsespringfling at geemail:

You can say Hava and Charles (ewww) or Candy and Mr. Patterson (double eww) or Jupiter and just about anyone....or, you know, people who are in books I didn't write, as well.

And the TV: I've told you about Chuck, right? At times it feels more like a sanitized TV Show Geeks Should Watch than a TV show that geeks actually do watch...but there are the moments that make it worth everything. And the show's ministering angels really do play a good game of keeping the characters' lives moving in unexpected ways. And then, of course, there are the gimmicks. Like this week, when the episode is shown in 3-D (I shlepped my glasses out of my copy of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier)...

Chana sings Ana

The countdown to Chanuka continues. Today: Chana Rothman's song "Ana."

A protest singer at heart and a throwback to Janis Joplin in aesthetic, Rothman is almost chastising God for holding out too long from redemption: "Deliver us/we are broken/Be our rock/there's no solid ground." Live, she performs it like an anthem, with the crowd singing along; recorded, it's mellower, though no less contagious.

Hear it and read the rest of the article here...

And, dammit, pray for the Messiah. My rabbi and role model, Rabbi Davide, just sent an announcement heralding "the birth of our son (name to be announced at the bris)...." The rest of the email is the priceless part, though. The rebbetzin "and he are resting somewhere on the outskirts of the Jerusalem forest while I enjoy the full personalities of our other children....praise the Lord."

In Australia, Yalta just learned to clap. In America, my palpable excitement and my jealousy are both rising exponentially at this writers' segue. People I barely know are telling me about the coolest stories, and I keep thinking "wow, someone should turn that into a book"...and then I realize, they are.