Michelle Pfeiffer as Lea in "Cheri"

I’m kind of cheating for the Salon today. I’m reading brief articles right now, but they’re book-related (most of them), because I’m trying to get a lot of cleaning and laundry done today. So this is what I’m reading today:

These are the 30 most disturbing “Twilight” products, courtesy of Will Francis. If you think a vampire sex toy is scary (#26), just wait till you see #7. Yikes.

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I’m checking out Book Vortex also today. Why am I always the last person to know about all the cool sites?

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I love this article on the Twilight series from The Washington Post, even if it is old news at this point. It makes me feel better for forming a book club for my students just so I would “have to” read the Twilight books. (Darn!)

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I got a kick out of this list of the 100 best books of the decade, and largely because there is a handful of graphic novels present in the list, including Fun Home and Persepolis (shocker, I know).

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I enjoyed Maud Newton on the modern memoir.

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I also finally watched Michelle Pfeiffer in the film adaptation of Colette’s Cheri, which actually also included the extension The Last of Cheri. I enjoyed it very much – it made me want to re-read the books again already – and Michelle Pfeiffer was the perfect Lea. It troubled me while I was reading the books that I was unable to “see” Lea at all, and while I understand that it is actually borderline-blasphemy to think this way, Michelle Pfeiffer answered a lot of my questions about Lea for me.

I’ve always wanted to take a little tour of literary landmarks, and it seems I’ve found my tour guide in Poets’ Graves. I’ve even found my very first stop – extra points if you remember why.

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I completed the first draft of a short story I was working on and I’ve come to find that I have no freaking clue how to revise my writing. I don’t even know where to begin. I read this article from Writer’s Digest in search of guidance, and it didn’t really help, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. While I was at it, I glanced at this “live webinar” (really?) about creating effective novel hooks.

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I enjoyed Salon’s Sexiest Man Living list, but I only agree with Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“500 Days of Summer” –> **sigh**). He and my favorite on the list, Rahm Emanuel.

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After seeing this, I’m adding Brom’s The Child Thief to my Amazon wish list. (Sorry, Powell’s!)

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These Death Masks are courtesy of Brandon at Bookstorm, from whom many amazing things flow, and include Keats, Lincoln, and Shakespeare.

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

He waited. The small nickelplated revolver in his hand. The Road, Cormac McCarthy

Jonathan likes to see movies. A lot. That is, he likes to see a lot of movies… a lot. I knew he wanted to see “The Road” – I could tell when he gasped and choked on my Coke when we saw the preview for the first time before… “Paranormal Activity,” maybe? If at all possible, I like to read a book before I see it adapted into a movie. That doesn’t always happen, but I like for that to be the case. I’ve owned a copy of The Road for a couple of years now and still haven’t read it, so I thought now might be a nice time to do so. We’re going to see if I can manage to finish reading the book before Jonathan snaps and insists that we must see the movie nownownow! I might make it, though – Jonathan might be good on movies for a little bit since we saw “The Fourth Kind” just the other day. In fact, he’s actually threatening to read the book himself, which would be fantastic… maybe more fantastic if he didn’t have to work. A lot.

With the holiday season now upon us, have you left any hint – subtle or otherwise – for books family and friends might buy you for Christmas? Do you like to receive books, or do you prefer certificates so you can choose your own?

The truth of the matter is that I don’t trust other people to buy me books, and any book that I realize I want I go ahead and buy for myself. This time of the year especially, the purchase of the desired book comes with a whipped cream-topped hot chocolate (Yes!)

In the past, I loved receiving gift cards to Borders, but I enjoy that less now. What I like about Christmas is that it’s a time to get gifts that are a novelty, and as much as I love books they are not exactly a novelty. They are the one thing I am always, always, always willing to blow my money on. Like I told Jonathan just recently, I am far more willing to shell out a bunch of money for books than I am for clothing – sad but true.

That said, some of the best gifts I have ever received have been books that I did not see coming. Jonathan gave me one of the enormous numbered hardcovers of Girls and Robert McKee’s Story for my birthday in June, both of which I enjoyed immensely (no-brainer). A couple of Christmases ago, my brother found my Amazon wish list completely on his own and bought me Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day, which was new at the time, and got my mom to buy me Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects. Every time I get a book I have actually been wanting, I am just tickled pink, but it’s rare and almost always coincidental.

Breaking Up is the major thing that I read today after having bought it yesterday. Jonathan and I celebrated he and Josh having finally turned in issue 20 of The Sword by shopping like mad all weekend long. We began Friday with the mall, dinner with my family, and he dropped me at a Borders to get the new Stephen King (I know, you don’t need to tell me) and the new John Irving while he ran by Best Buy. Yesterday we hit McDonald’s for breakfast (big deal, believe it or not), Crate & Barrel, my comic book store this time, Urban Outfitters, H&M, and we did dinner at Maggiano’s.

This morning we sat around reading for a while before we accomplished anything else, and that was when I read this book in its entirety. When we were at the store yesterday, I was looking at this book and almost picked it up when Jonathan picked it up himself and flipped through it, saying it looked like something I might get. Of course, I use my students as an excuse for reading these things. I am always excited when I encounter a graphic novel that I can justify bringing to the book box at school, but this book was just plain cute.

Truth, I wouldn’t run around recommending it like crazy, but my girls will like it a lot. It’s practically a scene-by-scene reworking of “Mean Girls.” I actually love “Mean Girls” – it’s fucking hilarious, I don’t care what you say – but reading something that’s essentially the same thing would be a little exhausting if I weren’t also excited to bring it to my kids. Not for the top of your TBR pile.

I’m going to jump on the bandwagon with Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. Well, I’m jumping on the bandwagon sort of. There are always books that I would be excited to see the release of – the last in recent memory that I was psyched about was the lovely Amy Shearn’s How Far is the Ocean From Here. But I’m going to do WoW about books I’m anxious to get to in the near future rather than books I’m waiting for the release of. (It’s my blog, I’ll end a sentence with a preposition if I want to.)

I am totally psyched to read Locke and Key: Head Games, written by Joe Hill. Funny how much I loved the first volume considering my general distaste for anything written by his father, Stephen King.

The first volume actually scared me, and I don’t think I’m easy to scare outside of the film medium. I think it speaks volumes when a single panel in a graphic novel makes me actually jump and makes my chest clench like a fist. The first volume did that.

So when I’ve finally finished New Moon – I’m a little more than halfway through it now – I need to reread volume 1 before getting into volume 2, but I’m looking forward to it. Highly recommended. Possibly my favorite horror comic.

I don’t have a review or anything of that sort today. I ran straight from a bad day at work (which involved a Twilight incident I don’t even want to think about) to the vet where my dog pretended to be fit as a fiddle but returned to her original crippled state as soon as we returned home. I was then held hostage at dinner by my father, and must write at some point today. (I swear I will.) So let me just link to some of the lovely articles I’ve encountered today.

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I am now officially looking forward to reading Flow: the Cultural Story of Menstruation. Anything highlighted by Bust magazine has to be good, yes? And I’m always excited about a cultural history of anything taboo, like Virgin, which is also in my TBR pile.

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This will either amuse you or cause you to vomit: midnight release party for Nabokov’s The Original of Laura and Palin’s Going Rogue: an American Life. Ouch.

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Chuck Palahniuk is getting teachers in trouble. If these damned writers wouldn’t produce thought-provoking material, we teachers wouldn’t be tempted to use it in the classroom. Dammit! (Okay, I haven’t read that particular story and I’m really just being a biased and bitter high school teacher. But I can make an educated assumption here.)

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A new graphic novel for the TBR pile: Logicomix: an Epic Search for Truth.

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One in 10 Adult Book Buyers… are geeks. I mean, read graphic novels – pronounced: “comic books”. (I’m allowed to be self-deprecating, back off.)

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An article on being a graphic artist that was at least interesting to glance through. Jonathan can let me know if this is at all accurate.

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Cut to the chase, save me some work, and see Multiversity Comics’s review of Suburban Glamour. They said it better than I would have, and I agree with every bit of it – more or less.

To be adapted for the screen by Twisted Pictures of "Saw" fame.

To further incriminate myself, I recommend that you enjoy a funny SNL spoof of “Twilight.” (I am so looking forward to “New Moon,” I just can’t help myself.)

I also recommend you check out this article about Rick Remender’s Sorrow getting picked up by “Saw”’s production company, Twisted Pictures. To channel my students, “Oh. Em. Gee.” I <3 Sorrow big time. I also <3 “Saw” big time. Does life get any better than this? I may burst.

Adaptations are also in the works for XXXombies – the second-most exciting prospect – and Night Mary – the third-most exciting.

I suppose this would be the time to say that I read Sorrow when I was first doing the comic book thing. I saw that it was being compared with the psychological horror of “The Exorcist” and “Psycho” and thought it could only be but so bad. There are actually a good few graphic novels I’ve read that actually make my chest clench and make me say, “Oh, shit.” Sorrow was the very first of all that I’ve encountered so far. If you want to see real horror in graphic novel form, Sorrow is not a bad place to start.

I’ve been reading New Moon in preparation for the movie, which I admit I am very excited about. I will never like the style, but the pacing is totally engrossing. I forget where I am and what I’m doing every time I open that book… But I left it at Jonathan’s, so I’m using my day without New Moon to read volume 4 of Otomen.

Otomen: 1) a young man with girlish interests and thoughts; 2) a young man who has a talent for cooking, needlework and general housework; 3) a manly young man with a girlish heart.

This is the first manga series I’ve ever followed, and it’s pretty darn cute. I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but it’s very interesting, and I might not even have as much of an appreciation for it as I should if it weren’t for the fact that I am constantly looking for books that are safe to share with my students.

The protagonist, Asuka Masamune, was abandoned by his father at a young age when his father became a transvestite and decided he wanted to live his life as a woman. Ever since, there has been extreme pressure on Asuka from his mother – and society in general – to be manly, to shy away from “cute” things, and not to end up like his father. Asuka is generally respected as the toughest, manliest man and fighter in his high school, and the only people who know that he is an otomen are his love interest, Ryo, who is not very girly at all, and his friend, Juta, who is secretly using his relationship with Ryo as the basis for the shojo manga he writes. In other words, it’s just adorable. It’s a very quick read, and each chapter is like a separate episode.

I didn’t know that the fourth volume was out until I happened to see it when Jonathan and I were at a comic book store on Friday. I don’t know what made me think that there were only going to be four volumes in the series, but now there is a volume 5 and volume 6 in the works, apparently. They’re a lot of fun to read and a few of my female students just love them.

An article I loved on authors and how they write, courtesy of Maud Newton. I’m a Junot Diaz – what are you?