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Julie Kenner is our guest blogger during the week of November 9th. If you have any questions for Julie Kenner, add a comment to any of her posts.

Here is more information on Tainted:

Lily Carlyle has lied, cheated, and stolen her way through life.

But in death, she'll really get to be bad...

When her little sister is brutalized, a vengeful Lily determines to exact her own justice. She succeeds at the cost of her own life, but as she lies dying, she is given a second chance. Lily can earn her way into Paradise by becoming an assassin for the forces of good.

It's the job Lily believes she can really get into-but she doesn't realize that she may not be able to get out.

View our feature on Julie Kenner's Tainted. 

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Katherine Kerr is our guest blogger during the week of November 9th. If you have any questions for Katherine Kerr, add a comment to any of her posts.

Here is more information on The Silver Mage:

"Prepare to get lost in the magic" (VOYA) of Katharine Kerr's newest Deverry fantasy.

The Horsekin are assembling along Prince Dar's northern border, and the Deverry alliance simply does not have the men and resources to prevent their enemies from moving into the wilderness areas known as the Ghostlands. But suddenly, the Dwrgi folk and the dragons come to Dar's aid, tipping the balance in their favor and offering Dar's people a chance to defeat the Horsekin once and for all.

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Getting together with friends and family over the holidays can be full of conflicting feelings: You love your relatives, you want them to go home immediately.  You appreciate the wisdom of your parents, you want them to stop telling you where you went wrong.  You're happy to blow off steam at the annual office Christmas party, you don't want to see Suzy from accounting get drunk and remove her top.  Holiday gatherings often fill one with the desire to find another strong drink or the door, or both.  And if you are giving in to ritual, you may want to host your own gathering, but feel a bit uninspired while watching the cranberry sauce slowly slide out of the can into the pot. 

Enter beer.

A breath of fresh air in the cold weather.  An offering that will make your holiday party stand out among all others.  Pairing beer with classic holiday dishes keeps the boredom out and enhances the food as well as any wine or spirit could.  In fact, slipping some craft beer in next to traditional dishes is a great way to educate your guests' palates.  And this time of year is full of fall/winter ales that hold all of the flavors of the season: Pumpkin, nutmeg, fig, pine trees, etc.  Here are a few pairing suggestions we offer as a way around the ordinary holiday happenings.  

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Before Barack Obama came along with his "Audacity of Hope," the Jews had another way to describe crazily gutsy, brazen behavior. We called it chutzpah. (Let that word roll through the back of your throat and you'll get a very good sense of its meaning.)

Well, Scott T. Zielinski, a 23-year-old Michigan man serving an 8-year sentence for robbing a party store, is a man with chutzpah coming out of his prison jumpsuit. Mr. Zielinski has decided to sue the owners and three workers at Nick's Party Stop, the place he robbed in November 2007, for using excessive force when they tried to prevent him from stealing their cash and merchandise.

Zielinski, who was unarmed when he tried stealing from the shop, wound up getting shot twice and beaten during his quashed crime spree. So he's now seeking $125,000 from his would-be victims. A Michigan Circuit Judge, David Vivianohas, just ruled that the case can be heard, but is forcing Zielinski to post a $10,000 bond to cover the attorney's fees of the store owner and its employees in case they prevail at the trial.

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Author-turned-DJ Steven R. Boyett had a fantastic launch party event at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego this week on Tuesday, November 3, where he signed copies of both Ariel and Elegy Beach.

Fans lined up to have their favorite post-apocalyptic novel signed, along with the sequel fans have waited 26 years to read. Some even brought their original copies of Ariel, first published by Ace in 1983!
 
Boyett was thrilled to be in such good company--he'll be seeing some familiar faces at the LoJolla Writers Conference this weekend, where Mysterious Galaxy is selling books. Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore is beloved by both readers and authors who gather there to talk about the books, music, and everything in between, and once Steve got to talking about writing fantasy and DJ-ing Burning Man, there was no stopping him!

Check out some of the pictures from the event below:

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This week's episode of A Cup of Poetry features a beautiful reading of two poems by John Keats from Bright Star, read by Elda Rotor.

Listen to A Cup of Poetry now and read the poem below!

About Bright Star:

The epic romance of one of the most celebrated poets in the English language. Coming to theatres in September 2009 is the tragic love story of nineteenth- century poet John Keats and the love of his life, Fanny Brawne. Keats died at the young age of twenty-five, leaving behind some of the most exquisite and moving verse and letters ever written, inspired by his deep love for Fanny. Bright Star is a collection of Keats' romantic poems and correspondence in the heat of his passion, and is a dazzling display of a talent cut cruelly short.

Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne, introduction by Jane Campion

Book: Movie Tie-In Edition | 5.19 x 7.83in | 144 pages | ISBN 9780143117742 | 16 Sep 2009 | Penguin | 18 - AND UP

$18.00 - Add to Cart

"Bright Star"

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

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Seeing-eye and other service dogs have long been exempted from regulations that prevent dogs in certain places like restaurants and offices. But these days a lot of people appear to be pushing the legal limits of the definition of "service" dogs. Restaurants, apartment houses, and other businesses may now be legally required to allow dogs who help not only those with physical disabilities, but also provide "emotional" support. Not only is the definition of "support" expanding, but so, apparently, is the definition of "support animal"--from what has usually been considered a dog to other types of animals including trained primates. Gone are the days of the organ grinder's accordion and companion monkey's tiny cymbals, an apparently politically incorrect stereotype offensive to the Primate-Americans among us, replaced by the primates who have been trained to provide emotional and in some cases--like the diabetic woman who trained her primate to retrieve her insulin and needles--even medical support.

But the expansion of the all animal/all the time policy seems to have hit a wall as decided by two recent cases involving a monkey on one side and a judge who thought he was the one being made a monkey of. Seems that as relatively loosey-goosey (no disrespect meant to the Avian-Americans among us) as the term "support animal" may be, legally a doctor must certify that a patient is keeping the pet for health reasons. Once you get your doctor's note, the New York Courts have ruled that emotional support is a valid reason to keep a pet even if the building has a no-pet policy. But when a Missouri woman tried to argue that her Bonnet Macaque monkey is trained to assist her with her agoraphobia and anxiety, the Judge ruled against her 'right' to take the monkey to Wal-Mart or to a cafeteria. The Judge found that the while the monkey, who is trained to fetch the remote control or her toothbrush, may have some pretty cool party tricks in his arsenal there is no correlation between his abilities and the owner's disability. An animal that "simply provides comfort" according to the Judge, is the equivalent of a household pet and does not qualify as a service animal. Even if he can play a mean set of cymbals.

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The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who introduced a structuralist and universalist approach to the study of anthropology has died, a month before he would have turned 101.

Levi-Strauss was born in 1908 in Belgium and grew up in France, in a French-Jewish family long involved in the arts. He began field work and teaching in the 1930s, primarily in Brazil. He was a visiting professor at the New School in New York in the 1940s and then returned to Paris, where he received his doctorate.

In 1955, Levi-Strauss published what many see as his most influential work, Tristes Tropiques. Levi-Strauss began the story of his anthropological work in Brazil and elsewhere by declaring: "I hate traveling and explorers." And indeed, many of his critics' largest problems with his structuralist approach to anthropology, which sought universal ideas in so-called primitive societies to show human commonalities, was that Levi-Strauss was not an explorer. He preferred study to fieldwork. Levi-Strauss searched for an underlying universal structure to humanity and believed that humans relied on opposites, such as cold vs. hot, to understand the world.

Tristes Tropiques was one man's look at humanity, his attempts and work to understand it. Much of anthropology has changed since the book was published 55 years ago and Levi-Strauss himself rejected the idea that he was the "father of structuralism". But regardless of labels, his influence on anthropology is undeniable and his works will continue to be read by those still trying to make sense of how people explain the world around them.

» Ken Auletta discusses his book, which looks at the rise of the Google brand and how Google and other online companies have changed the media landscape.

» Read more about Googled: The End of the World As We Know It

Googled Ken Auletta The End of the World as We Know It Technology Business Internet media

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Did you have a happy Halloween? Not me. I made the mistake of attending the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and found myself in the midst of the boob warfare that was being waged on the streets of New York City. Let's just say that's not a lot of fun for a girl whose only ammunition is at home in her sock drawer.

But happily 1,061 residents of Denver, Colorado made far better use of the holiday. Setting a new Guinness Book World Record, these folks donned gorilla costumes and ran 3.5 miles to raise money for the Mountain Gorilla Conservation Fund, which continues the work of noted gorilla lady, Dian Fossey.

The charity run charges first time participants $100 to enter the race - part of the cost of which goes to the purchase of a gorilla suit (presumably not made of real gorillas), and each entrant is asked to raise at least $300. Don't know exactly how much was made this year, but suffice to say, that kind of money can buy a lot of bananas.