This is coming to you from the San Antonio Public Library, Tobin branch.  Which is right next to a middle school.  The guys using the computers next to me are of the middle/high school hormonal variety, and they’ve been surfing some kind of site that has lots of girls on it and evaluating them all.  Loudly.  And I’ve already used fifteen of my allotted sixty minutes, after which I have to wait half an hour before even putting my name on the wait list again.  Which is a roundabout way of saying that there will not be a review today-I didn’t expect it to be so difficult to blog at the library.  Tomorrow, I’ll come prepared with a hand-written review that I can just type up!  I can’t really use the computer at my sister’s, because while she’s feeling better, she’s now even more behind in homework (have I mentioned she’s crazy brilliant at science?  she wants to be a physician’s assistant, and she got into the PA school via an early admission program that only accepts something like 8 people out of 3,000 applicants!) so she needs that computer.  But it’s cool, because it turns out this library has a really cool sign in the shape of a book that I plan to photography tomorrow!

I really need to work on my rambling, lol.  But for now, I want to mention somethings before I forget them!  First, the book about St. Petersburg is called Sunlight at Midnight and was published posthumously (he died during the pub process) by W. Bruce Lincoln.  Apparently, he was a big expert on Russia, because there’s a long list of other titles he wrote in the beginning of the book.  So as long as I enjoy it, I’ve got a whole new non-fic author to look for!

Secondly, even though this is a bit late, the March edition of the Bookworms Carnival is up over at Myrthe’s!  Go check it out.   For April, the theme is Latin American lit and authors (good thing I just read some Marquez, huh?), the host is Reading in the Louvre (maybe I should change my blog name to Reading in the Hermitage?), and the deadline is April 13th (just two days after my birthday!).  She’s provided an information page for all of you thinking about submitting.

Since today’s Monday, I get to spotlight one of my favourite blogs! This week, I’m going with Matt’s A Guy’s Moleskin Notebook. Matt and I have a lot of favourite authors in common, which is awesome, and he always leaves interesting and nice comments! Moreover, he’s originally from Hong Kong, and his occasional posts about Asian topics are always interesting. Right now, he’s on a trip to Asia, and I can’t wait to see all of the great photos I’m sure he’ll post. So if you haven’t stopped by his blog before, you ought to!

Finally, there’s the Once Upon a Time II Challenge!  Honestly, I turn my back for one week and I’m behind, lol.  I really enjoyed doing this challenge last year, so I’m jumping on the bandwagon again.  There are various ways to participate, but the main thrust is to read fantasy/fairy-tale type books between March 21st and June 20th. I’m choosing Quest One (because I’m too lazy to hunt for books that fit the different categories-folklore always seems to stymie me), and my five books are: The Grand Tour by Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede (and it’s in my trunk, so I can start on it!), The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale (I’ve heard great things about this one, and my library has it), Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees (I bought this after reading Neil Gaiman’s recommendation, but I haven’t gotten around to actually reading it), Enchantment by Orson Scott Card (since it didn’t work for the sci-fi experience, but as an Eastern European retelling of Sleepign Beauty, it definitely works here), and Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint (only appropriate, since I discovered him during last year’s Once Upon a Time Challenge!).

To round things out, here are three awesome things that have happened to me in the book blogosphere world in just the couple days I’ve been back:

• all the comments I got welcoming me back and saying they missed me. That made my week!
• winning How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Andi of AndiLit. I didn’t take any lit classes in college, so this should be a really neat book to read!
• the e-mail I received from Katrina of Stone Soup thanking me for linking to her blog, complimenting my own, and offering to buy me any book I wanted from Amazon! Talk about random acts of generosity.