Yes, I know I just got back from Scotland a month and a half ago, but vacations wait for no woman and I am heading back on the road to visit my Jalapeno and her new little one in B.C.

I bought about 10 dozen books while I was in Scotland, as trade paperbacks are the same price there as pocket, so even with the exchange we're looking at $15 as opposed to $25. Plus, they were buy two get one free so it was more like $10 a trade! Sweet!

My neighbour C has been showing up with chicklit books the past couple weeks, and I plan to take each one she gave me with me to B.C. there is nothing better than reading an entire book on a flight, and chicklits are wonderful for that. I will be taking Swapping Lives by Jane Green, The Bachelorette Party by Karen McCullough Lutz and Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. The latter is the only one I've ever heard of, so I'm not sure what to expect.

I will also bring Sebastian Faulks' The Girl at the Lion D'or, a book I've been dying to read for years but have never been able to find on this side of the pond. Bless British bookstores for stocking British authors.

I am currently reading my first man-authored book since GGK's Ysabel: Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt. It's sci-fi, which I read only rarely (okay, just Douglas Adams), but it comes highly recommended and so far is pretty intriguing. Plus, hopefully I'll get a new GGK convert in the recommendation bargain. And I'm guessing Jalapeno's hubby is going to dig this one too, so I'll lend it his way once I'm done. It's like I'm arriving bearing gifts (beyond the yummy essential oil soap I picked up for my girl on Skye, that is)!

I was doing crowd control at a work event yesterday, when I noticed that one of the people in line was holding Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest book. I finished instructing the crowd, and ended my speech with: “And great book, by the way.” She thanked me, and I went on to do something else.

A short while later I was back by her, and we got to talking about the book. She told me that she’d only read the prologue so far. I asked her if she’d read the Tapestry, and she said she hadn’t. I must have looked concerned by this, because she asked me if she should read it first. I told her it wasn’t necessary but that there’d be a few things that would make more sense to her once she had.

It was so wonderful to be able to talk to someone just discovering my favourite author. She seemed really interested in my GGK stories (how reading one of his books in Grade 11 turned me into a reader and contributed greatly to my decision to go to journalism school and to become a writer; how he e-mailed me once when I wrote a short blog about A Song for Arbonne in a book feature I edited back in the day over at Moxie.ca). She said her best friend was a huge fan. I suggested to her that Arbonne and Ysabel were perhaps the least intense of his books, and that if she wanted an emotional rollercoaster she should borrow her friend’s copy of Tigana.

I hope she comes to the spring event so I can see if she followed my advice.

So I'm moseying along on the train this morning, reading the latest Guy Gavriel Kay I'd picked up on New Year's Eve. I'm well into it by now—100 pages, or one-quarter—and then all of a sudden, my growing suspicions are confirmed with five simple words:

"Dave is north of Darfur."

And all of a sudden, this book becomes something quite different.

Wow. I never saw this coming.

Oh! Holy crap! I almost forgot! I got an e-mail from the host of the official Guy Gavriel Kay website.

(Those of you who know me in real life know that GGK is who made me a reader. I read The Summer Tree in Grade 11, and it opened my eyes to books. It's also probably what led me to go to journalism school and become a writer.)

GGK has a new book coming out in January! Here are the details:

"Ysabel takes place in the world of today: in a modern springtime, in and around the celebrated city of Aix-en-Provence near Marseilles. Dangerous, mythic figures from the Celtic and Roman conflicts of the past erupt into the present, claiming and changing lives."(Read the complete intro here.)

I'm drooling in my naughty places waiting for this book. Damn, GGK can tell a story.

I read Nick Hornby's How to Be Good this week. It was one of about 10 books that I bought on my used-bookstore binge with Elena last weekend. I'd seen High Fidelity (wasn't blown away) and About a Boy (loved it) in theatres, so I decided to skip the books and go with something I hadn't seen already.

It was okay. Easily readible, but nothing profound. I was kinda expecting profundity as About a Boy the movie left me very satisfied. I'd heard that the ending of the book and the movie are quite different, so maybe the producers added in the satisfaction themselves.

To sum up, worth picking up at a second-hand bookstore, but not worth buying retail.

Jana has finally started to get interested in The Summer Tree. In response to some banal work thing, she sent me this:

"Oops, should have said 'Brightly woven!' (No idea why they say that!)"

To which (rabid fangirl that I am) I replied: "Because their God is the Weaver at the Loom. And the series is called the Fionavar Tapestry. Sheesh!"

To which (sarcastic bitch that she is) she replied: "Yeah . . . but . . . (a) I didn’t know what their god is called (I assumed he was called Diarmuid . . . rrrrrrrRRRRRrrrrrrrrrr). PLUS I’m not assuming they are aware that the stories of their world would be called the Fionavar Tapestry IF such a book was to be written! Although, they kept looking mysteriously at that tapestry in the first room!?!!!????"

There's just no reasoning with some people.

All right, enough with these long, analyzing posts. Let's get funk-ay!

I gave Jana at work Guy Gavriel Kay's The Fionavar Tapestry, the series that made me love books. So far she's not saying much, but I have faith in her that she's going to love it. (She saw Mr. Kay's acknowledgements and realized she's neighbours with one of the editors of the book, so she'd better at least try to like it!)

Speaking of Fionavar, the first book of the series, The Summer Tree made the Indigo's list of iRewards Reader's Favourite Books of All Time. It came in at #76 (my lucky number!), while Diana Gabaldon's Outlander came in ninth. I had no idea either of the books were that popular!

On to music: I'm still loving the Decemberists, and have found an appreciation for Alan's beloved Okkervil River. I'm crazy about the Devics, who I must have heard on Morning Becomes Eclectic. I'm also really digging B.C. Camplight, who has a delightful beaver on his album cover and a fab song called Blood and Peanut Butter.

I listened to a couple tracks from Caroline's new album, Murmurs, and Fink's latest, Biscuits for Breakfast, and I can't wait to pick them up. Last but not least I grabbed Serena-Maneesh's self-titled, and Sh lent me Reindeer Section's Son of Evil Reindeer—which Alan tells me is good—and Goldspot's Tally of the Yes Men—which I listened to and think is good.

Whew! It's great to have new music to listen to!