I don't know whether I'm going to dress up tonight.

Happy Halloween, folks. No parties for me tonight; instead, I'm running the box office for Gaslight Theater's production of Private Lives, which continues tomorrow and next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. (If you're in central Maine, come see it; the performances are terrific, and it's very funny. Also, my living room sofa is part of the set.)

Our production of Private Lives is set in 1970s Maine, rather than 1930s France, so I'm toying with the idea of dressing up as a '70s hostess: wearing my mother's black-and-gold Moroccan caftan, teasing my hair very big, and laying on the blue eyeshadow.

My fear is that people will not recognize this as a costume; instead, they'll tell me how nice I look, and in the bar afterwards they'll shriek with laughter (or just shake their heads in sorrow) about my feeble attempts to make myself presentable.

What are you going to be for Halloween?

What I Read This Week

Karen Olson, SHOT GIRL. Karen's my friend, but I liked her Annie Seymour series before I met her. Annie's one of the most believable characters in crime fiction, a moody single woman who swears too much, bickers with her mother, and would sometimes rather be a good reporter than a good person. SHOT GIRL, the fourth book in this series, is far and away the best; it starts with Annie's discovery of a dead body who happens to be her long-estranged ex-husband. He's on the ground next to Annie's car, surrounded by bullets that appear to have come from Annie's gun. Annie herself is an unreliable narrator; it's a bold risk for a late book in a series, but it pays off.

Declan Hughes, PLAYS: Digging for Fire, New Morning, Halloween Night, Love and a Bottle. Meeting Declan Hughes was one of the great pleasures of this year's Bouchercon. I'd admired his novels before I met him, but my friend Richard Brewer asked, "Have you read his plays?" So now I have, and they are just as impressive as the novels: passionate, funny, and uncannily insightful, especially about their female characters. New Morning and Halloween Night are explicitly ghost stories, but all four plays are haunted by a kind of broken-hearted rage that feels specifically Irish.

Tim Maleeny, BEATING THE BABUSHKA. Tim was someone else I met at Bouchercon, and also just delightful; Bobby and others at The Mystery Bookstore have been raving about his books for years, and I'm embarrassed that I'm just reading them now. This is the second Cape Weathers investigation, but I didn't feel I'd missed anything by not having read the first (though now I'll go back to it). The San Francisco PI investigates the apparent suicide of a Hollywood producer who went off the Golden Gate Bridge, and finds himself poking a hive of Russian gangsters. Great fun, owing as much to Carl Hiaasen as to Dashiell Hammett, with a wonderful sense of place.

I don't know whether a zombie slave would be worth the trouble.

This morning Turner Classic Movies showed one of my all-time favorite guilty pleasure movies, Val Lewton's I Walked With a Zombie. It's a great melodramatic retelling of Jane Eyre, plus zombies. What's not to love?

Some people spend their fantasy time imagining resort vacations or fabulous meals or romantic evenings with George Clooney. I am not ashamed to admit that I have spent a fair amount of fantasy time deciding who among my acquaintances deserves to be my zombie slave.

But this morning, as I watched I Walked With a Zombie for at least the sixth time, I had second thoughts.

The truth is, zombie slaves would be pretty high-maintenance. Their self-care skills seem very low, and in the absence of Purina Zombie Chow, it would be a hassle to feed them. Dizzy's vet chides me for not brushing his teeth; if I don't brush my dog's teeth, I'm definitely not brushing my zombie slaves'. I have a guest room with a pretty big closet, but I already use that closet for winter coats and luggage, so my storage space for zombie slaves is limited.

Most of all, though, I've never been a good delegator. Zombie slaves would by definition not be self-starters. I can't see taking the time every day to figure out their to-do lists, then watching them to make sure they actually get stuff done.

If you had zombie slaves, what would you have them do? And how would you support them?

I don't know how reliable polls are.

During the month of September, I did not have a television, and my access to the Internet was limited. That was a good thing, since I observe an inverse relationship between time spent in front of a screen and time spent with live human beings; that ratio had gotten way out of whack in my ordinary life, and now that I'm home again, I'm trying to keep it from getting so unbalanced again.

Also, while I was away from the screen, I was not able to track political coverage as obsessively as I might want to. This was also good.

Now I have too much information, and no idea of how to sort through it all. This afternoon I watched a consultant for the McCain campaign say that the race is a statistical dead heat, while the Huffington Post says that Obama is pulling away. The RealClearPolitics.com average of polls show Obama six points ahead -- outside the margin of error, at least -- but is that nationwide, and what does that mean from an electoral vote perspective?

How reliable are polls, anyway? Have they caught up to modern technology yet? Are people just lying? What about the 2004 election, when early exit polls were calling the election for Kerry? Are we all just going to be fooled again?

We have six days left before Election Day, and at this rate I am not going to make it. I need to do some deep breathing and step away from the screens.

After I watch Barack Obama's speech tonight. And then the after-speech coverage.

Five Random Songs

"I Think I Love You," The Partridge Family. Ah, the Partridge Family. That's what I need. Some Partridge Family reruns ... if I iron my hair and find a vest and a tambourine, I can claim to be Laurie Partridge for Halloween.

"I Wanna Be Like You," Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. A cover of the song from "Jungle Book," fun but not as good as Louie Prima's original.

"The Man That Got Away," Rufus Wainwright. From the Rufus Does Judy album. Thisclose to being one step too far.

"Lets Go (Nothing For Me)," New Order. I love the jangly guitars on this song.

"It Was a Wonderful Time in Our Lives," Toronto Consort. Modern chamber music from The Sweet Hereafter soundtrack, spooky and beautiful and heartbreaking. I do not know the names of the instruments played here, and wish I did.

I don't know whom they survey for "Family Feud."

I've all but stopped answering my phone around the dinner hour, because it's either a political candidate or a pollster. In the right mood, I'm glad to talk to pollsters; anyone who asks for my opinion is someone I want to talk to.

At this point, though, I'm bored with it. Plus, I've already voted, and I'm strangely less willing to talk about how I did vote than about how I will vote.

In wishing the pollsters would ask me better questions, it occurred to me to wonder about that survey-based game show, "Family Feud." When I was a kid, I always wanted our family to be on it; now that I'm an adult, I'm very grateful to my mother for never taking that wish seriously.

It's a pretty bizarre concept for a game show, if you think about it. You win not by knowing things, but by guessing what other people said in response to a survey. It's a game designed by and for advertising executives and jury consultants.

And what's that survey like, anyway? Whom does "Family Feud" survey, and what are those questions like? Part of me thinks it would be fun to participate in a "Family Feud" survey, just to skew the numbers -- but do the people who take the "Family Feud" surveys know what they're for?

Here are five "Family Feud" style questions for you to leave your responses to. Tell me:

1. A good name for a dog
2. A bestselling author
3. A red food
4. An occasion for gift-giving
5. Something you break

Don't look at other people's comments until you leave your own answer...

I don't know whether I'm drinking caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee.

I gave up caffeine at the beginning of July, as part of a broader change in my eating habits. After the first painful week, I didn't miss it much -- and then, the week the show opened, I was grateful to be able to go back on caffeine and get the full effect when I needed it most. I was on the junk for Bouchercon, too (four days of sleep deprivation and alcohol abuse without caffeine was unthinkable), but gave it up again once I got back to Maine.

Until this morning -- maybe. The can of decaffeinated espresso (I know, it's a cruel joke) I bought on the way home is now gone, and I've turned to the grounds in a Tupperware container that's been in my freezer for God only knows how long. I think -- I think -- that these were decaffeinated beans I ground myself before I left for New York.

But I'm not sure. And this is why Heloise tells us to label everything that goes into our freezers, people...

So I've just made a pot, and we'll find out shortly. Today could be even more productive than I was hoping!

I don't know why it's fun to be scared.

The Augusta Jaycees are running their Haunted House in a warehouse right across the street -- this weekend and next weekend, $8 -- so my friend Jason and I went last night, after fortifying ourselves at the newly-reopened pub next door.

Neither of us had any idea of what to expect; Jason had never been to a haunted house, and I hadn't been to one in decades. Also, I don't see much in the dark anymore, and did not know whether that would ruin the effects or make them even scarier.

Even scarier, as it turned out. Jason let me clutch his arm all the way through the house, and without him I wouldn't have been able to see enough to walk; but strategic lighting and strobes were enough to let me see the monsters and scary things that jumped out at us.

It was really well done, genuinely scary, and we were both glad to get out -- but also glad to have gone through it.

It's a weird idea of fun, but it was fun -- and why is this? Why do we like horror novels, why do we like roller coasters and thrill rides?

I'm guessing that adrenaline fuels some mood enhancer in the brain, and it's fun to dump a lot of adrenaline into your system when you're not really in danger. There's probably a lot of medical research on this very issue, but it's Saturday and I am not going to spend the day looking it up.

Instead, I might go rent a scary movie.

I do not know why they call the purple flavor "grape."

It's been a busy couple of weeks, and I haven't had time to get to the grocery store lately. My breakfast scavenging this morning produced an unopened jar of homemade grape jelly, which I know was a gift but can't remember from whom -- the Beas? my friend Susan? my sister Peggy? If you gave this to me, leave your comment below.

So breakfast this morning was whole wheat toast with grape jelly, and I was shocked to discover that this jelly actually tasted like grapes. Wow!

That sounds silly, I know, but I am so used to "grape" flavor tasting like something else altogether: an indefinable combination of fruitiness (hate that word) and sweetness that is recognizably purple, but that we've all just agreed represents "grapes."

"Grape" is not the only fake flavor, but it's the one that bears the least resemblance to the thing it's supposed to be -- except, maybe the "blue raspberry" flavor of Kool-Aid and ice pops, though I never took that seriously as a representation of anything real. If I say to you, "It tastes like red drink," you know exactly what that means, and it's a flavor that is unrecognizable as any one fruit. (Interestingly, the distinctive flavor of Hawaiian Punch is guava; I didn't know that until I was an adult and tasted a real guava.)

Anyway, how did this happen? How did those first food chemists convince us that the purple flavor is "grape," and why do we continue to go along with this?

This is real grape jelly, and I am sorry I didn't open the jar before now (it's marked "2005," but the seal was intact). Now that I know it is possible to make "grape" things taste like real grapes, I'm never eating anything purple-flavored again.

What I Read This Week

Stuart Woods, HOT MAHOGANY. I have been working flat out this week and fighting off the last of my Bouchercon cold; I'm editing a couple of manuscripts and can't manage anything too complex in my spare time, so this book was perfect. Stone Barrington hunts for a priceless piece of furniture that may be an expert forgery, and sleeps with three different women along the way. It's an interesting premise that could have been so much more; what's here is very thin, and Stone's relentless philandering is getting kind of depressing.

Stieg Larsson, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. It took me weeks to get through this book, not because it wasn't good but because I could not turn off my mental editor as I struggled with the translation. Not being able to read Swedish, I have no way of knowing whether this is a good translation or not. I only know that I found the English unnecessarily convoluted and ponderous. But the story, parallel plots of a disgraced journalist resarching a long-unsolved murder and a troubled young female investigator who crosses his path, is compelling, and I'll probably read the next two books in the trilogy.

I don't know how to wear earbuds.

No post yesterday because I went to Boston to meet with a client -- I had a choice between an extra hour of sleep and getting up early to post, and the sleep won.

But somewhere along the way I lost my favorite pair of cheap headphones (I got them at Reny's for $5; they hook over my ears), and this morning I had to use the earbuds that came with my iPod.

Dizzy and I had not gotten past the mailbox before one of the earbuds fell out, and as I was putting it back in, the other fell out. I spent a 20-minute walk juggling the earbuds, and am ready to throw these things away.

What is the trick? Is it possible that my ears are just the wrong size for earbuds? Why does everyone else seem to be able to do this?

What I really want is a pair of those cool noise-cancelling headphones, although I would be a danger to myself and others (not to mention looking like a complete geek) if I tried to wear them while walking Dizzy.

Since I didn't post yesterday, here's

Five Random Songs

"Nothing's Changed," Chris Isaak. I listened to Chris Isaak pretty much constantly for about four years in the mid-'90s, and now rarely listen to him at all. Not sure why.

"Empty Glass," Pete Townshend. Love this album, love this song.

"Children of the Revolution," Kirsty MacColl. I wish she were still alive and making new music.

"Tomorrow, Wendy," Concrete Blonde. Goth mood music, appropriate to the season. The Augusta Jaycees' Haunted House is in a warehouse right across the street from me, tomorrow night. I'm definitely going.

"Blue Shoes," Katie Melua. More mood music, a gift from my friend Gary. But boy, it hasn't been a very cheerful set this morning...

I don't know how to break an egg open with one hand.

It's one of many enchanting scenes in the classic film Sabrina: Audrey Hepburn in cooking class, breaking egg after egg into a metal bowl with one hand only.

Every time I crack an egg I think of that, but I no longer try it myself; I've learned my lesson. I get the cracking part right, but when I try to open the egg with one hand, I either put my thumb through it or just crush the shell in my hand. I've always told myself it's because my hands are too small -- Audrey Hepburn had disproportionately large hands and feet, she was always self-conscious about them -- but I'm pretty sure people with hands smaller than mine can do this.

What is the trick? Can any of you do this, and if so, can you teach me? Or is it something I'll have to resign myself that I can never do, like whistling through my fingers?

I don't know why some words make me cringe.

This morning I'm eating a very good apple, which I almost didn't buy because its name makes my skin crawl: "Honeycrisp."

The word "crisp" has always bothered me, and combining it with anything -- as in this apple's name, or worse, the Burger King (is it Burger King?) "tendercrisp" -- makes me want to roll around in broken glass.

Why do some words feel like fingernails on a chalkboard, even when we see them? Most food adjectives do that to me, especially when they're applied to things that aren't food. I once dumped a guy for using the word "delicious" to describe a story (okay, that wasn't the only reason; that was symptomatic of much larger issues. But that's the part of it I remember). "Rich" bothers me in any context except to describe wealth. My younger sisters can't stand any word that describes a clothes fastening, especially "snap."

I'll defend the right to free speech with my dying breath, but the reason it's so important is because words themselves have so much power. One of the things I researched for The Express was a list of racial epithets in common use in the late 1950s/early 1960s; it caused me physical pain to put that list together, and it would not surprise me to hear that it hurt the actors who had to say those words.

If words couldn't hurt, we wouldn't need laws to protect our right to use them. The right to carry a weapon is the Second Amendment; the right to hurl invective is the first. I like to fantasize about issuing licenses to bear adverbs.

Anyway, I wish the apple growers had come up for a better name for this excellent apple. What words can you not stand to hear or see?

I don't know what dogs remember.

Dizzy, I admit, is not the world's smartest dog. He has some important dog skills, such as keeping track of how many biscuits I have in my pocket, and detecting feral cat poop at 20 yards. He can also hear (or smell) a peanut butter jar opening from about half a mile away. But he is not a problem-solver, his vocabulary is fairly small, and when the apocalypse comes, I fear I will not be able to rely on him to hunt for us.

So when I left him with family for more than a month, I was not sure he'd remember me when I got back -- or that he would remember me as his owner, and want to go away with me. Dogs don't wear watches or keep track of calendars; what's their sense of time?

I need not have worried. Dizzy was very glad to see me, and did not leave my side once I'd gotten to the Beas'. (He cries when I leave the room, even to go to the bathroom. My sister Peggy says that if he were a child, he'd need to be in therapy -- and that's probably true, but it's also very flattering to be the center of another creature's existence.

Dizzy wasn't glad to leave the Beas', though, and didn't want to get into the Beetle once I'd packed it up. He loves short car rides, as they're usually to the river, the park or to visit friends; suitcases mean a long trip, where I yell at traffic, and he hates that.

I got him from people who found him on a highway shoulder, so that may have something to do with it, too; he is afraid of car headlights at night, teenaged boys, skateboarders, umbrellas, and clowns. He used to be afraid of men with beards, but seems to be over that. He was about five months old when I got him, and when he has nightmares, I wonder what he's remembering.

He remembered Gardiner. About 20 miles from home, he started to get very excited, and he was thrilled when we pulled into our parking lot. Since we got home he has had joyful reunions with his two best dog friends in the neighborhood, and now it's just as if we had never left at all.

But I still wonder if he thinks about Clancy and Patches and the Beas, and he must miss their backyard, with all the squirrels.

What I Read This Week

This is actually what I read last week, because I've read almost nothing not work-related since Bouchercon began. (Declan Hughes made the comment on a Sunday morning panel -- how ironic it is that during a conference devoted to books, one has no time for reading.)

Frankie Y. Bailey, YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED ON MONDAY. Frankie was one of the panelists at the session I moderated -- on social issues in crime fiction -- and I'm so glad, because otherwise I never would have discovered this series. Criminal justice professor Lizzie Stuart searches for her mother, who abandoned her as an infant, and finds a tangled history of violence and murder in 1960s Chicago. Emotionally complex without a trace of sentiment; if anything, I'd have liked it to be longer.

Mark T. Sullivan, TRIPLE CROSS. I got a very early copy of this thriller, which won't be out until next year. At an exclusive Montana ski resort, the world's wealthiest people gather to celebrate New Year's Eve. A group of commandos takes over the compound and starts putting the business titans on trial for crimes against humanity. The head of security, badly wounded, makes it out alive - but his three children are still in the compound, hiding from the invaders. This is going to be a huge movie for someone.

Stuart Archer Cohen, THE ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC. A political thriller set in the very near future, in which a small group of radical patriots determine to take government back from corrupt corporate overlords by any means necessary. This book is at least 75 pages too long and annoyed me more than once, but the power of the story is undeniable, and I finished the book thinking of at least half a dozen people I'd recommend it to.

I don't know why synagogues don't have bells.

A random point of ignorance this morning, but church bells are a regular feature of life in my picturesque Maine town (and it is picturesque, especially at this time of year; it's raining today, but I'll take some leaf pictures tomorrow).

This was a question that occurred to me when I lived in Los Angeles, in a heavily Jewish neighborhood. We had all kinds of temples, from storefronts to elaborate Byzantine strucures -- but none of them had bells. (And no, Gardiner doesn't have any synagogues. Augusta has one. It doesn't have bells.)

Temples have shofars, ritual horns blown on high holy days, but no bells. For that matter, Islamic temples don't have bells, either. Why and how did Christians get the bells?

Bells as we think of them seem to have originated in China, so maybe Marco Polo introduced them to Europe -- but the middle East traded with China, too, so why weren't they interested? If anyone knows of a good history of bells, leave a recommendation below. I'd like to read it.

I don't know how we chose the foods that are supposed to be for breakfast.

Home again, with the luxury of my own kitchen and my own electric kettle and my own espresso machine. I always claim that I am not materialistic, but admit that having certain gadgets fills my heart with joy.

The refrigerator was empty after six weeks away, so I picked up essentials on way home: dog food, milk, bread, eggs, turkey. Rather than make eggs this morning -- because I am still very tired -- I am having a turkey sandwich, which feels like I'm getting away with something.

Why is this? Why don't Americans eat turkey sandwiches for breakfast? We eat other meats; we eat bread. And conversely, why does it feel like an event to have pancakes or waffles or bacon for any meal besides breakfast? How did Americans get to a collective agreement on the appropriate foods for breakfast?

I do know some of the history of how we started eating cereal for breakfast, one of the greatest marketing case studies of all time. Dr. John Kellogg and his rival, CW Post, deserve credit for essentially creating the American "health food" movement, and the first official health foods were breakfast cereals. But cereals replaced eggs and bacon, not turkey sandwiches.

As Pee Wee Herman said, "I'm a rebel..."

Five Random Songs

"Leave Me Alone (I'm Lonely)," Pink, from I'm Not Dead. I listened to this CD nonstop when I first got it, and now -- according to my iTunes history -- I haven't listened to it for more than a year. Weird. Anyway, this song is a little too on-the-nose for my first day back in Gardiner. Next.

"Summertime," Sam Cooke. Love Sam Cooke, dislike this cover, which sounds Muzak-y to me.

"Mary Mack," Great Big Sea. Even thinking about this tongue twister this morning makes me more tired. "Mary Mack's mother's making Mary Mack marry me, my mother's making me marry Mary Mack..."

"The Light Pours Out of Me," Magazine. From Zero: A Martin Hannett Story, 1977-1991, a great collection that introduced me to several bands I hadn't heard before, including this one.

"I'm an Optimist," Mark Isham. From The Express soundtrack, which is classic orchestral Americana; and why haven't you seen that movie yet? (Don't pretend you have; based on last weekend's box office, hardly anyone saw that movie. Go. Bring your kids. You'll be glad.)

I don't know the best way through New York.

Headed back to Maine this morning, a trip that will take between 10 and 12 hours depending on traffic, weather, and how many times I stop. It's a long trip to make alone, but bearable; I've done it so often that I am used to it by now. (I've driven from Gardiner to Virginia Beach in a single day, too, and will not be doing that again.)

When I tell people I'm headed north, those who have made the trip ask one question: "Do you take the George Washington or the Tappan Zee?" These are the two main bridges that get you from one side of southern New York to the other; the GW takes you through Manhattan, the Tappan Zee swings you around Manhattan and up through Westchester County. The Tappan Zee adds mileage, but unless you hit the GW in precisely the right circumstances, it can take an hour just to cross it.

I usually take the Tappan Zee; it's prettier, and traffic usually moves more quickly. Not always, though. The Tappan Zee requires a long stretch of driving on the Garden State Parkway, where traffic can be terrible. The Garden State Parkway also has toll booths every five to ten miles, and I am still holding out against the damn EZ Pass (a topic for a future post).

But the leaves are turning, and the sun is out, and even if the Tappan Zee takes a little longer, it will be prettier than the grime and traffic on the George Washington Bridge. And one advantage of driving alone with Dizzy is that Dizzy will never second-guess my route.

Dizzy will miss the Beas, who have taken such good care of him for the last six weeks; he'll miss Clancy, their big yellow Lab, and he'll even miss Patches, their cat. In his perfect world, I'd just move down here, and we'd all hang out together.

I don't know what happened to the "sleep cure."

At yesterday's Bouchercon Guest of Honor interview, Laura Lippman talked about having secretly read her mother's hidden copy of VALLEY OF THE DOLLS at an age that was too young to understand it completely.

I too felt too young to understand VALLEY OF THE DOLLS when I read it, and I was in my late 30s at the time -- but the power of good trash is that some images and plot points stick with you.

At one point fairly late in VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, the sex kitten Jennifer North checks herself into a clinic in Switzerland to lose weight through a "sleep cure" that keeps patients unconscious for a week at a time. The bipolar Neely O'Hara, strung out on pills and panicked over her own weight, latches on to this idea as a lifeline, although her own psychiatrist advises a year in a sanitarium.

My friend Karen Olson and I have discussed this wonderful old-fashioned vision of the sanitarium -- the idea of a gracious converted mansion with lounge chairs on a rolling green lawn, where quiet attendants dressed in white bring you toast and cups of tea. Did those ever exist, or did we just get the idea from some Harold Robbins miniseries? Whatever happened to the "rest cure"?

And for that matter, whatever happened to the "sleep cure"? I recently did some research about miraculous recoveries from extreme cases of hypothermia, which often involve a medically-induced coma, but I don't think that's the same thing. Is anyone still offering a VALLEY OF THE DOLLS-style sleep cure, and if so, for what, and what does it cost?

I realize the possibility of my own crummy insurance covering it is slim. But just for today, instead of driving home to Maine, I'm going to take a couple of Benadryl and try to catch up on my sleep. I've picked up an alarming cough, and hope that a day of antihistamines and 16 hours of sleep will get me back on the road early tomorrow morning.

Bouchercon was terrific, by the way. As usual, I didn't get a chance to talk to everyone I wanted to see, but did manage to spend some quality time with friends, make a few new ones, pick up a couple of new projects, and avoid making any new enemies that I know of. (And no, if I did make any new enemies, I don't need to know.)

I don't know where I'm going to see THE EXPRESS this weekend.

It remains true that I cannot be in more than one place at a time. Thus I have not been able to go to three panels simultaneously, nor have I been able to blog and hang out with my friends at the same time, nor have I been able to sleep and talk at the same time (contrary to appearances around 2:00 this morning).

I do hope, however, to see The Express this weekend even while I am officially attending Bouchercon. I'm not sure where the nearest movie theater to downtown Baltimore is, but I imagine the hotel staff will know.

This week's reading list is postponed until tomorrow, when I should have a little more time. In the meantime, go see The Express, and report back here after.

I don't know what to put on my business cards.

The meat of today's post is over at Notes from the Handbasket, my friend Laura Benedict's blog, where I am today's guest. Go there, leave a comment, and share if you win one of the prizes she's giving away.

I'm off to Bouchercon with way too much luggage -- what's appropriate for six weeks in New York is ridiculous for four days in Baltimore -- but I did manage to groom my eyebrows and remove unsightly facial hair, and I'm beyond excited to see so many of my friends in one place. Blogging will continue for the rest of the week, but who knows when or under what circumstances.

Five Random Songs

"She Loves the Jerk," John Hiatt. Another great song about unrequited love for someone else's woman, up there with "My Best Friend's Girl," "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" and -- yes, I'll put it out there -- "Jesse's Girl."

"Nothing New," Evan Frankfort. From the Trampoline Records Greatest Hits Vol. 1 collection, a gift from my sister Susan. This collection turned me on to several new artists I really like.

"You Do Something to Me," Bryan Ferry. Classic Cole Porter. "Do do that voodoo/That you do so well."

"Begin the Beguine," Salif Keita. More Cole Porter, this from the tribute album/AIDS research fundraiser Red Hot + Blue.

"China Girl," Pete Yorn. A cover of the David Bowie song, off the extra disc on musicforthemorningafter.

I don't know how to put nail polish on my right hand.

Bouchercon starts on Thursday morning, and I'm headed up to Baltimore tomorrow afternoon to settle in at my friend SueLin's and meet the members of my panel.

Bouchercon is basically one big high school reunion for the crime fiction world, and I'm looking forward to seeing lots of people I haven't seen for months or even years (Scott Phillips, find me!).

So I want to look my best, especially since I've spent the last month dressed in black in a windowless concrete bunker -- but this is where I run into a vast gaping hole in my knowledge base and skill set.

I don't know how to do any of the girly stuff, not really. A makeup artist on one of the game shows I did showed me how to put on makeup (finally, in my mid-30s), but it's still not something I do well. I get in trouble when I try to pluck my own eyebrows, and my cousin Sheila once compared my lipstick application skills to Bette Davis's in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (Okay, that was one night at Drag Queen Bingo, and I might have been Lipsticking Under the Influence.)

My fingernails have been mangled over the past two weeks of loading in and loading out, and I was thinking this morning that I might try to hide this with a bit of polish ... but then I remembered that it's one more thing I don't know how to do. I also don't know how to keep fingernail polish from chipping.

It's probably too late in the grand scheme of things, but if you see me at Bouchercon looking unkempt and have any ideas about how to fix that, feel free to offer. I'll be grateful.

I don't know how to prevent post-show letdown.

It's a physiological response, programmed into our genes by our earliest ancestors: after excitement, we sleep and recover. Several years ago, I did some literature research into the relationship between depression and infectious disease, and read a couple of studies that suggested that depression may be part of the body's immune system defenses. As Billy Crystal says in When Harry Met Sally, "One thing about depression is, you get your rest."

The show ended yesterday, and we had about half an hour to clear all of our stuff out of the theater. It's not a good system, and I hope NYMF changes that next year. But I was running all weekend, and excited about seeing visitors from out of town, and nervous about getting everything done ... and now it's Monday morning. I have some work I need to do and some cleaning of my sublet, but the big job of the past five weeks is over.

I could sleep for about a month, I think, but that is not an option. I need to get back to work that pays me and a town that is slightly less expensive than New York City. I'm anxious about everything I've neglected in the past month, and I'm going to miss my friends here and the daily excitement of the big city.

A bad funk is on its way, I fear, and I don't know how to prevent it. Bouchercon, later this week, should postpone it, and maybe if I postpone it long enough, it'll just go away. But suggestions are welcome.

Check local listings!

Sneak preview screenings of THE EXPRESS are showing in certain markets around the country tonight at 7:00. Check your local paper to see if it's showing near you, and go see it if you can.

If you can't make the sneak preview, the movie opens nationwide on October 10. I'll probably drag as many people as I can to a matinee in Baltimore at some point during the weekend.

While I'm here, birthday greetings to Thomas Schulz, celebrating today in Venice. That's a good excuse for not being able to catch THE EXPRESS...

I don't know what to do this afternoon.

Today is my last free day in New York City. I have shows tomorrow and Sunday, and Monday I head to Washington, DC for a few days before going to Baltimore for Bouchercon. (I am moderating a panel at 8:30 Thursday morning. If you get up that early and come see us, I will buy you coffee after and be your best friend for life.)

Anyway, I'm paralyzed by choice. What to do with my last free afternoon -- The Met? MOMA? The Guggenheim? The Morgan Library? The Cloisters? Somewhere I've never been? Maybe I could just go to a movie... or sit in a cafe with a cup of decaf and a slice of cake, doing Bouchercon homework and watching the world go by.

As I prepare to leave New York, I'm proud of how well I packed -- not just clothes, but books. I've read all but three of the books I brought with me, and we won't mention the three I bought yesterday, the two I got in this week's mail, or whatever I might pick up between now and Monday.

What I Read These Weeks (special two-week edition, since I didn't post last Friday)

Irvine Welsh, CRIME. It always interests me when "literary" authors turn to genre or young adult fiction, as if those were somehow easier than writing Serious Work about Serious Topics. I could make an argument for classifying some of Welsh's earlier work as crime fiction, and certainly he's fascinated by violence and redemption. CRIME is the story of a Scottish police detective who investigates a young girl's troubles while on vacation in Florida. Vivid writing and sophisticated literary techniques (alternating present-tense and second-person POV -- wouldn't one of those have been enough?) didn't keep this book from feeling weirdly tedious. It was interesting to compare CRIME with THE UNQUIET by John Connolly, a superior and very different take on similar subject matter.

Derek Haas, THE SILVER BEAR. More present-tense narration, but very well done; an impressive first novel about a hit man who calls himself Columbus, hired to take out a Presidential candidate with whom he shares a secret past. Reminiscent of Richard Condon and early Charles McCarry.

Will Thomas, THE BLACK HAND. The latest in this Sherlockian series finds private inquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, investigating a series of Mafia attacks on and around the London docks. More action than plot, but the pleasure of this series is the two main characters.

Alex Kava, EXPOSED. FBI Special Agent Maggie O'Dell is exposed to a deadly virus, spread by a criminal mastermind who borrows tactics from historic serial killers and mass murderers. The copy I read was labeled "in progress," but this was a solid thriller.

Jeffery Deaver, THE BROKEN WINDOW. Deaver's best in ages, a frightening thriller about identity theft. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs investigate a killer who frames suspects by using the most intimate secrets of their daily lives.

Patricia Sprinkle, SINS OF THE FATHERS. I don't read many amateur-sleuth novels. This one, about an investigation into how a black family's graves came to be on an all-white Georgia island, was plausible and compelling, but marred by two gratuitous acts of violence at the very end of the book.

Declan Burke, THE BIG O. I was favorably inclined toward this book because 1) it was a gift from the author, 2) my friend Bobby recommended it, and 3) it includes a reference to my friend Gary's movie Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead. Notwithstanding, this thriller is great fun in the Elmore Leonard tradition, unapologetically jammed with wild coincidences, and surprisingly low-violence for a book whose main characters are an armed robber, a kidnapper and a Siberian wolf.

I don't know the ideal attributes of a Vice President.

I have tonight off, which is great because, like most readers of this blog, I plan to watch the Vice Presidential candidates' debate. I feel other people's embarrassment too easily, and thus hope that both candidates are articulate, well-prepared, and polite to each other.

Beyond that, though, I don't have a good sense of what this debate is meant to achieve. What qualifies someone to serve as Vice President, other than the Constitutional minimum requirements?

We talk about Vice Presidents being a heartbeat away from the Oval Office; that has happened once in my lifetime, three times in my father's (and it's Dad's birthday today, so many happy returns). It hasn't happened in more than 30 years, though, and frankly I would not vote for either Joe Biden or Sarah Palin to be President of the United States.

The incumbent aside, traditionally the Vice President has represented the United States at state funerals, weddings and other ceremonial events, and the Vice President has been the Executive Branch's primary official liaison to the Legislative Branch. The Vice President serves as President of the Senate, and casts votes to break ties -- a real possibility in the next Congress.

Unquestionably, Joe Biden is more qualified to be President of the Senate than Sarah Palin is. Sarah Palin, however, is arguably better-looking than Joe Biden, and might look better in photographs at international funerals. As Vice President she might be as invisible and innocuous as Dan Quayle was, and as much fun for late-night talk show hosts.

Thus it seems to me that the standards for "winning" tonight's Vice Presidential debate are very different for Senator Biden and Governor Palin. Biden needs to convince us that he can help make a broken Congress work; Palin just needs to convince us that she won't be an international embarrassment.

I'm betting on Biden.

I don't know how important reviews are.

The good news is that the New York Times saw our show and liked it. (In the interest of full disclosure, we also got a rather scathing review from a theater website; I'm not going to link to that one.) By coincidence, the first reviews of The Express are also up at Rotten Tomatoes, and both are good.

Once again, though, I wonder what (or whom) reviews are really for. They're one person's opinion, and while that one person might have a body of experience or knowledge that makes him or her a subject matter expert, it's equally likely that that person is a recent college graduate who wrote the review for beer money or free tickets and had a nasty case of stomach flu that day. (Believe me, that isn't gratuitous snark; I've been that reviewer, or that reviewer's guest.)

The book community has been up in arms lately about the disappearance of book reviews and book review sections from newspapers, which is part of the catastrophic decline in newspapers in general. In New York, I read the newspaper on the subway, but when I'm home, I read the papers online, and so do most of my friends. I used to pay the fee to subscribe to the Times online, but they don't charge anymore, and that makes me happy -- although I wonder how it's going to work as a business model.

And it's true, I don't browse reviews online. More often, I look for reviews through sites that aggregate them (yes, usually Amazon, though I rarely buy from them). I almost never read a review before I've read the book, and it is very unusual for me to buy a book, see a movie or go to a play based on reviews.

Reviews are entertaining, and most weeks the reviews are all I read in Entertainment Weekly. Maybe that's enough of a reason to justify their existence. But I'm curious: do you read reviews? Do you make purchasing decisions based on them? Are there any reviewers you especially trust, or any you automatically ignore?

Five Random Songs

"Hesitating Beauty," Billy Bragg & Wilco. Woody Guthrie's marriage proposal, set to music by Wilco. This whole album (Mermaid Avenue) is great.

"Rain is Falling," ELO. One of the more obscure tracks off the Greatest Hits album. I've always thought they sounded like the Beatles, and this song is especially Beatle-y.

"Give Me Back My Wig," Hound Dog Taylor. Electric blues from the Alligator Records 20th Anniversary Collection.

"A Face in the Crowd," Kathleen Edwards. A great cover of one of my favorite Tom Petty songs.

"The Rascal King," The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. I've said it before and I'll say it again: horns are the bacon of popular music. Horns make everything more fun.

I don't know when I'll have another day off.

Today was supposed to be a day off, but I'm headed into the city in about an hour to try to reorganize our storage space at the theater. I think I know how to do it; I don't know whether I'll be able to do it in the hour allotted, and I don't know if I can do it without someone else to help me lift things.

All my clothes are at the laundry, except for a denim skirt and t-shirt I'm wearing. The denim skirt is not exactly practical for a task that might require me to crawl around in a closet, but I didn't know I'd have to do this when I got dressed this morning.

I'm tired and feeling a little sour today, which is foolish. I still have most of the day free, and since I'll be near Times Square, maybe I'll go see a movie afterwards.

Updated to add: It's pretty amazing how a good review can lift one's spirits. Unbeknownst to me, the Times reviewer was at yesterday's show. She liked it!

I don't know how long it takes to charge up a screw gun.

We have just over an hour to load in our show tonight; we get into the theater at 6:30, the house opens at 7:45. In that time, we need to put up two flats, install monitors and Plexiglas mirrors on two stands, and assemble a rolling table. We can do it all in the time allotted, but we need a screw gun -- and our screw gun is in storage at the theater, having lost its charge by the end of Saturday's strike. I do not know how long it takes to charge one up. Maybe we can plug in the screw gun itself while the battery charges. This woke me up around 4:00 this morning.

Anyway, the show's up. It's running. We had a sold-out house on Friday, and close to that on Saturday, and everyone seemed to like it.

We had a few technical difficulties. A flat broke loose in the middle of Act I on Friday, and only the quick reflexes of a couple of actors kept it from falling; our set designer ran around the back with a screw gun and repaired things mid-show. Brian Gallagher, the actor playing Kathie Lee Gifford's first husband, handled the mishap beautifully, and the audience seemed to enjoy it as part of the adventure of live theater.

On Saturday, one of the two video monitors that form the core of Act II's set wasn't working, so we had a black screen onstage. It must have been mildly confusing to the audience, but only mildly.

Tonight we get another chance to do it all again. Given the nature of live theater, I assume we'll correct the weekend's mistakes and find some new ones to make. Tonight's show is sold out, and I hope the audience likes it as much as last weekend's did.

Saturday night I took a busman's holiday and went to see [title of show], a musical about two friends writing a musical for the NY Musical Festival. It's playing through October 12 at the Lyceum Theatre on W. 45th Street, and it is absolutely delightful. I might need to see it again before I leave town.

I don't know what I'm forgetting.

Our show opens tomorrow. I didn't post yesterday and I probably won't post tomorrow, barring some unexpected disaster. I have three or four lists going of various things that need to happen between now and 8:00 p.m. tomorrow. Most of them will happen, but some of them probably won't.

Some of them might not be physically possible, and some of them, inevitably, have gotten left off the lists. I just forgot, and then I forgot that I forgot. This show has a lot of moving pieces: 11 actors, two musicians, six designers, a production staff of five, a creative team of four, a wardrobe assistant, not to mention the venue manager and her assistant and the wonderful Tim, who manages our rehearsal space.

We're a small village, and in just over a week, it'll all be over. Strange to think about, but the nature of the beast. A few years ago, I shot a pilot for a game show that is now on the air as "1 vs. 100." Bob Saget hosts it now; the funnier, hipper and more attractive John Fugelsang hosted the pilot I shot. (I was the winning contestant, of course; and I really was, no one had given me answers beforehand. If it had been a real game, I'd have won at least $50,000. As it was, I think they paid me $10/hour.)

Anyway, it was an intense experience over several days -- hours of working, waiting, correcting, doing it over and over until it was right. It felt great to be part of a team focused on a single goal. At the end everyone congratulated each other and hugged and promised to keep in touch -- and I've never seen one of those people since.

I didn't expect to; it's the nature of the work. This is much the same way. I hope I stay in touch with some of the people I've worked on this show with, but it won't surprise me if I don't.

I hope I never forget them, though.

I don't know the etiquette of social networking sites.

Against my better judgment, I put up a MySpace page a couple of years ago. For about a year, it was my primary means of communication with the man I was dating, which was weird because he had a normal e-mail account but preferred to communicate through MySpace.

That relationship didn't last, but I still have the MySpace page, and I wonder why. I've since put myself on Facebook, which is a much friendlier and safer environment -- MySpace is loaded with softcore porn and the worst excesses of young adult behavior, while Facebook is a place where people get serious about online word games. (Challenge me to Scramble, please; no one will play me any more.)

My MySpace profile is not inviting, to put it mildly. I describe myself as a know-it-all and say I don't want people sending me messages just because they like my photo. I state explicitly that I'm not online for flirting or intense online relationships with strangers. I also say I'm a professional editor, and warn people that I'll be rude to them if they send me messages written in textese or lolspeak.

But I keep getting friend requests from people who obviously haven't read my profile. Most of the time I just deny them; once in a while I think they might be someone I've met somewhere, and accept the friend request.

And then I get confused, because these fake friends often expect prompt and lengthy replies to their inappropriately personal inquiries or remarks.

Someone sent me a message today to ask why I was so angry. I couldn't remember having sent this person a message at all, but stopped long enough to reproach myself in case I had inadvertently been rude to someone who had no right to expect anything from me.

So what are the rules here? Certainly I'm not obligated to accept friend requests from strangers; am I obligated to respond to unsolicited correspondence? If I do respond, am I supposed to pretend to a friendship I didn't ask for and don't want?

It's probably easiest just to remove the dang MySpace page -- and I will, as soon as I'm out of tech week.

I do not know how to stuff 50 pounds of mud into a 10-pound bag.

The real estate market may be collapsing in other parts of the country, but Manhattan real estate will always sell at a premium. It's an island, after all, and there's nowhere to build but up.

New York is the only place I've ever been where people can tell you the precise square footage of their living space. I've lived in at least a dozen different places since college; I couldn't tell you the square footage of a single one. In New York, though, ten square feet can make the difference between a bedroom and a walk-in closet, so everyone knows.

Yesterday I sent my friend Richard, who's come down from Maine to be our Assistant Stage Manager, to The Container Store to buy bags to organize our props. We don't have Container Stores in Maine; Richard was a little overwhelmed by how crowded it was. But the key to New York life is that everything doubles as storage: tables have shelves and drawers, ottomans open to be storage cubes, beds have drawers or storage bags underneath them.

This week we've moved from the rehearsal space we had for the last three weeks into a much smaller room down the hall, and it's going to be a challenge. The new room has barely enough space to tape down the set, much less accommodate three musicians, dozens of props, twelve scene changes' worth of costumes, 11 actors and a production staff of five or six.

We'll figure it out, because we have to, but no simple solution occurs to me. It's good practice for our performance space, which is only a little bigger than this studio.

I do not know how to live like a bag lady.

The show opens a week from today, and we've started to incorporate costume pieces into our rehearsals. We have a cast of 11 and the show spans 30 years, which makes for a lot of costume pieces, and it's not safe to leave them in the rehearsal space overnight. So yesterday I volunteered to lug them home with me to Brooklyn.

Today we will be looking for another solution.

"They're not that heavy," our costume designer said, and he was right, for the first block. One of the bags, holding hats, wasn't heavy at all; the other, a vinyl block about the size of a courthouse cornerstone, weighed about 25 pounds. No big deal, except that my shoulder bag (with prompt book, computer, various supplies and my current reading material) weighs 15 pounds on its own, and the costume bag was just too big to be carried in any comfortable way.

So this morning I repacked everything into my big rolling duffle, thinking that would make my life easier. It did, but not by much; I am not strong enough to be able to carry the duffle up stairs easily, and you can't ride the New York subway without dealing with stairs. (You rarely see people in wheelchairs on the subway, because only a handful of stations are truly handicapped-accessible. Whenever I ride the subway, I appreciate the need for the Americans with Disabilities Act.)

Anyway, on my way home last night I needed to stop off at Kinko's to send out some e-mails, and I didn't drop all my stuff off first. As I was sitting there on my computer, surrounded by bags, a real bag man walked behind me and settled in another carrel. He was dragging a vertical shopping cart that apparently held all of his worldly possessions, packed into vinyl bags that looked just like mine.

It occurred to me, not for the first time, that street people need skills the rest of us never develop. Paradoxically, they must have heightened senses of self-preservation; they truly live by their wits, even if it's in a way that most of us shudder to think about. Certainly, the average bag lady manages her loads much better than I did last night or this morning.

What I Read This Week

Margaret Atwood, THE BLIND ASSASSIN. Claire lent me this book ages ago, and I finally got around to it last week; it's a dazzling, complex novel that is both love story and mystery, interspersing the memoir of 82-year-old Iris Chase with the novel written by her late sister, Laura, 50 years earlier. The book is similar in tone to The French Lieutenant's Woman, hiding its romantic heart under a determination to be unsentimental.

James Lee Burke, SWAN PEAK. I had doubts about a book that set Burke's iconic protagonist, Dave Robicheaux, in Montana instead of Louisiana; in fact, the new setting allows Robicheaux and his oldest friend, Clete Purcel, to learn new things about themselves and each other. And the real story here is not about Dave and Clete, but about an angry, frightening man named Troyce Nix, who gets an unlikely chance at redemption. One of the best in the series.

Jan Burke, BLOODLINES. Another book I should have read years ago. Three generations of a wealthy Las Piernas family disappear in one night, as the grandparents and parents are lost at sea and the grandchild is kidnapped from the family home. Twenty years later, the discovery of two bodies buried in a car offers some answers, but the mysteries are not finally resolved for another 25 years. Burke handles a complex plot masterfully, and the section of the book set in the '30s is so enchanting I wish she'd set an entire book there.

Tom Martin, PYRAMID. I was in the mood for an Indiana Jones-style adventure novel; this wasn't it. An Oxford don specializing in astronomy gets a deathbed message from her mentor, and she and a colleague chase clues around the globe to prevent the world from cataclysm. Martin lost me early on, when his brilliant Oxford astronomer had to ask someone what the Nazca lines were, and his heroes are ultimately nothing but witnesses to the book's ending.

I do not know how many people will be at Barnes & Noble - Lincoln Triangle tonight.

This morning's post is a total cheat, but I'm already running late. The cast of SHE CAN'T BELIEVE SHE SAID THAT will be performing tonight at Barnes & Noble - Lincoln Triangle, as part of a panel discussion on musical comedy. It happens from 5:30 - 6:30, and will be the first time any part of this show has been performed for the general public. If you're in the area, please stop by and say hi.

In other news, my friend Laura Benedict and her husband, Pinckney, are offering to match donations for relief of Hurricane Ike victims, up to $1,000. Check out details on her blog.

I do not know how to cope with other people's martyr complexes.

The great luxury of my regular lifestyle is that I don't have to play nicely with others, which has always been a challenge. I'm never really happy in a working group or a team unless I am running things -- but the responsibilities of leadership make me anxious and depressed and ultimately burn me out, which is why I left management.

Being a stage manager, though, is kind of ideal: I have authority without the ultimate responsibility for decision-making. I'm now dealing with far more people on a daily basis than I'm used to, and getting back into a small-group dynamic was one reason I wanted to do this. Social skills atrophy with disuse, and I worry that my current lifestyle is a bad cycle: I live and work the way I do because I can't suffer fools, thereby reducing my opportunities to learn how.

Not, I hasten to say, that anyone I'm currently working with is a fool. In fact, as one of my colleagues said last night, this whole process has been a sort of 15-way blind date, and as such, it's working out amazingly well. The actors in our cast are talented, bright and game for almost anything, and we don't have a diva in the bunch. They're assimilating a massive amount of information (information that's still changing) in a very short period of time, and I'm blown away by them.

We're all working very hard, and everybody seems pretty cheerful about that; last Friday aside, I'm cheerful myself, and having a great time.

But yesterday one of my colleagues made it clear that this intense workload is causing him suffering, and indicated that he needs some sympathy and admiration for this suffering -- and I had none to give. I was sharp, for which I need to apologize today. I also need to figure out how to respond to this without feeling angry about it, and how to give this colleague what he needs so we can all get through the next three weeks in peace, and remember the experience fondly.

So how do I do this? How do you respond to unspoken messages and unexpressed needs? How do you help change the narrative in other people's heads?

Five Random Songs

"The Bleeding Heart Show," The New Pornographers. Excellent cheering-up music...

"Every Day is Like Sunday," Morrissey. ... followed by music to send you back to bed. "How I dearly wish you were not here."

"Spring & All," Mary Chapin Carpenter. From a tribute album to songwriter Greg Brown.

"Trouble of the World (Coming Home)," The Nappy Roots. Gospel hip-hop from the soundtrack of The Ladykillers.

"Six O'Clock News," John Prine. A sad song about how a young man goes wrong.

I don't know why people drive in New York City.

Another day with an insufficient number of hours, or at least an insufficient number of hours with Internet access. The Brooklyn Heights library stays open until 8:00 on Tuesdays, at least.

I was up and on the subway around 8:15 this morning to get to the Tribeca Bed Bath & Beyond right when it opened at 9:00, so I could buy a rolling garment rack to serve as a rehearsal prop. The racks come flat in a big box, which I carried uptown on the 2 train to Times Square, and then carried four blocks across town to our rehearsal space at 41st and 10th Avenue. It's by no means the strangest thing I've seen carried on the subway, or on the street; the other day I saw a man walking down 9th Avenue carrying one of those giant hands in the shape of a chair.

My point is that it's easy to take most things on the subway, and people do. I've noticed lately that almost the only cars on the streets in Manhattan are taxis, cars with government plates, and cars obviously driven by non-New Yorkers. Why tourists think it's a good idea to have a car in New York City, I can't imagine.

That said, I have driven in New York a couple of times; in fact, one of my first attempts at a standard shift was on a car I drove from my friend Carmen's wedding in Brooklyn to her reception in Hoboken. I don't remember why or how I wound up being the one to drive that car, but I managed to get there without crashing, although I think I shrieked a few times.

I've since mastered the standard shift, but I'd still shriek if I had to drive here.

I don't know how to walk in high heels.

Before I start, Page Six mentioned our show today! Check it out here. Buy those tickets today, they're selling fast.

One difference between New York and Washington, DC is that women in Washington ride the Metro in sneakers and put their good shoes on at work, while women in New York ride the subway in heels. This puzzles me, since the streets of New York are much dirtier than those of Washington, and sidewalks are much bumpier and more cracked. Also, New York women seem to wear more expensive shoes than Washington women, so why wouldn't they be more careful?

If I had an office job in New York I'd mark myself as a rube by wearing sneakers to work, because I simply don't know how to walk any distance in heels. The other night I watched a woman and her date walk across the platform at 59th Street -- I'm guessing they had been to Lincoln Center, from their clothing -- and she was gliding on four-inch heels as if they were toe shoes. I admire that. I would lurch in those shoes, twist a knee and probably even break an ankle.

It's just not something I ever learned to do, and I'm not sure why. Part of it, undoubtedly, is that I was a senior in high school at the age of 15, and left for college at 16; I kind of skipped those last years of my teens, when most girls get serious about hair, makeup and other trappings of femininity. I never learned to style my hair with a blowdryer, I'm lousy at plucking my own eyebrows, and can't apply nail polish without looking like I came from a fingerpainting class.

Every so often I think I should make more of an effort, and I try -- but because it's not how people are used to seeing me, or how I'm used to seeing myself, I just look like I'm wearing a costume. I do have two beautiful pairs of high-heeled shoes that I bought in LA with well-meaning friends, and I think I've worn them a total of five times, combined. Needless to say, I didn't bring them to New York with me.

I do not know how to be in two places at once.

I'm in Manhattan right now, when I was originally supposed to be in Syracuse for tonight's gala premiere of The Express, the movie I've spent much of the last two years working on. No help for it; Equity rules require a stage manager to be present at all rehearsals, and I won't have an ASM until Sunday.

Yes, I am disappointed -- I would go farther than that and say that I am sad and I am actually pretty angry about this, but this show is something I wanted to do, too, so I can't complain much about not getting everything I want.

In grade school I went through a phase of fascination with all things supernatural and paranormal, as many young women do. (I have an elaborate theory about why this is, but will save it for a day when I'm not so busy.) Anyway, I was always especially interested in astral projection -- the idea that one's body could be one place while one's spirit was another. I spent a lot of time trying to astrally project myself to places I wanted to go, and managed nothing more than a few pretty good exercises in imagination.

Now that I think about it, though, even astral projection doesn't allow you to be conscious in two places at once. As I understand it, astral projection sends your consciousness away from your body, so the information your body receives while you're gone doesn't register. Sleep-learning doesn't work, as we know, and astral projection would probably work on a similar basis.

Thus dies another childhood ambition.

What I Read This Week

I am so busy that I literally want to cry about my inability to get everything done the moment I want to do it. On the plus side, I've had a lot of time for reading on the subway, and my lack of a reliable Internet connection helps with reading time, too.

Laura Lippman, HARDLY KNEW HER. I would never say that I prefer Laura Lippman's short fiction to her novels, but I like them just as much; it's like drinking Prosecco instead of Pinot Grigio. I'd read most of the pieces in this collection before, but it also includes some new stories, and an excellent new novella.

Jane Stanton Hitchcock, THE WITCHES' HAMMER. A prominent New York surgeon is murdered soon after coming into possession of an ancient grimoire, and his daughter is determined to find out the connection. A good premise and some moments of real suspense are thwarted by overwriting and tedious detail. A more rigorous edit could have made this a much better book.

Elmore Leonard, THE HOT KID. Somehow I didn't get to this book when it first came out, but it's perfect subway reading: a rollicking Western set in 1930s Oklahoma, without an ounce of fat on it. Leonard's best in years.

Gene Kerrigan, THE MIDNIGHT CHOIR. I was impressed with Kerrigan's debut, LITTLE CRIMINALS, and even more impressed with this second novel. A jewelry heist, a suicide attempt and a mother's desperate effort to regain custody of her son come together to bring the past home to a Dublin police detective. Kerrigan manages a terrifically complex structure like a seasoned veteran, and the ending feels both shocking and exactly right.

Laura Benedict, CALLING MR. LONELY HEARTS. Laura's a friend of mine, and I read this book in manuscript; it won't be out until the very end of the year. Even if Laura weren't my friend, I'd be dazzled by this book, a truly creepy tale of revenants and damnation. Three teenaged girls cast a spell to bring them a lover, with consequences that ripple through the next 25 years and ruin more lives than their own.

I don't know the significance of "seven years."

Seven years is a fraught span of time. Jacob worked seven years for Leah, and then another seven years for Rebecca. Joseph's Egypt had seven fat years followed by seven years of famine. Grade school legend says it takes seven years to digest swallowed gum, and breaking a mirror gives you seven years of bad luck. Marilyn Monroe tempted Tom Ewell in The Seven Year Itch, and it used to take seven years to recover from bankruptcy (though I think it may now be ten -- anyone know?). Michael Apted chose seven years as the appropriate interval for his documentaries about a group of British schoolchildren as they grew up.

I remember hearing somewhere that all the cells in the human body replace themselves over seven years, so that every seven years each of us is a new person. (I don't understand how that phenomenon interacts with the aging process, but never mind.)

So today is the seventh anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It seems almost unbelievable that it's been seven years already, but I also have a hard time remembering the world as it was on September 10, 2001, before everything changed. I used to be able to drive my car down Pennsylvania Avenue, right past the White House; as recently as when I was in college, people could buy tickets right on the airplane, the way you can on trains.

I don't know what I think about the idea of a national holiday on September 11. Maybe it's not a great idea. Veterans' Day and Memorial Day used to mean more than sales and a free day off, and I'd hate to see the same thing happen to September 11. What would we call it, anyway?

I don't know why clams are happy.

The show I'm stage-managing includes the line, "I'm happy as a clam." As we were blocking it yesterday, I realized that I have no idea what this means. It's one of those expressions that makes no sense, like "pissed as a newt" or "sick as a pig."

Are clams happy? How would we know? What are the hopes and dreams of a clam, and what might be its disappointments? Do clams have history and tradition? Is their lack of this what makes them happy?

And why, if clams are happy, should oysters not be equally so? Well, oysters get irritated; this irritation is what produces pearls (thereby providing metaphors for second-rate poets and self-help gurus through time immemorial). So oysters without pearls might be happy -- except that they don't have pearls, and certainly pearls are something that would make me happy.

Why not say, "Happy as a good dog?" or "Happy as a game-show contestant?"

Five Random Songs

"Act of the Apostle, Pt. I," Belle and Sebastian. Ooh, how appropriate -- "Oh, if I could make sense of it all..."

"Chelsea Hotel," Regina Spektor. A cover of the Leonard Cohen classic; one of my favorite songs, but I'm undecided about this version. I'm undecided about Regina Spektor in general.

"Bizarre Love Triangle," New Order. A blast of hope on the grayest day, an immediate mood-booster no matter what -- the greatest pop portrait of infatuation I've ever heard. Words can't express how much I love this song.

"Welcome to My Party," Lea Delaria. Lea Delaria is a vocalist who should get more attention; I saw her live once in Hollywood, courtesy of my cousin Deidre.

"Go West (Farley & Heller Mix)," The Pet Shop Boys. Not only do I own the Pet Shop Boys, I own a collection of their disco remixes. And I am not ashamed.

I don't know what makes it "Greek" yogurt.

All yogurts are not equal. I first started eating yogurt in the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. My mother didn't like it (she had issues with food textures), so we never had it in the house when I was growing up. I tried it at a friend's house and liked it, and since it was a convenient thing to take for lunch, that whole summer I lived on not much more than Light & Lively yogurt, very strong instant iced tea, and the occasional piece of toast. (Not recommended: I weighed 103 pounds, at my current height, and photos from that summer show me as a long-haired but cheerful skeleton.)

Anyway, I like yogurt, but have since abandoned the Light & Lively (i.e., gelatin-based) style, which often came in colors unknown to nature. Other types of yogurt might as well be pudding, and I stay away from those, too.

But Greek yogurt is something else. The Gardiner Hannaford doesn't sell it, but the food shop at the Clark St. subway station does: Fage (pronounced "Fa-YEH," the container says helpfully), in several flavors, with honey and without.

I like the plain stuff; it's like eating straight sour cream, except that the package claims it has no fat and only 90 calories. How is this possible? How is it made, and what makes it "Greek"?

I could look it up, but I'm already running late this morning. My blogging schedule may have to change to evenings, but we'll see how this week goes.

I don't know how to drink out of a Nalgene bottle.

Bottled water's a ripoff and bad for the environment, okay? If your local water isn't safe to drink, do something about it; show up at a meeting of the water board, install a filtration system, or buy a Brita pitcher. And I say this as a former resident of the District of Columbia, which did have boiled water alerts on an alarmingly regular basis for a while in the mid-90s.

Green wannabe that I am, I carry around a cool blue Nalgene® water bottle that advertises the fine, fine novel KILLER INSTINCT by Joseph Finder (and was a gift from that gentleman, a client and friend). It has a top that twists on tightly, to avoid leaks, with a loop that makes it convenient to hang off my messenger bag. It's extremely durable and holds 32 oz., so if I drink two of them over the course of the day I've satisified the requirements of my food plan.

The problem is that once the bottle's about 1/4 full, I can't drink out of it without spilling it down my front. It's a design issue, I think, or else there's some trick I haven't been able to figure out; I have to tilt the bottle up to pour the water into my mouth, but the mouth of the bottle itself is so wide that excess slops out on either side of my face. It's embarrassing.

Does anyone else have this problem with these bottles, or am I the only one? What is the secret I don't know? Thanks for your help ...

I don't know where I'm going to find an assistant stage manager.

I wasn't supposed to be the Production Stage Manager for this show, and I don't mind admitting it. I mean, I do theater as a hobby, and almost all of the other people involved in this production are seasoned professionals.

Assistant stage manager, that was my original title. It was going to be great; I had no problem doing whatever grunt work needed to be done, in exchange for a laughable stipend and the opportunity to learn the real job from a professional.

But understudies are part of life in the theater, and when the original PSM got a real job (with a show that was not part of a festival), I got promoted. And so far, it's been great. I'm having the time of my life, learning things at an astonishing rate, and managing to keep up with it all pretty well so far (check back about this in three weeks).

The problem is, though, that I did not have an understudy, and theater has no 25th Amendment. The 25th Amendment, remember, is the one that allows for the appointment of a new Vice President after the Vice President resigns or dies in office, and revises the succession to the Presidency if the President resigns or dies. We didn't need it until Spiro Agnew resigned in the middle of the Watergate scandal, throwing everything into chaos.

But I digress. We don't currently have an assistant stage manager, and we need one. We need one now, during rehearsals, but we can't do without one during performances; someone has to be backstage to oversee scene changes and props and wardrobe, and as someone recently said to me, "You can't leave actors on their own backstage." (That's not meant as an insult -- not really -- it's just that actors need to focus on their performances during a show, and it needs to be someone else's job to worry about everything else.)

So if you know anyone in New York who'd like an adventure in the theater, send him or her my way. At this point, no experience is necessary, just a good attitude and some decent organizational skills. On-the-job training guaranteed.

I don't know what goes into the aroma of the New York subways.

"New York Subway" is a fragrance unlike any in the world. If you woke me up in the middle of the night with a vial under my nose, I could tell you exactly what it was -- but what is it, and where does it come from?

Diesel oil and tar are its primary components, which doesn't make much sense, since I think the trains are electric -- aren't they? -- and the subway tunnels are concrete. Above the diesel and tar are the more expected smells of a giant city: garbage, old urine, sweat, damp wool, coffee, food.

Several years ago I toyed with the idea of moving to New York, and spent a week with friends in Brooklyn, just poking around the city. At night I'd sleep on their pullout sofa and dream about spending hours scrubbing out subway stations on my hands and knees. Washington, DC keeps its subway stations almost unnaturally clean; why can't New York? (Obvious answer: New York's system has many times the number of subway stations, many times the number of riders, and is about 100 years older than Washington's.)

This morning I shared the elevator at Clark Street with a father and daughter, and the little girl picked an empty potato chip bag up off the floor. As she moved to pick up another piece of trash, her father said, "Sweetie, you don't have to clean up the whole car." "But I want to," she said.

What I Read This Week

Olen Steinhauer, THE TOURIST. Matt Baldacci of St. Martin's put the advance copy of this book in my hand at BookExpo America in May, saying it was the best novel they were publishing next winter. I wouldn't disagree; it is certainly the best spy novel I've read this year. Milo Weaver is a former covert agent trying to live a normal life as an office employee of the CIA. A legendary international assassin tracks Milo down, not to kill him but to find out who has killed the assassin himself -- he's dying of AIDS. Milo's search takes him back to the deepest secrets of his own life in a novel whose twists continue to the last page.

Michelle Gagnon, BONEYARD. FBI Agent Kelly Jones investigates the discovery of several sets of bones, buried in the Berkshires. Someone's been killing young gay hustlers, and soon it seems that a second killer is at work. I figured out the killer pretty early on, but this is still solid entertainment from an excellent new writer.

Marianne Wiggins, THE SHADOW CATCHER. A dazzling novel that weaves historical fiction -- the story of turn-of-the-century Western photographer Edward S. Curtis -- with a fantasia on Wiggins's own life. Gorgeous writing and a gripping story, and I wished it had been twice the length.

I don't know if I'm going to get to see Alison Gaylin and Jason Starr tonight.

Insanely, ridiculously, off-my-feet busy today -- so busy that I left my prompt book in Brooklyn and have to run back to get it before rehearsal starts at 1:00. It's always something... I knew I was leaving something behind this morning, but couldn't figure out it until I got to Hell's Kitchen, where our rehearsal space is. I kept clutching for things -- phone? check; sunglasses? check; iPod? check; wallet? check -- it didn't occur to me that the missing item was the single biggest thing in my messenger bag. Sigh.

Anyway, tonight my pals Alison Gaylin and Jason Starr (and, I hear, the legendary Ken Bruen) are reading from their works at The Mysterious Bookshop in Tribeca. The event starts at 6:30, but I don't get out of rehearsal until 8:00 ... I hope someone will send me a text message to let me know where they go, if I miss them at the store.

But if you're in NY tonight and not in rehearsal, you have no excuse. Go see them. Maybe I'll meet you there.

I don't know why I'm supposed to wear sunglasses.

Eyes are mysterious to me. A couple of years ago I did a lot of research for a client on artificial eyes, which was was handy because it gave me the vocabulary I needed to talk to my own doctors earlier this year, when I was diagnosed with an atypical form of a degenerative eye disorder.

At this point it is no more than an inconvenience, whose main symptom is an inability to see much in the dark or in low light -- but I still don't understand much about the mechanics of this disorder, or why one of the few things the doctors advised me to do was wear big, dark sunglasses all the time when I'm outside in the light.

Don't get me wrong; I'm as fashion-conscious as the next person. I like the idea that I look cool in big sunglasses (shut up, I do look cool) and they hide the permanent bags under my eyes.

But it's annoying and inconvenient, because my trouble is not being able to see in low light -- and what do the sunglasses do? They reduce the light! It's just perverse, and I don't understand it. I'm constantly pushing my sunglasses up, and have become one of those people who wears sunglasses atop her head even at night, because otherwise I will set them aside and lose them. (I've lost three pairs since the beginning of the year. Fortunately, two of these were pairs I got for $2 apiece at Big Al's.)

My sunglasses are on top of my head right now, in fact. I'm posting this from a nice little coffee shop on 9th Avenue that offers cheap internet access and is only a block from our rehearsal space. It's going to be my home away from home for the next month, I suspect, and I only wish it had evening hours.

Five Random Songs

"Stir It Up," Delbert McClinton. A cover of the Bob Marley classic.

"One Step Up," Bruce Springsteen. From Tunnel of Love, a song about the end of a relationship -- I associate it with the breakup of one of my own.

"All Good Gifts," from the Godspell soundtrack. Love this song...

"Island of No Return," Billy Bragg. From Back to Basics. I saw a fistfight break out at a Billy Bragg concert once, actually. Bragg saw it and stopped the concert from the stage until the guys cut it out. That was cool.

"Please Don't Bury Me," John Prine. An anthem for organ donation. Seriously.

I don't know what makes strangers punch each other.

Yesterday afternoon I staggered over to the taxi stand by Penn Station, dragging the largest suitcase I own. (Today's post might just as easily have been, "I don't know how to pack for six weeks away from home," but I might use that later in the week.)

It was a gorgeous afternoon, and the line moved quickly. At the head of the line, a pink, balding man in his late 40s or early 50s moved to enter a cab.

Words were exchanged, but I didn't hear them. What I heard was the man shout, "Where you going? Where you going? F--- you!" The cab started to pull away; the man kept yelling, "F--- you! F--- you!"

The angry man started to get into the next cab, still shouting, but -- inexplicably -- the first cab stopped, and the driver got out. The angry man walked over to him and chest-bumped him, the way ballplayers do to umpires. The cab driver shoved him, and the angry man punched him in the face.

It was a clumsy punch, the punch of a man who's only seen it done on TV; the cab driver looked more experienced, and punched the angry man in the gut. And there the two of them were, brawling on 8th Avenue in front of all of us in line. The taxi dispatcher did nothing; two other cab drivers eventually got out of their cars and pulled the men apart.

The angry man demanded a police officer, and said he wanted to file assault charges. The taxi dispatcher ignored him. Eventually the man took another cab, and rode away.

Why does this happen? The angry man might have been drinking, but I couldn't tell; the cab driver seemed to be just an ordinary cab driver. It was 4:00 in the afternoon on a beautiful day.

This is something women don't do. I've never thrown a punch, except for one well-remembered day when I punched my brother Ed in the belly -- he was a toddler at the time -- just to see if it would push in like the Pillsbury Doughboy (it did, kind of). It's not on my list of things that would occur to me to do.

And ordinarily I try to stay away from places where people are likely to punch each other, but how would I know to stay off the streets of New York on a Monday afternoon?

Things I Don't Know

I'm up early this morning, more out of anxiety than anything else. In about five hours I'll board an express bus to midtown Manhattan, where I'll catch a cab to Brooklyn, where I'll dump my stuff before a 6:00 meeting with my director so that I can put together a list of things I need to do before tomorrow's 1:00 p.m. rehearsal.

It feels a little like leaving for college. I expect to learn more in the month ahead than I have in years -- not just about the process of putting on a show, but about all kinds of things. I'm throwing myself outside my comfort zone, and it's good for me. The one advantage of being single at 42 is that I can do this sort of thing without anyone calling it a midlife crisis, or disrupting anyone else's lifestyle and expectations.

But the month ahead is going to be a major exercise in learning what I don't know, which inspired the topic for the coming year.

The "Answer Girl" persona started as a fictional character in a novel I was writing (which I may one day get back to, but who knows). I use it ironically, but it's taken on a life of its own. It is not unusual for me to get phone calls from dinner parties or e-mails first thing in the morning from friends who have questions they think I can answer. It's become a party trick; sometimes makes me feel like a circus freak, and sometimes it makes me feel like a fraud, because I don't always know.

I collect information. It's what I do for fun and anxiety relief, as if knowing Gerald Ford's birth name (Leslie Lynch King, Jr.) or the capital of South Dakota (Pierre) could protect the people and things I love from harm. It is massive, nearly compulsive overcompensation for my acute awareness of all the things I don't know -- like how much it's going to cost me to live in New York for a month or how I'm going to get all my work done or how little sleep I can survive on for the next six weeks. Or why my hair is suddenly so gray...

But I also don't know bigger things, like why John McCain chose Sarah Palin as a running mate or how Barack Obama plans to pay for universal health care. I don't know why the levees in New Orleans aren't ready for another hurricane, and I don't know where those two million people have gone.

So this year's blog is going to be all about things I don't know, and how I deal with that ignorance. Sometimes I'll look it up; sometimes I'll make it up; sometimes I'll just deal with the anxiety. And every day, by posting the topic on the blog, I'll ask you.

I can use the help.

A Message from John McCain

Hey, you! Reagan Democrat over there! You're a woman, right? You look like a woman, but kids these days keep their hair pretty long ... heh, heh ... and I see freckles. Irish? You're Irish? Yeah, I bet you're a Catholic. And I must say that hair dye's keeping you youthful-looking.

Anyway, my pollsters tell me you're excited about voting for a member of your own generation. And you thought it was cool that a woman got so far in this year's Democratic primaries.

So I've got a deal for you: a woman on my ticket! And she's only 44!

What? What's that you say? She has no meaningful policy experience? Oh, come on. She was mayor of Wasilla. Wasilla has almost 8,500 people in it. It's bigger than the town YOU live in, isn't it? And she's been governor of Alaska since - uh - 2007. And she's only had one independent investigation launched against her so far!

But this is the great part -- she's pro-life! She's so pro-life she has FIVE children -- and the last one's only four months old! And he has Down syndrome! And she's going to make him a prop in a nationwide campaign, isn't that cool?? Her teenage daughters are bound to be psyched about all this, too, and her seven-year-old will love that big house on Observatory Circle.

I know you'll be as pleased as I am about my choice of the most qualified woman I could find to join me in this quest for the Presidency. Don't think about the fact that I'm 72; it's not as if Governor Palin would ever have to run things herself. She's just here to look pretty. Did I mention she was almost Miss Alaska?

Off to join the circus

I leave early Friday morning for points south, and won't be back in Gardiner until mid-October. Between now and then I'll be in Washington, New York and Baltimore, and hope to see many of my friends and relations. If you need more detailed information about my whereabouts, send me an e-mail.

The blog resumes on Monday, and no, I still don't have a theme. We'll both be surprised.

In the meantime, I took a few days off last week, and got a lot of reading done.

What I've Read Lately

Jennifer Finney Boylan, I'M LOOKING THROUGH YOU: Growing Up Haunted. A very loose memoir of Boylan's life growing up in a haunted house, as a girl in a boy's body. Boylan is a funny, insightful, compassionate writer -- I was a fan of her novels when she was James Finney Boylan and loved her first memoir, SHE'S NOT THERE. This book could have used a little more structure, but still left me with the feeling that she's someone I'd love to know in person.

Sean Chercover, TRIGGER CITY. A worthy follow-up to Chercover's dazzling debut, BIG CITY, BAD BLOOD. Chicago PI Ray Dudgeon agrees to investigate an apparently straightforward murder for the victim's father, a retired Army colonel, and discovers an international conspiracy. The book will be out in October.

Jack O'Connell, THE RESURRECTIONIST. Jack O'Connell is a unique voice who's been silent much too long. His books are unclassifiable, somewhere between crime fiction and fantasy; this book is unquestionably a thriller, but one that deals with things seen and unseen. Sweeney, a pharmacist, brings his comatose son Danny to the prestigious Peck Clinic in hopes of a cure. What he finds are two very different philosophies of dealing with the comatose, which require him to make life-changing decisions about his future and his son's. That description doesn't begin to describe the strangeness and wonder of this book. I will need to read it again about six months from now.

Clare Langley-Hawthorne, CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. A debut novel set in Edwardian England, featuring the politically active heiress Ursula Marlow. Someone is killing the daughters of wealthy men, for reasons that may have to do with a secret in Ursula's father's history.

Lee Child, NOTHING TO LOSE. Jack Reacher crosses between the Colorado towns of Hope and Despair, and runs afoul of Despair's police force. They're rude to him for no reason he can identify, so he decides to teach them some manners. Not one of the stronger titles in this series; Reacher, always an anti-hero, comes off as irrational and petty, and the end of the book is just plain ugly.

Max Allan Collins, THE FIRST QUARRY. Classic pulp about a hit man's first job, set sometime in the 1970s.

Michelle Gagnon, THE TUNNELS. A very impressive debut novel. FBI Special Agent Kelly Jones returns to her alma mater (a New England university based on Wesleyan), where a serial killer has been slaughtering young women in a tunnel network underneath the campus. Tight, clean, suspenseful, with a strong, believable heroine; the sequel's already on my to-be-read pile.

Books, Books, Books

Hey, everybody -- just checking in to post a reading list, and spread the word that Ballantine is offering a free PDF download of Katherine Neville's THE EIGHT between now and August 18 -- just click here for details.

Travel time last week meant extra time for reading, and a bout of insomnia's helped as well.

What I Read These Weeks

P. G. Wodehouse, HOT WATER. Kevin Wignall recommended this non-Jeeves novel, which I'd saved as a reward for finishing some work. Kevin says he can't understand why no one's made a movie of this, and I agree. A chateau off the coast of France is the setting for several elaborate schemes, including the blackmailing of a Senator, a jewel heist, and two disastrous engagements. Wodehouse pokes at everything from Hollywood to literary pretensions, and I laughed out loud.

Louis Bayard, THE BLACK TOWER. Louis Bayard is a beautiful writer, and explores new material in every book. I was - er - thrilled to snag this advance copy at the Thrillerfest banquet. In Restoration France, a medical student becomes involved in a series of murders -- because his father, a physician by the same name, had treated the young Dauphin in the Bastille. The Dauphin died of disease or malnutrition during the Terror -- or did he? A marvelous, moody book that raises as many questions as it answers.

Victor Gischler, GO GO GIRLS OF THE APOCALYPSE. I'd have read this book anyway, but Karen Olson's recommendation booted it to the top of the pile. In the not-so-distant future, the world goes to hell in a handbasket: flu epidemic, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, food riots, and the destruction of Washington, DC send Mortimer Tate into a cave with a decade's worth of supplies. Nine years later, he emerges to find a world where the only semblance of order is a chain of strip clubs -- Joey Armageddon's Sassy-A-Go-Go -- and Mortimer's own ex-wife is one of the main attractions. Mortimer sets out to find his wife, and gets caught up in a post-Apocalyptic showdown in the skyscrapers of Atlanta. It's horrifying, funny, surprisingly poignant, and all too plausible; Gischler is a twisted genius.

Elie Wiesel, NIGHT. I'm not sure how or why I never read this book before, but saw it mentioned recently on a friend's blog, and decided it was time. This memoir of Wiesel's time in the Nazi death camps is a permanent human document. Everyone needs to read it; it's on school reading lists for a reason.

Janet Evanovich, LEAN MEAN THIRTEEN. A little light reading, for a break; Stephanie Plum hunts for her missing ex-husband, a shady lawyer. Cars get destroyed, junk food gets eaten, Stephanie flirts with Ranger but winds up with Joe Morelli. It's reassuring.

Will Peterson, TRISKELLION. The first young-adult novel by Mark Billingham and Peter Cocks, to be the first in a trilogy. Twins Adam and Rachel spend the summer in their mother's home village of Triskellion, which is haunted by a dark secret. The premise is good but the pace is slow, and the big reveal at the end is a little too understated.

Ammon Shea, READING THE OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages. A short account of Shea's year spent reading the Oxford English Dictionary, with some of the best words he discovered. An absolutely delightful book, and must-reading for any fan of words. I wish it had been twice as long.

Chelsea Cain, SWEETHEART. I read most of this book in one sitting, waiting for a new tire; I had a blowout the other day in Brunswick, and an advance copy of this book was in my trunk. I didn't like Cain's first novel, and this is more of the same. If you liked HEARTSICK, you'll like this one: haunted homicide detective Archie Sheridan battles beautiful serial killer Gretchen Lowell. It's a fast read, and well-done, but left me feeling as if I'd been reading pornography.

Dick Francis, UNDER ORDERS. Francis's first novel in years brings back ex-jockey Sid Halley, who mysteriously hasn't aged at all. It's not his best work, though, and the prose clunks in places. Read the earlier books instead.