"Couches are good for one thing."*

...and that would be for lying upon (while H takes all four boys to his parents for an hour or so, God bless the man), with a drink close to hand, a nice bowl of cashews, my laptop (12 ongoing games of Scramble), and Devil in the White City which I am finding surprisingly (to me) readable. It reads like a novel. It's fascinating.

And Vicki Glembocki told me to read it.
Yes, THAT Vicki Glembocki.
I talked about her book The Second Nine Months, remember? I was enjoying it very much. And she found me and emailed me. Before I could email her to tell her how much I liked it (well, really, before I could - via email - throw myself at her feet, arms wrapped around her ankles, sobbing, "Yes! Me too! Me too! I loooooove you! Can we get our babies together and have coffee? And do you truly not care if I have showered or not?")

And again, we all know how I am with Real. Live. Authors. (Right, Rebecca?)(I wonder if I should have used my favorite sycophant quote for this post..)

So - read her book. in fact, BUY her book - this sort of honesty should be rewarded. It's funny. And spot-on. If you've had a baby to care for 24/7, you'll get it; if you haven't (and plan to), consider yourself (truthfully) forewarned. It's straight up, it's not Girlfriend's Guide (which lost me when she told me to basically starve myself while breastfeeding to get my bod back SIX weeks after birth). It's not What to Expect (which basically yells at you for eating anything that's not wholesome and wholegrain - she says, drink in hand). It's just real. And funny. And heart-wrenchingly accurate. I may very well make my husband read it - or maybe not. As he has already experienced one woman's baby crazies.

In other book news:

- reading Lucinda Rosenfeld's What She Saw. I was speeding through it, thoroughly engrossed, and then the protagonist's affair with a jerk of a professor threw me - and her - off track, and Phoebe has emerged as this whining, narcissistic, bulimic, insecure bimbo - and I am having a tough time continuing. Which is sad because I really liked Phoebe in the first half of the book.

- also reading Revolutionary Road. Gina's description of it as the novel form of Virginia Woolf is accurate. Frank Wheeler is an asshole; his wife April is a twit. And yet I keep reading because I must know what happens.

- just bought a hardcover of the inestimable David Mitchell's Black Swan Green which I remember liking very much but don't remember much else. Plus, I read Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and Nigel Slater's Toast around the same time and am sure I have it confused with one or both of them.

- bought Greg Bear's Quantico for H's birthday. I read and liked Darwin's Radio (but I was pregnant at the time and it freaked me out pretty badly).

- bought a Titanic book for Seg's fifth birthday coming up in a few weeks. Wonder of wonders, to find a Titanic book we don't already own!

- restrained myself from buying Terzo a little stuffed puppy dog he was playing with at the bookstore (he was "ruff! ruff!"-ing at Quarto). Oh. My. God. He was so dang cute, and he kept talking about his "friends" (what he calls all his stuffies he must sleep with). I did buy him a book about backhoes, though. Because that boy has me wrapped right around his little finger. And everyone knows that backhoes ROCK.

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* John Wayne