Check out this awesome video featuring authors talking up the reasons to give books to all those on your gift list:

My wish list is here–I always want books!

Reading a YA book for work right now–things have sadly slowed down and this is the first book I’ve been assigned to read in months. I’m mildly amused because the author gave one character the name of a state and another character the name of a prominent city in that state. It’s obviously an accident, and easy to do when you’re coming up with character names. I do it all the time. Once I realized that I had paired my main character “Stewart” with a character named “Martha” and I had an entire page of dialogue between MARTHA and STEWART. Free association is a powerful thing.