two.

I finally finished the anthology of vampire stories, Women of the Night. Interestingly enough, this book doesn't come up first on a google search. Anybody want to guess what does?

It had some great stories, and some good stories, but it didn't really have any bad stories, per se. Some of the stories were a bit longer than I would have liked, but none of them were too formulaic.

My favorites were Neil Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, Apples" and "Faith like Wine" by Roxanne Conrad (or Longstreet--same person, but one of those names is a pseudonym). The book had a fair distribution of horror, fantasy, and urban fantasy. At first, I was afraid that every story was going to be about a man drawn to this beautiful woman who turns out to be a vampire and kills him. or something. But a lot of the stories, if not most of them, deviated from this cliche. Another entertaining, but slightly tiring, story is "Claim-Jumpin' Woman, You Got a Stake in My Heart" by Esther Friesner.

So on the whole I liked the book. I'll probably pass it along for my sister to read, since none of my friends (except for one in Atlanta) share my predilection for the paranormal and/or the supernatural.

I kind of heart Neil Gaiman.

Right now I'm reading Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Not paranormal, supernatural, apocalyptic, or dystopian. Sometimes a girl needs a break. I bought this book in the Atlanta airport while Carla and I were waiting around for the flight to Mexico. But I was too nervous on the flight (both there and back--I don't really enjoy flying, especially with a child who I do not legally have custody of) to actually read and retain any of it. I'm almost half-way through with it, and I think I'll reserve it for my reading at school between classes. Since I have a three-hour break on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I've also been looking at ebooks for my Kindle, since it is supposed to ship at the end of this month. I read for about an hour yesterday about the file types it accepts and the conversions, etc, but I am still just as lost. Some things said that the kindle will automatically convert things to its file type but it's .10 per document charged to your account. Another said that it will do it free. I now know there is a way to convert .lit files to .azw files (kindle proprietary file-type), but I don't understand the instructions. What is a .mobi? or something like that.

I will have to catch my sister on a good day and prettily beg (oxymoron) for assistance. She's the only person I trust with all my techgeekery. My co-teacher (I have a masters degree already, so I can legally teach, but many of the people in my program can't legally teach yet--you have to have 18 graduate hours in your subject before you can teach--so I got a "co-teacher" to "help" me) is pretty swift with techgeekery, but I trust my sister implicitly, and she won't really make me feel stupid. He is a sarcastic little bastard, who will latch on to anything and exploit it. I am the same way, so we get along. But he's not the kind of person I would go to in a moment of need.

My coffee cup is empty=serious problem.