David*Macinnis*Gill.com

Alice is a Seat­tle teenager who seeks advice from a poster. She has two tree-hugger par­ents, one good friend, and an end­less thirst for vanilla lattes. What she’d really like, though, is a boyfriend, some­one, any­one who will notice her, so she asks her poster-advisor, Dove Girl, to send one her way. The prob­lem is, …

When our youngest had a cold last week, she sneezed uncov­ered.  I told her, always cover a sneeze so you wouldn’t give another per­son your cold. Oddly, she con­tin­ued to sneeze uncov­ered, and when I came down with the same awful cold this week, she was delighted.  Last night, as I sneezed (I cover, btw) …

            The Uni­ver­sity of Ten­nessee is my dou­ble alma mater. I took my under­grad Eng­lish and doc­toral Edu­ca­tion degrees from there.  Many of the land­mark events of my life occurred on cam­pus or were put into motion by cam­pus events. I remem­ber my uni­ver­sity fondly (but not fondly enough to increase my annual gift, so …

Rub, rub. Blink, blink.  Is that day­light I see?  Yes, it is!  It’s time to come out of my cave. It’s been a long month. I’m con­vinced that Punx­sutawney Phil was a writer in a pre­vi­ous life.  Revi­sions are what finally did him in.

Please join us tonight for an ALAN Online BookChat to dis­cuss Robert Lipsyte’s RAIDERS NIGHT. A sched­ule of future ALAN BookChats is avail­able at http://tinyurl.com/2l2qu5 Date: Wednes­day, 8/15/07 Time: 9:00 PM East­ern URL: http://alan-ya.org/bookchat/flashchat.php More about the novel: “The pres­sure is on. At Near­mont High School, foot­ball stars are treated like roy­alty, and Matt Rydek has just …

Despite your keen­ing whine that J.K. Rowl­ing is a deriv­a­tive, unimag­i­na­tive, bloated, xeno­pho­bic writer, when you and I are dead and buried, mil­lions will still be read­ing the Harry Pot­ter books.  Keep that in mind, will you? PS.  Does any­one know a recipe for mak­ing wine out of sour grapes?