Tidbits

Movies

• Sean Parker provided his guests with tailored, handmade costumes for his Lord of the Rings/Medieval themed multimillion dollar wedding.  I'm assuming my invite got lost in the mail? 
• Oh hello, pictures from the movie adaptation of The Book Thief, a movie Ima need a box of tissues and a hug when I see.  
• I'd totally watch the Gallagher Girls movie, but let's be real.  I'm crossing my toes that the CW somehow winds up turning this into a series.  
• You know what sounds like a great idea for summer camp to send your kids to? Not this.  World, please meet the Hunger Games camp (did the creators miss the entire moral of the books?).

Libraries

• According to NPR, libraries are the new cupcakes. If so, pray tell: what does that make the cronut, MonkeySee?!
• Have you met my professional mini-me, the Lego Librarian? 
  
  
  I'm not sure which mold I fit, but I can't even begin to emphasize how perfectly Mr. Library Dude has pinpointed and lego'd each library stereotype.  Well played, sir.
• I'm mildly embarrassed that I missed this gem until reading the first thing on this three point list.  But guess what I'll be watching, on repeat, this 9th grade orientation season without complaint?
  

Tidbits: In which bad ideas outnumber good ones

 Hey you guuuuyssss.  Sorry it has been so long since my last tidbit explosion all over this page. I hope you are tid-tillating with the following:

•  Here is your feel good international library sory to get you through Thursday and Friday, and onto your weekend:  there are now 100 public mini-libraries in permanent kiosks in parks across Colombia, and if you live in the city of Bogota, you are extra lucky because there are 47.  The project began ten years ago in an effort to promote literacy in the country.  If you speak Spanish, you can watch the following news story on it.  If not, you can still watch it for the only on Spanish-language television interview positioning at the two minute mark. 
   
• In bygone days, I hinted at my deep reverence for the early 90's TV show, Carmen San Diego (in the context of burying it deep in a ramble about my #1 love, The Oregon Trail).  I still want to go on that game show and lose!  According to Vulture, Jenny from the Block has attached herself to a film remake of this most fabulous show.  Ugh.  Ughhh.  Ughhhhh.  So wrong. 
  
• Ally Carter's Heist Society 3: Perfect Scoundrels just got a new dress.  Except I'm going to be totally honest here, my first, second, and third reaction to it was: "Isn't that the same cover?" Yes, yes it more or less is.  And also, I'd like to draw your attention to the 35-year-old banker dude in the sunglass reflection. 
  
  
  Don't even try and tell me that is Hale; no teenage boys, no matter how ridiculously wealthy, have posture that good, or wear a suit that comfortably.  Nice try with your stock photo, book cover designer.   
  
• Things that just don't sound like a good idea to me: Hunger Games live action role playing.  Everyone gets straight up fight club murdered! And yet, it happens, and someone got really hurt.  I wish this young woman a speedy recovery.  Be safe out there, larpers. 
  
• So you want to smell like a vampire.  Or a witch.  Or BOTH.  Lucky for you, Viking press is launching a promo for Deborah Harkness' Shadow of Night, which includes...perfume.  Yeah, I don't know either.  But now you can find out what the undead smell like after they do vampire yoga.  Score!  I am more excited to actually read the sequel to A Discovery of Witches than I am to smell like it, but each to their own, right?

Uncommon Criminals, by Ally Carter: My Uncommon Goal of Art Theivery

Uncommon Criminals
by Ally Carter
Disney Hyperion Books: New York, 2011.
ISBN: 978-142314795-4

     Kat Bishop is back again in the second book in Ally Carter's Heist Society series.  This time though, our favorite con-artist with a heart has herself been conned after being led to believe she was returning the allegedly stolen Cleopatra Emerald to its rightful owner.   Embarrassed that she's fallen victim to an old school con artist who seems to think Kat is just like her, Kat reluctantly accepts the help of her crew in retrieving the emerald and reuniting it with it's rightful owner, making things slightly awkward with her possible (if she would only admit it to herself) crush, Hale.  To get the stone back, the crew must work together in a high stakes gamble in the casino's of Monaco, all while trying to avoid the attention of Uncle Eddie, who has specifically instructed them to have nothing to do with the Cleopatra.  This newest edition in the series is an exciting, quickly paced, occasionally romantic read; it may even be stronger than the freshman effort!  It is recommended for libraries serving (probably female) patrons aged 11 to 15, and cool adults who like to pretend like they can be an art thief if their day job doesn't work out.  Ahem...

You guys, this book is really fun.  I encourage you to read it over a vacation or lazy Saturday morning.  It's quick.  It's exciting.  It's white-glove sexy (chaste kissing, not the white doctors office gloves you're thinking of you perv).  It's about art theft!  It's like a girls' version of Ocean's Eleven, before they blew it by making too many (whatever, it's the truth).  Just do it.  You're welcome.

Perhaps you don't remember the promise I made to you several months ago when the first two chapters of this book were up online.  It is likely, because I barely remembered.  You know, the one where I promised to tell you which paintings I'd steal if ever my soul became a blackened coal lump and I turned to a life of art theivery of specific paintings for my own, and only my viewing pleasure? But rejoice, because remember, I did.  And here they are.  There are probably more that I've forgotten, like some Winslow Homer watercolors (how did I miss his watercolors until the age of what I am now?),  Dutch Renaissance Masters, or the crown jewels (which I'll get anyways, when I marry Harry, obvi).

 Paintings I'd Steal
(if ever my soul became blackened coal lump and I turned to a life of art theivery of specific paintings for my own, and only my viewing pleasure)

Tidbits: Drew Barrymore gets Uncommon while I reveal a secret shame and a hankering for ancient beer

Vacations:

• Sparkling Witt: Becky and Jeff are super, and not just because they love to eat my Le Creuset experiments!  Becky is blogging about their current adventures (like learning to say baking soda) in Finland and it is faaantastic.  Bonus points: visit jeffreycwitt.com. 
  

Food Porn:

•  The Beer Archaeologist: this. is. so. cool.  Indiana Jones of BEER!  I read this while waiting to get a typhoid, yes, typhoid shot at 10am.  And wasn't disgusted by my craving for beer.  I dare you to read this and deem it not cool.  Or crave ancient beer!

Movies:

• Remember when I gushed about how I want to be an art thief ala Ally Carter's Heist Society?  Heist Society movie rights were optioned at like, the same time publishing houses were duking it out to win the hand contract of the fair Ally Carter.  And yesterday, I was pumped to see via the twitters that Drew Barrymore will be producing and directing it! SQUEE.  I am, as they say in France, le pumped.  Bring on the art thieves!
• Neil Gaiman has crazy hair and talks here about the adaption of American Gods, which I'm getting more excited for after thinking about the general code of crazy/awesome in Game of Thrones and True Blood, and really, HBO adaptations in general. 
• Gushed about Reviewed Jasper Jones, by Craig Silvey yesterday.  And then immediately after posting read some other things and realized it's already been optioned down under.  Huzzah!  If it ever actually gets made, and gets made as fantastically, gothic, creepily, gorgeously as that book trailer, well, I'll just have to run away to Australia. 

Books:

• In case you missed it, this is a great article/interview with Jay Asher about Thirteen Reason's Why.

Secret Shame:

• I don't like to talk about it (much).  BUT.  The Vampire Diaries is my secret favorite show that I get overly excited to watch. Don't judge me!  Or do, because according to this article, I have EXCELLENT taste.  It's delightfully crazytown, they're not afraid to kill people off, and Damon, oh Damon...trust me, you will never get bored of this crazy parade. 

PrE-views! Ally Carter's Uncommon Criminals

Confession:  I am an Art History dropout.  It is a sad but true fact of my life.  I love it, truly, madly, deeply.  I geek out indecently over old paintings and museums.  But apparently at 18 I thought that majoring in Spanish would be much more viable career path.  And now I am a high school librarian.  GO FIGURE! 

Um...but really my wild fantasy dream job was never art historian extraordinare.  It was, is (if this library thing doesn't work out!), top shelf art thief.  You can't really avoid this thought if you are say, an art-luvr living in a city where the Gardner Heist, the greatest unsolved art theft in all the lands  occurred (debatable, but I'm always right, so you lose!).  Thusly, when Heist Society dropped I was stoked!  And now that the second one (Uncommon Criminals) is imminent, I am doubly stoked! Unfortunately for all of us, it does not drop until June 21.  BUT.  BUT.

Join me in tiding ourselves over by reading the first two chapters online!  I salute you for inspiring my criminal mind to dream big, Ally Carter! 

Thusly, when it DOES drop, I promise to release my dream art theft hit list in its honor.  Check your security systems, museums of the world!  Thomas Crowne PaperblogPrincess is coming for you!

I'd Tell You I Love You, but Then I'd Have to Kill You, by Ally Carter: Alias awesome

I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You. Ally Carter(2006).

NY: Hyperion. ISBN: 1423100034

Cammie Morgan, is just your average 16 year old girl who attends Gallagher Academy, an all-girls boarding school where her mom is the headmistress. Or is she? And is the Gallagher Academy just your average boarding school? As it turns out, no! Cammie, alias "the Chameleon," like all her classmates, is actually a super-genius attending a top secret boarding school for future mistresses of espionage. Here, the girls speak 14 different languages, hack the NSA, take notes on paper that evaporates to destroy the evidence, and take a class called Covert Operations. It is a Cov-Ops field trip into town that leads trouble for Cammie, when she bumps into and attracts the attention of a cute boy named Josh. But the townies have some preconceived notions about Gallagher girls, chiefly that they are little rich bitches who can be filed under the not to like category…So Cammie tells Josh she's a home schooler who has spent time in many foreign lands. Soon, she's sneaking out using the secret tunnels to rendezvous with Josh, and her roommates Becca, Liz and new bad girl transfer Macy are spying on him for extra credit. But can the spy games last? Will the teachers catch on? Would Josh still like Cammie if he knew the truth about where she went to school? Or what her school really is? And will she pass her Cov-Ops midterm?!?

I enjoy Alias, so it's no big shocker I found this book to be a super fun YA chick-lit romantic read about girl spies (I am a run-on champ). If only Francie had been as smart as Becca or Liz…le sigh. I found the spy gadgets cool, the plot well fleshed out and compelling, and the characters vibrant. Cammie and co may have spy skills and genius IQ's, but they still have adolescent problems like homework, self-confidence problems, compelling family drama, and trouble figuring boys out. I also really enjoyed that the ending isn't entirely foreseeable, and the action keeps the plot pace quick. I highly recommend this book, especially because it is the first in a series (the second one is even better!), and it gives a new twist to a tried and true YA romance genre staple.

Best for: Due to the girl heavy cast of characters and elements of romance, this is a book which will most likely only titillate girls ages 12 to 16. Sorry, gentlemen. Stick to Alex Rider, equal gender employer/hero to the younger YA masses.

Book Talk Hook: Do a lead-in asking questions about the things you can learn in spy school (i.e. "Who here can speak 14 languages?" "Who here knows how to kill a man using only spaghetti?" etc.), and then give a brief summary of the plot.