The Manolo, The Witch, and The Fun Reads

Thanks to the superfantastic Gerrie, I was blogged by the Manolo! That means I've had about 600 new visitors to RSR in the past couple of days. What fun! Maybe I should've dusted. I mentioned a couple of days ago that I planned to go to a movie. I ended up seeing "Bewitched" and it was very cute! Silly, of course, that's a given. But it was silly in a good way and I laughed out loud in spots, always a good thing. Well, ok, not ALWAYS a good thing. I can think of times when laughing out loud would be wildly inappropriate. But during a comedy movie it's a Good Thing. One of the interminable series of pre-movie trailers included the preview for "Rent". It looked SO good! I got teary-eyed just watching the preview, so I hate to think what I'll be like during the actual movie. It was strange though, seeing a story that's normally told on an nearly-bare stage, with not much more than scaffolding and folding chairs and tables for a set, translated into a real world sort of setting, with buildings and cars and extra people. Between "Rent" and Joss Whedon's "Serenity", I'm REALLY looking forward to the fall movie releases! I've finished two books in the past few days and I give them both a big thumbs up. For fans of fantasy novels, there is "Smoke and Shadows" by Tanya Huff, which brings back Henry Fitzroy (romance novelist, vampire, bastard son of Henry VIII) from the Vicky Nelson novel series, but pairs him with Tony Foster, a secondary character in the Vicky books. They're fighting an evil wizard from another world, who is known as the Shadowlord. My favorite line from the book is when Tony says "a world where Joss Whedon got canceled was exactly the kind of world where the Shadowlord could win". Ya gotta love it! I also just finished the latest Stephanie Plum novel by Janet Evanovich. This one is called Eleven On Top. In it, Steph has decided that bounty hunting is not for her and her life is going nowhere. So she quits her job and tries a series of new-but-not-necessarily-improved career options, while still dealing with the usual madness that is her life. It's hard to beat Janet Evanovich for screwball comedy and this one is no exception. Ok, now I suppose I'd better think about pulling myself away from the distractions and doing some real wo...hey!...something shiny!.....