she's making a list
If you make a to-do list and then cross things off that list, you will feel better. It's a list-masy time of year after all. But if you look at lists of books to buy for Christmas and do the math, as Moorish Girl has done, then you will weep into your sleeve and search for a tissue on which to delicately blow your horn. I was happy to see Louise Erdrich's The Painted Drum on both the New York Times and L.A. Times lists of notable books of the year, and was dancing in the Bavarian clogs, which I purchased during my snow-filled days as an undergraduate at Colby College, to see Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black on the New York Times list. (Elizabeth, you must read Ms. Mantel, darling, she is deep, dark, and hot, too.)
I am headed to lend my services to a bookstore this afternoon and plan to make my own list of books to read and to give as presents, or to give as presents and then ask to borrow to read. And if my list happens to be made up 100% of women of my own gender, then hells bells, call me Myrtle and slap a cookie down on the counter for me.