According to the Nobel Prize Committee, Dorris Lessing will be unable to attend the award ceremony due to back problems. Lessing is this year’s Nobel Prize winner for Literature. I think this highlights two very important things.

Nobel people, choose authors while they’re still young enough to enjoy the award. Thanks. And Ms. Lessing, I can’t believe you. If that were me, I’d have strap me to a board, prop me up in a wheelchair, I don’t care - but I’d be there. That’s a once in a lifetime kind of thing.

Every few months, a new study comes out to tell us that Americans are reading less. I don’t get the point of these studies. Do they really think that we don’t realize that people are reading less? While we’re at it, allow me to save the time of doing a few more studies. More people are seeking addiction treatment, more families are losing their homes to foreclosure, kids don’t exercise enough, and people are getting ruder while interacting less with their communities and neighbors.

Are we shocked? Let me know which studies drive you absolutely insane. There have to be some out there, because I cringe with almost every study I hear about these days.

I had no idea that there was such a thing as the “Bad Sex Awards”, but apparently they exist. The award is designed to highlight examples of bad sexual description in modern fiction. In 2007, the award goes to Norman Mailer, the late 84-year-old author of works like “The Castle in the Forest”.

The awards also listed honorable mentions, and you can read the entire store at Yahoo!. I’m still just amazed at the fact that someone has clearly spent a great deal of time and money to make these awards known.

When it comes to buying gifts for family, I’m all about the experiences. Last year, that included a holiday jazz night out at a dinner club, a drive through a holiday lights park, and a ghost-hunting trip. On another Christmas, I bought concert tickets for all the girls and we went out together in January. It was really fun, getting the chance to get together again so soon after the holidays.

This year, I’m considering Wicked tickets, another concert, or a girls night out at a hotel with an indoor pool, hot tub, and lots of junk food. And of course, I’ll buy everyone a book, too. You can never go wrong with books and experiences.

The Dangerous Book for Boys came out this summer but I wasn’t particularly interested in that title. Now that The Daring Book for Girls is out, though, my interest is piqued.

The book talks about everything from famous female scientists to basic female games and skills. Friendship bracelets, double dutch, and cartwheels are covered in the 300 page book. Right now, it’s heavily discounted, too, so that’s a bonus.

Plenty of novels use flowery descriptive language to talk about things like verandas, stairways, and window seats. Similarly, though, there are parts of the house that no one ever talks about. Below, I’ve listed some very worthy parts that, for some reason, never seem to work their way into great literature.

5. Heating Vents
4. Butcher Blocks
3. Wall Sconce
2. Satellite Dish
1. Shower Heads

I recently read that a Vancouver author won a children’s book award for a book called “Odd Man Out”. The full story is below. Corrupted as I am, though, I couldn’t help but think of other books that could have been written under the same title. IBelow, I’ve listed a few ideas that sprang to mind.

Odd Man Out - A gay coming of age tale about a weird boy and his sexual awakening.
Odd Man Out - The story of a man who was forced from his community due to his odd behaviors.

I don’t know, it just didn’t sound much like a children’s story to me. What do you think?

I’ve never been married, but I’ve done a lot of dating. Currently, I am seeing someone without exclusivity, so I’m kind of a passive date-seeker. I’m a lot like those jobs people always talk about - the ones that are out there, but not posted on job sites for the whole world to see. If I ran across the right candidate, though, I wouldn’t hesitate to take action.

I recently created a dating site profile to see what I’m missing out on by not actively looking around. I didn’t include a picture this time, because that never ends well. I tried that once about 6 years ago and I got two stalkers and nearly 500 e-mails in less than a week. While most sites will tell you that you should add your picture, I definitely don’t recommend this for girls. I only exchange photos through private correspondence.

So anyway, I created my DateHookup.com account and proceeded to run a basic search. At first, I got a lot of really irrelevant results. I’m a well-educated, highly paid, non-religious, attractive and athletic white female, and I’m basically looking for the male version of myself. Race is somewhat open, but I definitely wouldn’t be comfortable taking on entirely new traditions as would be necessary with certain men. I used their excellent advanced search feature to see what else I could find, but unfortunately, there were no matches within 100 miles of where I live. I’d probably fare much better in certain areas like NYC or SF or LA, but here in the midwest, my ideal man is pretty much nonexistent. I knew that, though.

I doubt that my experience was typical, though, and I loved the easy navigation through the site. If you’re looking for someone special, definitely check it out.

Below, you’ll see a picture of the Stephen King home. It’s exactly as I would have imagined it, but my question in this: What does he keep in the towers?

If it were my house, the tower would be a reading room, lined with books all the way up. What about you? What do you think it in the tower? And what would you put there if you had your very own tower?

This may sound weird, but lately, I’ve noticed that home theater furniture makes some of the most comfortable reading furniture that there is. We recently purchased one of those awesome leather home theater chairs, and I’m constantly getting kicked out when the S.O. wants to watch a movie. It’s become such a problem that I’m going to have to go furniture shopping this weekend. I’ll be looking for some kind of fluffy, over-stuffed chair to put in my reading room.

Where do you do most of your reading?