So, doing research is sometimes more fun than writing.

Behold! An amazing book of etiquette from 1891.

It's just as awesome as you could imagine. As someone who is often at a loss in social situations (damn you, salad fork, why must you look exactly like the dessert fork!), there's something appealing about the idea of a book of manners that everyone is expected to read and follow. Practically, I know this leads to cotillion, so I won't wish it on anyone.

(Note: everything I know about cotillion I learned from All I Want For Christmas, in which the young Ethan Embry (nee Randall) rescues his crush from a boring cotillion and proceeds to woo her in a diner? I think.)

(Oh, that and I went to a year of middle school in Texas, where girls were already discussing their coming-outs and how hard it would be to curtsey and how they were ALREADY PRACTICING for their curtseys. I was writing X-Files scripts in ProWrite on my dad's computer when everyone was asleep. Just saying, thanks for that year in Catholic school, Mom and Dad!)

ANYWAY. MANNERS.



Dresses are from 1880, not 1891, but by 1891 everyone looked like a Gibson Girl and it gets all upsetting.

( Ladies and gents, if you ever wondered what to do with your calling cards, well, now you'll know! )

I'm a book cover nerd*. As such, I find The Book Design Review really awesome.

I also like Henry Sene Yee and David Drummond, for giving us a little behind-the-scenes action, including covers that got shot down (and often the reasons they got shot down, which tend to have very little to do with design and everything to do with marketing).

I don't blame them for all the concern about book covers, though. Good book design covers a multitude of sins. *cough*StephanieMeyer*cough*

Sadly, sci-fi authors don't have quite so proud a history with cover design.

(Fun fact: if you walk up to me and say, "I will never forgive you, Flame-Tiger, for what you did to my family!", I will laugh out loud. This has been true since 2007.)

Are there any top-tier book designers (literary, sci-fi, whatever) who people feel like name-dropping? Bonus points if they have blogs.


* Clearly not a nerd who knows anything. More the kind of nerd who likes to look at pictures and say, "I like that! I like that, too!"


ETA:

Irene Gallo has a blog! In other news, bread now comes in slices!

Dinner was a success! Except the dessert plates, which were a foot in diameter with a 3" dip in the middle for your two molecules of dessert. They were also served on 14" platters, just in case you worried that the weight of your dessert was going to cause your 12" plate to crack and spill half an ounce of sauce all over.

On the way home at 11pm, I ran across an antiques store still open (of course!) with books on the table out front. I picked up a book for two dollars, though that guy shouldn't have bargained so much, because it turns out this book? Is priceless.

"The Successful Secretary's Handbook," 1971 edition, includes chapters on the layout of your desk, how to be a good personal assistant to your boss, when it's best to use the mimeograph over the "photocopier machine", and how to greet guests.

It addresses women alternately as idiots and serial killers and is, I believe, the only secretary's handbook to include both a warning not to leave your drawers open (in case people trip on them) and a glossary definition of "ballistic missile."

Needless to say, you'll be hearing about this puppy in future.

I tried to fulfill catrambo's meme-tagging last night, but the closest book had a big picture of a mousp on page 123, and the second book, From the Ball-Room to Hell, didn't even have 123 pages, and since I'd cleaned up over the weekend there weren't other books within reach! (I'm a heathen.)

So I'm just going to share a random sentence from From the Ball-Room to Hell and we'll all pretend it was on page 123.

"Every woman has a God-given instinct which teaches her right from wrong, and she cannot but know that to indulge in such emotions as the modern waltz fosters is wrong."

Those 3/4-timing skanks.


Also, I'm not a big tagger; by all means look up the 5th sentence on page 123 of any book of your choosing, if that puts wind in your sails!

To do this weekend:

- Critique/get critiqued.
- Write 4,500 words.
- Flip out about my lack of writing ability. (I'm allowing myself one, which I will probalby use up in the next four hours, throwing my entire weekend into a tailspin!)
- Tango. Whether this is a reprieve or just more stress remains to be seen.
- Return emails.
- Lay groundwork for freelanceitude.
- Oh god, 4,500 words. What was I thinking five bullets ago?
- Deeply long to watch the Extended Edition of The Two Towers and Return of the King.
- Not actually watch them. Too much enjoyable time! I have to suffer, dammit! Suffer!
- Put away the clean laundry that is currently piled on my occassional chair. (It's piled me-high, people. This is not a drill.)
- Debate going to I-Con. (I'm not a gamer, and the tango DJ [milonga at a convention! WTF?] isn't worth a trip on the rail. Peter Beagle...is another story. I love Peter Beagle like I love animatrionic polar bear puppets.)

This list will be updated Monday, at which point maybe two of them will be struck out and the rest will still be sitting here! Place your bets.

Also, when I was at home last weekend I found my old copy of Dragonsinger, which I read when I was eight. That is the Mary Sue to end all Mary Sues, holy shit. No wonder I had an inferiority complex back then. Bad at piano AND without the ability to Impress fire lizards!