Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Happy Mother’s Day to you, if it applies, and to your mother, because it’s fun to say “Your mother” and mean it in a nice way. My Mother’s Day started off with my going back to bed with a migraine (fucker) and then getting back up once I was firmly in the embrace of painkillers to enjoy having my children and husband make me breakfast and give me gifts.

One of my gifts, from Freebird: The Mommy Book, by Todd Parr: “Some mommies work at home. Some mommies work in big buildings. All mommies love to watch you sleep.” I love the Parr books, especially The Daddy Book, which we read all the time with Freebird. Baba O’Riley gave me a copy of The Family Book, which is terribly sweet and made me smile-cry with the pictures of families of different colors and sizes. My favorite part was the page about how some families look like each other, and some families look like their pets. If I look like our pets, we are so screwed. And hairy. Very very hairy.

Since my gifts were books - oh, how my family knows me! - I got to thinking, what are your favorite children’s books of the very-young-child variety? There are some that are incredibly old but stand up for repeated tellings even when they’re nearly 80. Ferdinand the Bull was published in 1936, and I remember having my own copy when I was a kid.

Other books that are mainstays of the home library are Goodnight Moon, Guess How Much I Love You (though thanks to The Sneeze I sometimes say, “little brown nut-hair,” which is awful and funny), and I Love You, Goodnight.

What about you, and your bookshelf? What books form the corners of your childhood memories? And what books do you pass along to children in your life?

Remember the high-stepping pink miniskirt lady? You know, she was over here, and she was over there, on sample covers from HarperCollins. Leg problems and romance, that flippy-skirt lady had them all.

And, it seems she has a new wardrobe, and possibly more stock options—stock photography options. From alert reader Becky comes a new link: The Girl’s Guide to Kicking Your Career into High Gear cover features similar legs in a similar pose.

My questions? Who is this lady that she kicks her career into high gear by wearing a very short trenchcoat and a very much shorter and thus invisible skirt underneath? Exactly what kind of career is she kicking here? And who ARE these women who can get away with heels and high-legged marching without stockings on? Do they never get blisters? And finally - is that in fact the same shot, with a different purse and a jacket Photoshopped over the pink tweed?

From my inbox comes news that Laura Kinsale’s books are being rereleased through Sourcebooks Casablanca, a small independent publisher. Midsummer Moon, Seize the Fire, and Prince of Midnight are being promoted as spring reads, and two of the books are available now via Amazon and Powells.

I am guessing the rerelease will bring a lot more historical romance readers to Kinsale’s stories, as some have been out of print and have been hard for me to find when I go looking.

That said, I have to mourn the old style covers, because, damn. They were full of Fabio-esque goodness and oddly-lit visible buttsecks. And, I think, Scarlett Johansson.

Great tits cope well with warming.

To which I say: Tits, schmits--won’t somebody think of the boobies?

(Many thanks to my friend HaikuKatie--my favorite source of anything tit-related--for sending me the link.)

There are few people more informed than the people who read this site (hi, folks) so I want to ask you who are better informed than I am about Myanmar/Burma and that region in the world. Currently, news reports list at least 22,000 people as casualties of Cyclone Nargis. According to Reuters reports, international relief and aid is somewhat compromised because those requesting a visa to enter the country for relief purposes are not being granted entrance by the military junta in Burma. One report from the Times Online estimates that the government totals released from Burma could be very low, and a more accurate casualty count could reach double the presently published number:

The latest official death toll was 22,500, according to Burmese state media. But even after three days there has been no comprehensive survey. Assuming that there are many casualties to be revealed, and that a significant proportion of the 41,000 listed as “missing” are dead, the final toll will be much higher.

“We’re looking at 50,000 dead and millions of homeless,” Andrew Kirkwood, country director of the British charity Save The Children told The Times. “I’d characterise it as unprecedented in the history of Burma and on an order of magnitude with the effect of the tsunami on individual countries. There might well be more dead than the tsunami caused in Sri Lanka.”

So, what to do, where to go, how to help? Any suggestions?

According to the Wikipedia article, very few organizations have operations already located within Burma, and those that do are accepting donations to help relief efforts. But I’m curious if anyone reading has suggestions or knowledge that might give me and other readers an indication which organizations can offer the most direct aid.

Below the fold are links to the organizations highlighted within the Wiki article that offer online donations earmarked for the Burma relief effort and who indicate that they are already within the country, if you are interested for more information.