[ETA: pass the potato!]

St. Mark is the patron saint of Venice, and as such, you see his symbol, a winged lion, in many places around that region. Sometimes the lion is clutching an open book, sometimes a closed one. Open, it means the statue was carved when Venice was at peace. Closed, Venice was at war. There is a church in town called St. Mark's, and it does indeed have a winged lion on the very interesting architecture-wise chapel. I've never looked to see if it holds a book, open or otherwise, but perhaps if they have art shows again I will be able to find out.

The random trivia above is brought to you courtesy of , the debut novel by Elizabeth Kostova, a bestseller before it was even released. Damn but I hope my first novel sells like that. Guess I should get it written. Had an idea for Moonstone today while I was aliquoting samples. And who said science squashes creativity?

Anyway, I went ahead and bought The Historian in hardcover on the strength of word-of-mouth and reviews that I'd read about it. I've been breaking my "buy no hardcover books" rule quite a bit lately. Picked up as well, after the Writer's Meetup Tuesday. I've got so many books waiting to be read you'd think I'd quit...but I can't. It's an obsession. Both books look to be a good investment. Haven't gotten far in either, but it's a sad fact that even I cannot read two books at once.

And of course, the huge book of the summer, , comes out on the 16th. (I can't believe it's July already.) I went ahead and preordered it at Left Bank Books, so I'll be going to the midnight release party and meet up with a few other fans from the hp_stlouis livejournal, I hope. I just really wanted to party, and this seems like a fun way to do it. Cece might come too, which would make things doubly fun. It looks like there's going to be a lot going on that night, so yay.

Hopefully I remembered all the things I wanted to say before the power went out unexpectedly for just a second earlier. But that second was definitely enough to turn off every computer and light and electronic device, so I lost what I was typing. I love technology. The funny thing was, I was listening to my portable cd player, but I hit pause just as the lights went out, so I was really confused for a moment as to why my battery-powered player suddenly stopped. Don't you love feeling sheepish?