An ambitious weekend

In the past seven days, I've started and finished four review books (titles in the sidebar at left) and have written four reviews. I'll email them to my editor tomorrow. Apart from one, due 1/11, they're at least three weeks early, so he may be surprised. Mostly I wanted to get them out of the way, but now I'm faced with the unexpected realization that I have a choice as to what to read next.

As I write, I'm also making some baklava for Mark's birthday tomorrow (found some phyllo that had been sitting in the freezer way too long) that's based off an Internet recipe. It contains scintillatingly helpful directions such as "boil Baklava syrup until syrupy," so maybe I should be more suspicious, especially as it comes from a Southern cuisine website. They didn't mean southern Greece, I don't think.

Other random updates:

My review of Beverly Swerling's City of Glory is on Amazon now.

I posted a bunch of UK titles on the forthcoming books page that were sent to me by one of the UK HNS editors (Ann Oughton). I also posted St. Martin's Press titles through next August.

Conference registration has been open for two months, and we're about half full. We'll sell out early for sure.

Baklava's done now. It looks really good, if I do say so.