The worst gift I ever received was from my mother-in-law. Apologies in advance; this is "War and Peace"-length.

Blessed, selective amnesia.

Let us never forget he also coined "Myrish swamp." For the ladies.

Please don't forget "Myrish swamp." For the ladies.

Ditto, but we plan on getting wasted first and catching a ride home from the aforementioned embarrassed spouses.

so much depends

Yes. Good God, yes, they need editing. I have the half-finished Breath of Snow and Ashes sitting on my Kindle, silently judging me for not finishing it yet. But they're just such meandering affairs that flail to find a plot with some forward momentum for waaaaay too long. Also Brianna sucks. And also, errbody gets…

For contemporary, Susan Elizabeth Phillips is the queen. I started with Match Me If You Can, then read everything else. I also love, worship and adore Julie James. Practice Makes Perfect is a great place to start.

I was thinking about buying Nightshifted as a Christmas gift for my ICU nurse sister, but even the thought of a zombie love interest made me skeptical. Sounds like the execution is no better than I imagined.

Yikes. How big do swordfish get? And are these giant fish monsters angry that we've been eating their smaller kin?

A few years ago, my sister and I were in a thrift shop that was playing this on a VCR, and she made them remove the video tape so she could buy it. It was the right decision.

Sure, a meetup could be fun! And I, too, have a smothery Republican family, but I'm also in academia, which is oodles more tolerant. So my perspective is probably skewed by my job.

:)

I really am!

So I guess that means no io9 Peoria meetup, huh?

Not from there, but I live there now. :)

Yeah, I figured that was why you used it. And I suspect none of us really mind the middlebrow implication, more the over-usage of the expression. (I'm guessing the Journal-Star is the only newspaper in the country that never, ever uses that phrase, just out of sheer weariness.)

Hey! I'm in Peoria, and I'm fine with the same-sex kissing. Leave my (mostly) tolerant city out of it.

Goodness, there are TONS of knit/crochet patterns out there for projects related to Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek, superheroes, robots, monsters, Cthulhu, etc.

I hope so. I'm both daunted and excited at the prospect of coming up with an organizational system to fill all of the bookcases. Alphabetical? By genre? Library of Congress system? The sky's the limit!