Good news! My novel, The Celestial Globe, received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly! Yay! Thank you, PW! If you’d like to read the review, here it is. And can I say how excited I was to have my review placed right next to Megan Whalen Turner’s? I love, love, love her books, and enjoyed Conspiracy of Kings (though I won’t say any more, because it’s not even out yet and I wouldn’t want to spoil anything for anyone).

It’s interesting, how just a phrase in a review can hook me. I haven’t read anything by Philip Reeve, but I think I’m going to have to read Fever Crumb, just because the reviewer in PW mentions that it has “foldable assassins made of paper.” Foldable assassins made of paper? Yes, please! How imaginative. How deliciously intriguing.

I’m very slowly reading through Wolf Hall, and otherwise I’ve just been reading for classes and poring over my friends’ manuscripts, each of which is very satisfying. This week I’m teaching Henry V and Tale of Despereaux (different classes). Can I confess that Despereaux made me teary-eyed?

For you writers out there, here are some words from Toni Morrison (pulled from the Paris Review interview collection I’ve mentioned in a previous entry) that I found wise and useful:

“The difficulty for me in writing—among the difficulties—is to write language that can work quietly on the page for a reader who doesn’t hear anything. Now for that, one has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm, and so on. So, it is what you don’t write that frequently gives what you do write power.”

and

“…there is a line between revision and fretting, just working it to death. It is important to know when you are fretting it; when you are fretting it because it is not working, it needs to be scrapped.”

Indeed! On that note, I’d better get back to my revision before Eliot wakes up from his nap…