Slum dogs named Simon and Danny (you can't make this stuff up!)

Great interview with Vikas Swarup, author of Q&A (known to the masses as that movie, Slumdog Millionaire).

Friday: news round-up, then sleeeeep

I've been a bad blogger this week, neglecting you all since last Friday. I wish I could say I was being productive (well, I guess I was... just not here...) or that I was on a fab vacation like refinfo. Alas, no. I had an exhausting weekend, after a really crazy week and after catching a nasty cold. Prescription was: Advil, juice, and bed all day Saturday. I spent this week getting back in gear, and representing my employer with my great colleague BookPusher @ the FIS Job Fair. As always, the job fair rocked, thanks in large part to the amazing job that Meg and her colleagues did putting it together.

Now, my pretties, as a reward for following here, I give you .... a random Friday news round-up:

• Join the Coalition to Keep Canadian Heritage Support for Literary and Arts Magazines


• Why I'm a Slumdog fan, from the wonderful blog of Mitali Perkins (thx to Allison for telling me about this blog!)


• Just when you thought it was all puppies and rainbows: "Three-quarters of parents too busy to read bedtime stories!" AAAAHHH! To make it worse, "only three per cent of fathers now find the time to read to the kids compared to 89 per cent of mothers." SIGH.


• A little treat for surviving item #3 above: Spice of life: How writers evoke the past through food (nod to Hilary and Bec! Thinking of you with this post!)


• Complaining about the wet cold chez vous? My friend French Panic will set you straight, in print and in video, too!


• The Spanish National Library throws party via Facebook invites. Brave new world, folks!

As promised above, I am now off to score some dinner - I'm thinking cozy bar with wingback chairs - and then sleep. I'll be curling up with this.

Did you know Slumdog Millionaire is based on a book?

Yup, it's true. In fact, when I first saw the trailer, I thought, "what a rip-off of Q&A!!" only to realise, happily, that Swarup did get credit. Read more about Q&A here.