A Note to Our Readers

This edition isn't quite what we planned it. But then they never are.

We thank Folding Star for allowing us to highlight a book chat from A Winding Road. We thank Betty, Rebecca and C.I. for their assistance and input.

Blah-blah-blah, you say, where's Ava and C.I.'s TV review! I want my T.V. review!

We understand that. We love their reviews as well. But we went from a plan to spotlight some books this time out to a literature theme. We forgot to tell them that. Ava and C.I.'s response was along the lines of "Oh, you fuckers!"

So short of asking them to create a review on the spot, we were left without one. That's fine. We'll all live. Maybe not happily, but we'll live.

They're going to try to watch Desperate Housewives tonight. A number of you have e-mailed requesting that. So let the anticipation build on that. They had a good review and it could run here the same way Kat's Korner on Tapestry runs -- it's strong writing. But they pulled the review because they felt it defeated the purpose of this edition. Though saddened, we understand and we'll all work to make sure we're all on the same page much earlier. With Ava and C.I.'s TV reviews, if we have a theme, we need to let them know that when they're choosing which show to watch. Telling them as we're assembling the edition, "Oh by the way, we're going for a literacy, literature theme this week" doesn't cut it.

We thank Kat, as always, for being so damn groovy and happening and for letting us rerun her Tapestry review. That's art. And music is art so we're fine with it bending the theme slightly.

If there was one surprise from this week's e-mails, it was how many of you missed books and music. The e-mails poured in on that after we noted last week that we'd been remiss in our book coverage. Hopefully the above make up for it.

Knowing we were remiss in books, we agreed to find books, all read them (or as much as we could get through) and do a new segment, "Five Books in Five Minutes." This is a rundown of five books. It is not an indepth review. We'd planned to do that via e-mail and then boil down the observations into a concise, brief review. Plans . . . Something we strive for.

What happened instead was a two hour debate and dicussion on each book. We've spared you that but we did include an exchange between Ty and Rebecca because we thought it was to the point of the book being discussed and we thought it was funny. Thank yous go to Rebecca, Betty and C.I. for participating with that article.

This segment will pop up again, we can't say how often.

Our actual roundtable was supposed to be about reading. But when do we ever stick to one topic? As always, it's lively and we hope you enjoy it. Veronica's question inspired our free association. We thank Veronica for her question, Dallas for tracking down links (and we finally told him to take a break and stop hunting or he'd still be tracking down links for that thing), Rebecca, Betty and C.I. for participating. We regret that Folding Star had a prior committment and was unable to take part and hope that next time Folding Star will be able to join us.

Our editorial is our goodbye to Danny Okrent of The New York Times. A goodbye that sometimes seemed would never arrive. Thankfully, it has. We thank Rebecca and Betty for participating in that and Dallas for tracking down links. (C.I. passed on the editorial when we noted we'd be noting The Common Ills.)

Hopefully something here will make you laugh or scream. And yes, we are prepared for the stream of hate mail since Ava and C.I. do not have a TV review up.

-- Jim, Dona, Jess, Ty and Ava