things in books

Jo Walton with an interesting post over at Tor.com on female characters and male rape in C.J. Cherryh's books (specifically the Alliance/Merchanter books). The comment thread is interesting, too.
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Spent a bunch of money at Book People yesterday on presents...my bid to save the publishing industry. I was struck by how many recent, lauded novels shelved in fiction (read mainstream or lit fiction), as opposed to shelved in SF/F, are very clearly speculative in nature, relying on an element of the fantastic for their very premise.

sigh.
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To go with books as presents, I am making a freakload of bookmarks, each an original bit of artwork. This is a lot of work.