"...I guess he must have married and had children and they thought he was the most wonderful papa in the world the way he worked hard and bought them toys for Christmas. Now his children are getting old too, like him, and they have children and nobody wants the old man any more and they are waiting for him to die. But he don't want to die. He wants to keep on living even though he's so old and there's nothing to be happy about anymore."

—excerpt from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Blogger has a new interface, new templates, and new features...I had no idea they were going to launch this—the first I heard of it was reading a post about it at stop design. It all looks pretty good and I'll be exploring the new features soon, though I doubt I'll use one of their new templates...I like designing my own.

Like many fans of Madeline L'Engle I couldn't resist watching the Disney adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time last night. It was pretty horrible—they butchered it—but I had to watch it to the end. It's one of my all-time favorite books. I wondered just what Madeline was thinking when she let Disney get their money-grubbing hands on it. Then, skimming the literary news at maud's place, I found a link to an interview in which the author talks about what she thinks of the project...

She also comments on the Harry Potter books:

"I read one of them. It's a nice story but there's nothing underneath it. I don't want to be bothered with stuff where there's nothing underneath. Some people say, 'Why do you read the Bible?' I say, 'Because there's a lot of stuff underneath.' "