I have just spent most of the last 4 hours creating a list of symptoms and the 7 different medications that the variety of doctors I have seen in the last 8 months have given me. I had my first of two follow up appointments today and it wasn't good news. Hope tomorrow goes better as we start going through blood tests. It is hard to feel positive when my body has refused to cooperate with me and let me actively enjoy my "old lady-hood". Even a trip to the mall doesn't delight me as I know how I will feel afterward. No happily trooping home with bags of goodies on sale! Steve would fall over backwards in disbelief to read the above! Okay, enough whining!

Had a chance to read through the nastiness on a few of the blogs that have gone gung ho against Card having received the Edwards Award. It always amazes me how people I would think to have open minded views of other people's values and beliefs because of the way they have been treated are worse than any of the hate-mongers I have seen from the ultra-conservative side. The name calling and hateful messages are horrible and they hardly send a message of an understanding of others' rights to their own beliefs and lifestyles.

Card rightfully deserved the Margaret A. Edwards Award for the Ender's books as they have become part of the cannon of young adult literature. Sure, they are "boy" books to the extreme, but I don't hear anyone name calling and asking for blood in relation to women who write chic lit for teens. Card is an incredible writer in relation to his SF for teens. As far as his ultra-conservative personal views and his writing for the adult readership with these same views - he has a right to those views. He was not honored for his adult writing and his value system is not in any way a criteria for this award.

But, I have to smile in the fact that the hate-mongers are shooting themselves in the foot with their vicious postings as the more they complain about Card and his books the more people are going to take a look at this author, the criteria for the award and many who never read the Enders books will now be purchasing them and reading them and sharing them with their kids. The nay-sayers to Card having won the award are acting like the censors that we fight so strongly against when they want to remove And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson from the library. I am disappointed in the very groups I normally stand firmly within and/or beside. If we expect to be accepted, we must learn to accept the right of those who have beliefs totally different from our own to express them.

After that I thought it quite appropriate to discuss a guy book - Fight Game by Kate Wild. This is her first novel and it got my attention as it focuses on a teenage Gypsy who has learned to live outside of the norm since his family moves from location to location in their travel trailer. The softness in his life is the love he has for his sister and his nieces. He would protect them at all costs and he ends up doing just that when two punks try to burn their trailer, with the girls in it. Freedom chases them down and it appears as if he has pushed one of them into the path of a bus. Was it murder? Doesn't much matter as he is a Gypsy and the only way Freedom is going to be able to survive is if he agrees to work with the undergroud police operation to infiltrate the vicious high-tech fight club where fighting goes on endlessly with new teens recruited to be killed in the Bear Pit. There always has to be a bit of romance in these guys' lives so enter Java Sparrow who has been watching the fight club complex for another reason. Two heads are usually better than one when it comes to getting into a high tech complex. Yes, this book is a bit on the violent side, but it one that many of the guys will pick up just because of the cool looking cover with the title tatooed on Freedom's fist, while he scowls at the potential reader. Hand this one to the guys who are into the war games. This is Wild's first book about Freedom and I look forward to reading the sequel which will come out in summer 2008. Scholastic does have a way or recruiting really good international YA authors and Wild is no exception.

All for today.