Delta Sierra

106 posts
Book-industry lifer.

QOTD: Was There a Book, Play or Movie Made Your Blood Run Cold?

Once upon a time, long, long ago, young Delta Sierra attended university*. One noon-time, she took her sad little home-made sandwich (she was poor) to eat in the campus theatre, which was holding a very good programme of short lunch-time plays. Today’s play, quite by happenstance, was a dramatization of Shirley Jackson’s powerful and influential short story, The Lottery. It is a masterpiece of ever-mounting suspense, tension and ohmygodno.

History does not record whether or not DS went to her afternoon classes, or indeed what those classes were. But that moment of ohmygodno has stayed with her all her life.

She sincerely hopes you have had similar seminal moments.

* She graduated with a half-assed BA and a very nice MRS. Comment.

QOTD: What’s Your Worst Clothing Disaster?

Example: the time last month I tried some clothes on at a store. Spent the rest of the day with the zip of my pants undone. Fairly standard, happens to everyone.

Getting out of the car after running quite a few errands. Notice I have my slippers on.

Friend of mine, a very beautiful woman with a glorious figure, once walked many, many blocks of Yonge Street (a slightly raunchy street in Toronto) with the buckle of her fancy, rather gaudy belt entirely undone, the shiny parts of it bobbing and flashing in the sun. She didn’t notice until she was back home. Continue reading →

Chicken Soup for the Crasstalkers’ Soul

Anyone here not aware of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books? It all started innocently enough in 1993 with Chicken Soup for the Soul: 101 Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit. The brief stories were meant to comfort the reader’s jangled nerves. If you had a bookstore, you’d shelve them in Motivation/Inspiration/Self-help. Or maybe in Gift Books. The original editors were Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. Continue reading →

Recommended Writers: Lisa See

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of going with a friend to see Chinese-American author Lisa See give a lecture at a nearby library. (Woot-woot for library public lectures! Check out to see who your own public library is bringing in. I’ve seen people from Nobel physicists to Ray Bradbury.)

See is the author of several novels (most recently Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy) and a sort of biography of her family’s immigration-to-America experience, On Gold Mountain. She’s also the author of some fairly successful mystery novels (Dragon Bones, and others. You know where powells.com is, go look.) Continue reading →

QOTD: What’s Your Best Wedding Horror Story?

Inspired by alluson’s the-tailor-lost-my-bridesmaid-dress story on Wednesday afternoon, I’m asking you to share your best wedding-related horror story.

I’ve personally accompanied a bride to the dry-cleaner who was supposed to clean and box up her dress in one of those lasts-forever preservation boxes. Only guess what, no dress anywhere. So she gives them the evil eye and walks into their workroom. Oh, there’s the dress – on the floor, kicked into the corner.

Then there was the wedding I was attending wherein the groom accidentally stood (both feet) on the bride’s gown’s train. She SHRIEKED at him, I mean really shrieked. Starting married life off on a sour note, so to speak. Continue reading →

QOTD: What Is It With Visitors?

The ones who travel many miles, hours and hours on an airplane, even, and when they arrive they have no clue what they want to go see? Don’t get me wrong, I love to see friends and (pretty much) family show up to stay for a few days. Evenings are great, good food and booze and conversation.

But why do they sit there like bumps on lumps waiting for me to decide what we’re doing during the day? Continue reading →

Things I Learned at the Antiquarian Booksellers Seminar

Last week I attended the annual Colorado Springs Antiquarian Book Seminar. The days were long, the lectures were dense with material, the faculty (big-deal booksellers) were generous beyond belief, they all put in 12-hour days on our, the students’, behalf. On my way home, the one thing I didn’t put in my checked-luggage was my notebook. Not going to risk losing that. Sometimes I was listening so hard I was sorta writing on auto-pilot, and will need to go through those notes several times before it all sinks into my brain and stays there.

Continue reading →

QOTD: What Do You Subscribe to Online?

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As in, stuff you’ve asked people to send you via emails automatically every day or week.

Word-a-Day aka Wordsmith, been getting this one for years, since before the interwebs were invented, no, really. Definitions, etymology, examples of usage that are often quite snotty/amusing. Its founder, Anu Garg, is the pleasant gentleman pictured to the left.

A booksellers’ listserv. Several rare-books catalogues. A couple of auction houses that do book-auctions. Weekly book reviews from the New York Times. Publishers Weekly news, a daily service. News-alerts from the Economist. I got the Guardian’s fashion articles for a while, but then decided I didn’t like people telling me what to wear. Continue reading →

Phond Phamily Frases

When you were growing up, did your family have their own little catch-phrases? My little brother had trouble distinguishing pillows from cushions, so in our house we had pushions. He couldn’t get his tongue around ‘tea towels’ so we had tea tiles. My friend called her infant daughter Princess Poopsalot, for obvious reasons. Continue reading →