When I went in to work yesterday morning C. very cheerfully told me she'd flamed me on my blog. I assumed she'd flamed me over the latest cat post—my blogline subscriber lists take a nosedive when I announce a carnival—but no, she flamed me because of my review of Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black a week or so back ("very good, very dark" is how I put it. She thinks it's "sensationalistic trash"). By the time I reached the restaurant last night she'd told A. and P., who know full well the pitfalls of taking book recommendations from me, and were automatically on C.'s side of things. (The surprise of the evening was discovering that A. and I are on the same side of the fence regarding A Confederacy of Dunces—the pro side-- although neither of us could dredge up John Kennedy Toole's name to save our lives.)

And it was only the night before that AS, my daughter's best friend, greeted me by saying, "So I understand you gave R. a book about cannibalism and castration for Christmas."

Well, yeah, but unwittingly. Who wouldn't have supposed that a newly published novel about Czechs and mystical Christians in Siberia in 1919 would be the perfect gift for a Russian and Eastern European studies major? I'm sure she read much worse during her Serbian death camp reading phase.

And anyway, I'm looking forward to reading it myself.

There's just no accounting for taste.