New Words, Rude Commenters, Bad Videos & Good Books

Since I've been spending much of my time these days either reading novels or reading various blogs and articles on the internet, I've run into a bunch of terms that are completely new to me. Well, the new vocab is not in my mostly-YA novels, but I'm certainly running into terminology that just doesn't compute on the internet. Sometimes I can make a pretty good guess based on the context, and sometimes I've even googled the word or phrase and still can't make heads or tails of it. Some of these recent puzzlers:

yob

tony school

connected math

RINO

(If you can shed any light on these things, let me know.)

OK, like I said, I can take a guess at them from the context they've been used in. I've also run into new terms that are obvious insults, usually in the comments sections of political articles. (I won't list any of them here.) Lately I've been figuring that people who comment on politics are the crudist, most uncivil people on the planet. But Terence recently decided to enlighten me, proving the political commenters are a step above some other categories. Don't believe me? Terence pulled up a YouTube video of a horrifically bad (but apparently popular) song by a young teen named Rebecca Black. The comments on this video go way beyond what I read by the arm chair politicians.

Poor girl. Her music is atrocious, in my opinion, and the video is hilariously pathetic, but hey, Terence thought it was kind of "catchy." But wow, some people can be harsh. (And some people had odd tastes in music because apparently the song has a lot of fans. But then again, people like Lady Gaga, too.) Sorry, but if my daughter decides someday to upload a music video from YouTube, I might ban her from reading the comments. Better yet, I might ban the uploading of music videos altogether!

Well, off easy-to-parody music videos and back onto what I've been reading. For those of you who like to read the same kind of stuff I do, I've had a couple of good reads lately:

Ruby Red, by Kerstin Gier

Prisoners in the Palace, by Michaela MacColl

Dragonfly, by Julia Golding

Of the three, I think my favorite was Dragonfly. It's a fantasy romance/adventure that kind of reminded me of The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. Not that the stories are that alike, but if you liked one I imagine you would like the other.

Ruby Red is the first in a trilogy. It's a time travel novel, with characters who can end up unwillingly traveling through time just by being born with the gene (a similar idea to The Time Traveler's Wife?) I will be very happy when the sequel comes out in the spring. Clearly there is more to be told here, and we are still a long way from solving the primary mystery.

Prisoners in the Palace was a fun, light read, Victorian-style. Literally. It is historical fiction set at the point in British history just before Princess Victoria becomes Queen Victoria. I had no idea that Victoria lived in such un-royal circumstances as a child, but the author assures us that part is factual.

Anyway, if any of you have the time or inclination you can probably find these books in your local library (after all, if my tiny library has them, yours probably will too!)