Some backstory

So a long time ago, I graduated from a very small college and moved to Vermont to be a ski bum for a year before heading off to Our Nation's Capitol for graduate school. Some of my collegiate compatriots and I started a book-club-by-mail: one person would pick a book, send it to the next person who would read it, comment, and send it to the third person. We had a little notebook for all the comments that was going to serve as a record for the ages on our great insights into these great works of literature.

It's now more then a decade later, and I've moved from The Green Mountain State to DC to Tucson, AZ, to Houston, TX, and am now in the process of preparing to move to London at the end of the month. I've finished grad school, gotten married, produced two progeny, and read a lot of books in that span of time. My taste runs strongly to what my husband* refers to as "trashy science fiction", but I prefer to think of as openminded consumption of anything even remotely speculative in nature. I'm currently on a big Elizabeth Bear kick, but thankfully my fellow Mavens keep throwing some good stuff into the mix to keep my brain from disintegrating completely into a pile of alien goo.

We've collectively decided to shift from the postal service to the World Wide Web because really, someone is going to get pissed that she has to ship books to the UK all the time (hence the Intercontinental nature of the blog title). And this way we will have a record of all our thoughts on the great works of literature we're reading all in one place - how many times has that notebook been replaced in the last ten years ladies?

I'm looking forward to reading a bunch of good stuff in the next while, as well as forcing these two slackers to keep in touch. I think we all hope that anyone out there reading will join in the conversation!

*This from a man who reads mostly non-fiction. You know, because if it's not educational, why should he waste his time? Bah!