Whoops, didn't read your message carefully and see you advised about it being a short story - sorry!

Rosefolly, I agree with you about those publishers, careless cads, but glue is readily available so we'll be all right. I think we should definitely all get washed up on an island together with our little mini-libraries and then find that the island was once inhabited by a wealthy hermit who loved books and we came upon his mansion and it was well stocked with food and wine and a huge library of nothing but signed first editions and every other book ever written,plus preplanned regular shipments from all the publishers with their new crops of books, with plenty of bedrooms for everyone, and clothes in the closets, and a beautiful garden and then we find a will in the locked desk drawer and lo and behold it deeded the entire island and all it contents to me, his beloved long lost niece, as long as she shared it with the other booklovers she washed ashore with on Fantasy Island, two of whom are physicians, two are nurses, two are dentists, and two more are optometrists and two more are opticians, all of whom can man the fully stocked medical center in the East Wing if necessary. gbg....out of her mind

Blimey, it's too long since I've been on here....note to self - must visit more often! Sheri - I read Your Inner Fish about six months ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. This month, I've read a couple of books which might interest you. First, I decided that I'd see what the creationists have to say about everything (or, at least, one of them), and read Evolution - The Fossils Still Say No! by Duane Gish. He follows the story of life as written by evolutionists and just finds holes in the arguments; his main argument being that there are no real transitional fossils. It's a very frustrating book - it just picks holes in evolution and evolutionary theory over and over again without putting anything except "Goddiddit" as an alternative. To someone with a scientific bent, it's very tedious. I was able to spot a few of his flaws, but I'm not an expert on paeleontology, so the book does give the impression that evolution is dubious, to say the least. Then I turned to Evolution - What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters by Donald R Prothero. Prothero is a professor of geology, & a fellow of the Paeleontology society. Basically, he knows what he's talking about - and boy, does it show! In the first part of the book (entitled Evolution and the Fossil Record), he discusses the scientific method and why creationists cannot be considered to be scientists (basically, it comes down to the fact that if the evidence leads you somewhere, that's where you have to go - even if the bible tells you something else). He also discussed the history of evolutionary and geological theory, and systematics - the way living things are related to each other and how they are sorted out. In the second part of the book (entitled Evolution - the Fossils say Yes!), he more-or-less follows Gish in discussing the evolution of life on earth from the beginning. The difference is that he demonstrates, with dozens of examples, that the fossil record is far more complete with literally hundreds of transitional fossils between "kinds". He also takes the time to bad-mouth creationist quote-mining and their misapprehensions about evolution - he goes as far as accusing them of downright dishonesty in a lot of their books. It's a magnificent book, and I frankly don't understand how anyone could read it and still believe in young-earth creationism and flood geology. I'd thoroughly recommend Prothero - it's one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read on any subject. If you wanted to read just one book about evolution, to understand exactly what it's all about, and why the creationish arguments are so flawed, I can't think of a better one. It's worth reading Gish in parallel to see how dishonest a so-called scientist (he has a PhD in Biochemistry) can be - more-or-less HAS to be - when they are starting from a premise which they are not allowed to challenge. (The only down-side to Prothero is the fact that it's a BIG book - it's not one you can slip in your...

I loved JS&MN, so thanks for the heads up. The stories sound like they are similar to the fairy tales in the footnotes of the novel, which I really loved. I am putting it on my TBR and hope to get it from the library also. HA! The ad the came up with this thread is Barbie and the Twelve Dancing Princesses. How wierdly appropriate.