Rockybird, you had some childhood adventures didn't you?!? One of my sisters was always a wanderer as a child; back in the '60s parenting was definitely more free-range so she used to go all over our neighborhood unsupervised, which at the time was a relatively new development with lots of fields, woods etc. We lived in a military town which also meant lots of men around and I remember her at one point coming home to tell our mom that someone she met out in the woods was 'bothering' her. That turned out to be a guy who had been exposing himself to my 8-year old sister, repeatedly! OMG, I still recall how shocked and upset my mother was about that. She had no idea what had been happening and evidently my sister just wasn't fazed by the whole thing. Looking back as an adult myself she and my family are extremely fortunate nothing worse happened. Tish, nothing as serious as your story but here's another Bad Mother memory from my files: both my husband and I are/were not terribly interested in food and eating. We are both eat-to-live types and for a long time our dinners were relatively informal to say the least. Till one night when my daughter was ~7 YO she came to me just before bedtime insisting she was so, so hungry. I couldn't understand why until I asked my husband what he had fed her because I thought he'd taken care of that. He looked at me blankly, then asked what *I* had given her because he thought I'd done something for dinner! Talk about feeling awful...that was the start of my many year 5-night a week family dinner schedule (the other 2 nights were leftover and pizza nights). I never missed feeding the kids dinner again :). And while I'm here, one from parenting my son, teenage category. He, at my insistence, went to the senior prom. He wasn't dating anyone so took a girl who was a friend and he also told me the next day offhandedly that he had driven a group of kids home from the prom which was held on South Beach. A few days later I had gotten annoyed at something he hadn't done, homework I think, and was ripping him about being irresponsible, not doing what he should etc. He lost his temper and blurted out that 'driven a group' meant that all the kids he drove home were blind drunk and he was worried they would get hurt so volunteered to get them home safely which meant he had to drive literally to the south end of our county from the north end (SoBe) taking various people to their houses. Not only that, his 'date' ended up drunk-dialing her ex boyfriend to try to hook up with him while my son was taking her home then proceeded to vomit out the window of the car all the way to her house. I'll never forget my son saying to me 'mom, you have no idea what I had to do because I was the only one who wasn't blasted out of my mind!'. Talk about feeling like the world's worst mother!

Rosefolly - thanks for posting this list. I'm always interested in your Hugo award postings. So far, I've read only one of the nominees - the Emily Tesh one and it certainly deserves the nomination. It was one of my 'best-of' from last year's reads.

What is the name for a woman (or man) who has nothing to sell but his or her body? It's desperately sad to display this. I don't know anything about this person. There are some models that make quite a bit displaying themselves wearing designer clothing although I can't really see designers making pantyhose a trend in dresswear. I think for many, making money off of their body one way or another has a short shelf life. What's important for those people and others with a relatively short shelf life such as some sports, is how they plan and invest and whether they can muster the willpower not to blow their budget for the future on tempting fripperies. What would be sad is for someone to reap profits off of their body displays, mocking those who differ as prudes, then recklessly spend all they make, and a few years later when the bloom is off the rose, be left with nothing.

I look forward to all new Connelly books, chisue. I keep an unread backlog so that when I get a urge to read a Connelly book, there's usually one that's new to me I can turn to. I've re-read all of his books several times. Here's a non-fiction book with a Connelly connection that I just read. Black Tunnel White Magic, by Rick Jackson. Jackson is a retired LAPD Robbery Homicide detective and a long time friend and Connelly subject matter collaborator/technical consultant. And somewhat of a inspiration for personality traits of Connelly's Bosch character. The book is about a real investigation Jackson was involved with, one that took over 2 years to finish. And over 25 years to conclude. For those of you who read Connelly's works, if you'll recall that some books back, the Bosch character retired from the LAPD and looking for something to do, started doing volunteer cold case work for other police departments? Guess where that idea came from? That's what Jackson decided to do upon his retirement. He's apparently solved several dozen cases. Here's a "book tour" interview video about the book: