Peo­ple who like to say “Happy Mon­day” — are they really that cheer­ful, do you think? Mov­ing on. Here are an assorted selec­tion of news top­ics that I ran across the net recently.

glasses and paperKeis­hon is still read­ing UNDONE by Karin Slaughter. Although the book is good, she spent most of Sun­day with friends and fam­ily and didn’t get much read­ing done until late in the evening. The review might be up Tues­day or Wednes­day. #readingdeadlinefail

Jane from Dear Author wrote up a nice sum­mary of the RWA09 con­fer­ence. I’m told that the next con­fer­ence will be held in Nashville, TN in 2010. I know I said that I wouldn’t want to ever attend but am seri­ously think­ing about going next year.

Also, Katiebabs did her write-ups on RWA09 as well and shared some pho­tos. Loved it, thanks. Other peeps twit­tered the event using hash­tag #rwa09.

In the cat­e­gory of author’s being seen in a pos­i­tive light — Neil Gaiman is “32 fla­vors of awe­some” accord­ing to the Sav­age Crit­ics. I love read­ing sto­ries like this. Sounds like Gaiman is truly a class act.

Over at the Booksmug­glers, Ana and Thea are hav­ing a YA Appre­ci­a­tion Month where they will be review­ing YA titles up to August 15th. Apro­pos as I for­get which one of them finally read all three books in Megan Whalen Turner’s THE THIEF series. Yes, her books are that good. I’ve only been scream­ing to every­body to read her books for the past two years now (or some­where close to that).

On a more somber note, news leg­end Wal­ter Cronkrite died at age 92. He wasn’t apart of my gen­er­a­tion but I do know he was the voice of the first man to ever walk on the moon and he shed the tears of most Amer­i­cans when JFK was assas­si­nated. RIP.