I am interrupting the usual posts of my book reviews with a pretty awesome story.

So back in the high school day, I was a big ‘ol drama geek. I hung around with other creatives who liked to act and sing, design sets, sew costumes and watch just about every movie ever made. It was during that time of my life that came out of my shell and met really cool people, some of whom I can still call friends today.

Enter, stage left: Allan (one of the really cool people).

Like me, Allan was a lover of the arts and was also in the theater program. We worked on countless shows together (okay we could probably easily count them, high school is only 4 years for most of us), hung out in the large groups of hip-to-be-square kids that the drama geeks were and then we both went off to separate colleges and into the whole wide world.

Fast forward 20 years and Allan and I have more than inhabited whole wide world, we were now residents of the World Wide Web. Through the advent of this tiny little social networking site called Facebook, we bumped back into each other. Turns out that Allan graduated with a degree in English Lit (a course of study I attempted and fault Herman Melville and John Milton for my change in direction and subsequent five-year undergrad run) and made his way to California to do great things in the world of entertainment. Such great things that he had started his own pop cultural-themed Web site and was seeking content contributors.

I was more than flattered when Allan, who knew I was a huge bookie … wait, that doesn’t sound right. It works for foodies, but not book lovers … asked if I would like to contribute book reviews to his up and coming site. Heck yes I was interested! I just wasn’t sure how much I could commit to reading and reviewing, with a demanding work schedule and life as a single mom. Allan was super flexible and was willing to take what I could offer, whenever I could offer it.

So, I submitted a few book reviews and even wrote my first-ever movie review and then life got busy for the both of us. The holidays were here which took me out of commission for a lot of things and at the height of the holiday hooplah, I decided to pile just a little more on. Yep, that was just about the time that my partner in project crime and I decided that we would read a book a week, every week, for all of 2010.

If you are still with me, you are so very kind or I caught you on a Wednesday night and you don’t have the stomach to watch the American Idol results show which could be handled during a commercial break versus “after the next 2o commercial breaks”. Whatever the reason, I am so very flattered and will try to get to the exciting point I promised at the beginning, because there really is one.

So, Allan and I were briefly out of touch and then were suddenly back in the swing of communicating about a week ago. His site has grown and is really taking off, garnering some great interest and readership and he’s seen my little old blog here and wants to know if he can set up a Lara’s Reading Room area of his own site, where all my reviews will also be featured and possibly read by some cool people like all of you who read me here and maybe even some people in the actual business of books. BREATHE and yes I know that was the biggest run-on but this is kind of exciting for me. Actually, though, I have no idea what that all means beyond my reviews being in more than one place. But it’s pretty stinkin’ cool in my book.

I will tell you this, though. My blog is staying put for now. I don’t have any plans to delete it. My reviews will appear here and on on his site, which I encourage you all to check out:

http://www.popcultureworldnews.com/


It’s really an entertainment junkie’s paradise. I don’t think that’s how Allan is officially marketing it, you know. But, if you love entertainment, you just need to bookmark his site. Wasn’t that a hot plug? He probably won’t be hiring me to do any real site promotion after that sorry “just bookmark it” push. Thankfully, I have a day job and this little slice of reading books and sharing my opinion of them on the side.


Happy reading, surfing or pop culture site bookmarking!

I will be back in seven days…