No longer having a pop culture column means one very important thing – I have no outlet to discuss THE VERY IMPORTANT THINGS like Gwyneth Paltrow being on Twitter and Jude Law dressed in a hazard-suit of some kind and Bradley Cooper giving an interview in French and ThatJP on The Bachelorette who is totally going to win this whole damn thing and not the dude with the scary mask or that douchebag Bentley, but really, doesn’t she already know that people named after cars are never trustworthy and that girl on So You Think You Can Dance who thinks that Ringo Starr is her father and that the Ringo Starr that WE think is Ringo Starr is an impostor and that the REAL Ringo lives in Utah with his daughter who is both a crappy dancer and delusional.

SEE? This is why I need to revive Juice. There is so much inane drivel important stuff swirling around in my brain.

So, I figured that this pop culture dump was a nice little segue into what I was actually going to talk about today which is only kind of, sort of pop culture-esque in that it involves me being @replied to on Twitter by a celebrity. Now before you go and get all excited (and NO, it wasn’t Gwyneth Paltrow getting all goopy on me) this is actually kind of, sort of a cautionary tale of sorts.

I guess what I am trying to say here is that it’s important to remember that Twitter is a public place.

So, when I tweet casually….

perhaps I should have considered my public audience. There was a lot of conversation back in forth, on twitter, on facebook, and through emails. The consensus was that some people loved it and some people didn’t. Most people loved the part that took place during World War II, but really had no desire to even read the part that took place in the present. Personally, I read a lot of Holocaust fiction and non-fiction. My grandparents were survivors of Auschwitz and Dachau and I grew up listening to their personal accounts and learning to never forget. Because of the real stories and all of the reading I have done, I take Holocaust fiction very seriously, and tend to probably critique it more than most. I found the WWII part to be very interesting, but not interesting enough to make up for the present-day protagonist that was irritating and unlikable. To me, main characters need to be likable. So, I found myself racing through half of the book to read the historical fiction. So, yes, HATED is a strong word. But, it just wasn’t my favorite. I mean, I read it to then end, right? That’s more than I can say for The English Patient….

Anyway, I was getting tons of response, but one in particular caught my eye.

So. Yes. That would be Tatiana de Rosnay. THE AUTHOR OF SARAH’S KEY. Tweeting back at me. I loved that she had a sense of humor about it, because I imagine that writers probably have to develop somewhat of a thick skin because with all of the praise and critical-acclaim, there are always going to be haters.

And then I thought. Wait. *I* am a writer. I have sort of kind of maybe a thick-ish skin and I usually let it roll off my back when people leave not-so-nice comments about my writing or about me. Most of the time I’m all, “that’s why there are millions of different blogs out there! If I don’t do it for you, surely someone else out there will be bigger! better! nicer! funnier! lengthier! briefer! more crass! less crass!”

Only sometimes…well, my skin is impossibly thin and it makes me feel really crappy.

I probably just should have tweeted that I was sorry because I know what it’s like to have a thin skin and clearly this book means a hell of a lot to this writer (you know, the same way MY writing means a lot to ME). So, Tatiana de Rosnay, if you are reading this, I am sorry. You seem like a lovely, lovely person (and funny too!) and I’d love to give something else you’ve written a shot.

And I promise not to tweet about it.

Unless it’s to tell you how much I loved it.

And how pretty you are, of course.