I mentioned this book back in my entry about more gifts for girls with geeky inclinations back in December. (Hey, and I’d also like to add that there’s even more cool science-themed jewelry out there!) Do the Math, to be published in July 2007, is a young adult novel about a girl who solves a mystery by applying algebraic reasoning, so I hear. My writing teacher, Janis Cooke Newman, read drafts of Do the Math because it was written by her original writing teacher, Wendy Lichtman. Janis told me last summer that even though she is not particularly into math per se, she got really drawn into the story.

Considering that Janis’s novel Mary is one of the five finalists for the award for first fiction in the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes competition to happen in late April, that means Janis can recognize some good storytelling when she sees it. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what this young adult novel Do the Math is all about, since it sounds like a character I might have been able to relate to back in junior high. And the cover makes it look like there’s probably gender issues involved, too. Very cool. And there’s math. Need I say more?

Well, I’d like to judge the book for myself once I get a review copy. And it seems like I will! Because today I heard from Wendy Lichtman herself (not as huge a surprise as it might have been, considering the single degree of separation). She wanted to know if I might suggest organizations to market the book to. Starting out with She’s Such a Geek was very smart of her, of course! And she already knew about the Expanding Your Horizons network mentioned in Ellen Spertus’s post just before this one. I told Wendy that I’d be happy to review the book for Inkling (perhaps, if the editors agree), and WEPAN and Techbridge also came to mind immediately. WEPAN seems to have a link to BrainCake, another group that encourages girls in STEM.

But I was wondering whether any of you know of any organizations that might also potentially be interested in hearing about what promises to be a darn good mystery starring a girl who likes math? (The open source model of asking here has worked in the past!) If you know of any such groups, please share here! And of course, we shouldn’t just limit ourselves to budding geeks only—we also need to appeal to the girls who have yet to embrace their own geeky parts.

So in case you were wondering what I look like, what I like to read, and what my favorite flavor of ice cream at San Francisco’s Bi-Rite Creamery is, here ya go. (I’m up to nine punches on my Bi-Rite Creamery card now! One more and I get a free scoop. Maybe I’ll make that one ginger.)

I’ll tell you more about why I’m re-reading The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace in future postings. But I want to note here that I had a lovely chat with People Reading blogger Sonya, who has written her first novel and is a fan of SSAG co-editor Charlie Anders’s writing. Sonya started her blog six months ago in order to reassure herself that people really do still care about books, and sure enough, in this town they really do.

I know that I do my share to buy the sorts of books that unfortunately will never be sold by the palletful at Costco, because the world is not just. (I was just at Book Passage at the Ferry Building yesterday and I saw some hardcover copies of a previous novel by 2006 National Book Award for fiction winner Richard Powers remaindered at $5.98 apiece—ouch! But in Germany he sells hundreds of thousands of copies of his books. Of course, they elected an intelligent female scientist to run their country, which I don’t think could ever happen here. *sigh* Well, like I said, the world is not a just place.)

Well, it seems that I’m one of the few blogging here at the SSAG blog these days, though believe me, I would love to see more of the other voices here. Because I’m no expert on games, or science fiction, or fantasy—though I know Charlie does post on some of these things, since she writes in those genres among others.

I noticed the split that runs through the book in the two San Francisco readings for the book. The January 25 reading was weighted pretty heavily toward games and fantasy, and the February 1 reading was towards science and technology. (Charlie and Annalee read the same sections of their contributions at both readings, so they kind of balanced each other out.)

It’s kind of interesting, isn’t it, that geeks can run the whole span from fantasy to the deepest truths of nature. I used to be at the “deepest truths of nature” end of the spectrum as a geek, until I realized I hadn’t even been hacking anywhere near the forest containing those, much less the particular cluster of trees shading the Truth. (Now I’m a sort-of geek who has forgotten more physics than most people will ever know—and believe me, most people do not need to know higher physics!)

The whole split makes me think of a quote by the English poet William Wordsworth that I swear I read once, where he described the two different aims of his poetry versus fellow Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetry. It boiled down to, Wordsworth tried to make the strange feel familiar, and Coleridge made the familiar into something strange.

Of course, now I’m wondering which side maps to which. I would have said that I can relate to making the strange familiar—but as I think of it some more, physics research in a way is more about making the familiar strange, isn’t it? Because it’s very possible to look at everyday phenomena and find some really peculiar behavior. And so the comic book writers and gamers and character bloggers might be the ones making the strange familiar.