Can’t figure out the right consonants and vowel mix that perfectly imitates the groans coming out of me.

Woke up with a sore throat. Took my Cold Fx but sometimes you just have to be sick I guess.

Got through the day without sneezing too much, it hit hardest when I got home.

Bought three books at the conference. Even started reading one of them called Stone in My Hand, by some white lady pretending she’s Palestinian.

What a load of crap!

I’ll finish the stupid thing, and see if it gets any better. And if it does get better, I’ll be man enough, or woman enough, to admit I’m wrong.

It’s got every starred review it could get, blurbed on the back cover. And it’s by Candlewick, one of the best publishers in the States.

I wish the reviewers would stop giving starred reviews to books they think are authentic, written by writers trying to profit off other people’s misery.

And I’m not saying this Carolyn whatshername is necessarily such a writer. I’m reserving judgment till I finish the book. But Homeless Bird was written by an irresponsible writer and it won the National book award! And the stupid lady who wrote it had the nerve to brag that practically the only research she’d done was to watch a couple of travel shows. Or was it only one travel show. Can’t remember. My head’s too fuzzy.

Shabanu and it’s stupid sequel is another such book! I even tried to tell Suzanne Fisher Staples that she’d gotten the thought processes of her Muslim heroine all wrong, but she insisted she’d vetted it by some Muslims and she told me how hard she’d worked to make sure she spelled the name of the charpaee, the string cot they’d sleep on right.  (she spelled it charpois! Ha!) Charpaee is more phonetic!

All I know is the way I’m feeling right now, I’m not in the mood for any diplomacy.

And by the way it’s NOT muZlim or MOSLEM. It’s MUSLIM. Soft ‘s’, not hard ‘z’ sound.

Muslim means something. In Arabic the prefix ‘mu’ means ‘one who’ and the root word is ‘SLM’ which means ‘peace’. So a Mu-slim, is basically one who has achieved peace through submission to the will of God.

By the way MOSLEM/muzlim means something too, and it’s insulting. The prefix ‘mu’ still means ‘one who’ but the root word is now ‘ZLM’ which means trouble, horror, chaos, war. You get the picture.

Can’t people read? Do they see any ‘z’ in the word? Just like they say Ac-med, instead of Ah-med. Where’d the hard ‘c’ sound come from?

Credit the CNN people and other journalists for starting to say it right, but there are still so many people saying it wrong.

In fact today, on the panel, there were two perfectly lovely examples of very nice people, totally mispronouncing it. I should have said something. I should have taken them aside and quietly told them what they were saying. Especially since both of them have written books about Muslims. Books that I have no idea whether they’re any good or not.

I should have said something. And I will. I’ll email, at least the lady, I have her email, and gently tell her, the mistake.

And then one day I’ll get around to reading her book.

I hope it’s not crap. I really do.

I’m tired of all the award-winning-starred-review-getting-crappy books about Muslims out there!