I’ve been waiting to read the review of Steve Coll’s new book, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, which came out in hard cover today. Supposedly, the Pulitzer Prize winning author has done a wonderful job documenting the vast Bin Laden family’s history, including Osama’s life as one of 54 children.

But you’d never know that from looking at Amazon’s page, at least not today. Rather than a review of Coll’s book there’s a lengthy description of Roger Lowenstein’s book on pension debts and the destruction of large U.S. companies, While America Aged.

Mistake? Lousy April Fool’s joke? Computer glitch?

It’s hard to say — which is yet another reason why I hate April Fool’s Day — but if I were Coll I’d be pretty hacked off.

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Sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday at his home in Columbo, Sri Lanka after suffering from post-polio syndrome for two decades. He was 90 years old.

Believe it or not, VH and I only recently watched Clarke’s film collaboration with Stanley Kubrik, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which affected us both so differently that it seemed like we’d seen two different films. VH found it monotonous and painfully slow, lacking the booze, boobs and bombs he prefers in movies. Me? I found it the visual equivalent of experimental literature, something I have a fondness for.

Then again, I’ve worshiped Clarke’s literary mastery since the first time I picked up Childhood’s End, a novel about an alien species, the Overlords, that transforms Earth into a “paradise” by supplying humans with everything they could possibly need. In doing so, the Overlords sought to help humans evolve and ready themselves to participate in the larger universe.

But “paradise” is often a label attached by those who’ve never actually experienced it, whereas those who have often find their circumstances considerably less than ideal. Ultimately, one has to wonder whether humans supplied with everything they could desire — and thus freed of the need to struggle, toil and persevere — are actually human anymore.

That book so profoundly affected me that I spent the better part of a year devouring some of his other works, eventually working my way into other masters of the sci-fi genre: Heinlein, Asimov, Zelazny.

Clarke’s imagination drew me into a genre of fiction that never fails to make me think, to dream and to hope. He said of his own life, words now immortalized in his epitaph, that “never grew up; but he never stopped growing.” Thanks to his prolific and profound works, that can also be said of his millions of fans who, like me, are mourning our loss.

My New Year’s Eve festivities were cut short last night when, shortly after VH popped open a bottle of bubbly, my body began shaking with chills that turned into a raging fever in the blink of a runny red eye. Next thing I knew, I was essentially imprisoned in the bathroom for the remainder of the evening by a nasty stomach bug that’s left me shaky, wrung out and otherwise feeling like crap.

Apparently, it’s becoming a tradition for me to be sick on New Year’s Eve and Day. What fun.

Right about the time they dragged out Dick Clark’s corpse for its 15 minutes of fame for the year, I was finally able to crawl to the bed and collapse with a book. I only knew it was midnight because The Big-Eyed Boy insisted on hooting and hollering as he raced through the house, jumping on my bed and knocking over the bowl I’d been keeping on my nightstand “just in case”. (Thank goodness I hadn’t needed it recently.)

Still, I did manage to enjoy the evening, thanks to a very fun, entertaining book: Dead Witch Walking, the first in a series of first-person novels by Kim Harrison featuring saucy redhead Rachel Morgan, witch and hunter of magical bad guys.

Set in an alternate version of Cincinnati where a virus carried in genetically engineered tomatoes wiped out a huge portion of the human race and revealed that there have always been fantastical, and dangerous, creatures living among us: the Inderlanders.

Vampires, werewolves, fairies, pixies, witches and warlocks (the latter two of which shouldn’t be confused) all vie for power now, with many crossing the lines of benign magic to traffic with demons. Rachel’s job, and that of her vampire and pixy roommates, are to stop those who dabble in such devilry, a feat which she performs whilst clad in black leather.

Dead Witch Walking tells how Rachel left Inderland Security to become an independent agent, earning herself a bounty on her head that takes more than one nasty encounter to escape from. Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer must love the way Rachel kicks ass but doesn’t necessarily pause to take names.

A fun, fast-paced read and an absolutely perfect to kill time. No pun intended.

In the old days, I used to love hanging around libraries, skimming the stacks for titles that caught my eye and spending an afternoon reading about whatever topic struck my fancy that day. That was long before I had children, much less such a crammed schedule. Although I’ve never lost my love of libraries, I haven’t set foot in one for over a year. I just don’t have time. Which is not to say that I’ve lost any of my love for them. I’ve simply learned to look online to satisfy my curiosity.

Until now I’d found online libraries to be largely disappointing. Most have sparse selections, poor formatting, and are little more than scanned copies of outdated volumes.

Then there’s Questia, an online academic library that sets the standard for what digitized libraries should be.

Let me tell you now, folks, this is a site I am actually using and know I’ll be a fan of it for some time to come.

As a writer and homeschooling parent, the kind of information I need in any given week is all over the board. One day I might want to read up on children’s learning styles and that night be curious about symbolism in literature. I’ve yet to find Questia lacking on any subject I’ve searched, and with over 70,000 books and 1.6 million articles in just about every category you can imagine, from art to psychology and everything in between, I guess that’s not so surprising.

They make learning about new subjects easy, too. Don’t know precisely what you’re looking for? All you have to do is type in your keywords and search their predefined research topics to retrieve a listing of categories containing your terms.

My search on “child learning styles” led to over 29,000 results… a bit more than I’ve got time to read this week. Fortunately, I don’t have to read them all at one time. Questia’s innovative search engine allows me to narrow my search further, then add titles of interest to my online bookshelf using one click.

The easily accessed bookshelf screen appears as a pop-up box, which means it’s contents are continually accessible. Just keep adding to it as you browse your results then use it when you’re ready to start researching your topic further.

Making research efficient is really where Questia shines.

I’m an avid note-taker, the kind who likes to mark her books up and cross-reference them. I’ve even been known to do this with some of my more beloved works of literature if, say, a Salinger passage reminds me of something Hawthorne once wrote.

That habit is one that’s stood between me and enjoying online research in the past, since I’ve always found it annoying to have to keep a hard-copy notebook (or even a separate computer file) to supplement what I’m doing online. (Librarians, I’ve noticed, tend to get a bit twitchy when I forget the book’s not mine and jot notes in the margin.) I have to take notes for information to really sink in to my brain.

Questia’s innovative research browser lets me do just that. In addition to taking notes on-screen, the browser allows users to bookmark pages, highlight particular passages, and generate citations and a bibliography with one touch. I’m still addicted to maintaining hard copies for my files, and Questia lets me print the page — with my notes and highlights. There’s also a dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopedia built in to the browser, so all the tools I need to research and write about a project are on one screen.

But Questia’s not just for academic research. The online library also contains thousands of classics, with everything from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to The Origin of Species.

At first glance, Questia’s subscription fees might seem a bit steep at $19.95/month ($49.95/quarter), but I easily spend the annual cost of $99.95 every month at the bookstore. With the price of gas what it is these days, that 30-mile round trip really adds up — and so do the double-shot lattes I wind up ordering every time I go, too. (Don’t even ask me what I paid in library fines over the past year. I’m afraid to know the total.)

You don’t have to take my word for it, though. Questia is now offering over 5,000 FREE books online. Check it out, and remember there’s no due date on your books when you read them online.