Having a baby has turned me into a TV addict! I grew up without a television (one of the things Patrick and I have in common), and maybe because of that, I've traditionally been less interested in TV shows than in movies. There are a couple of TV shows I've absolutely loved (Dr Who, Buffy), but usually I'm just not that interested - we still don't own a television, and when we rent DVDs, I almost always choose movies, not TV shows.

At least, that's how it used to be. No longer! First I got hooked on The Tudors. Then I started to enjoy Merlin, the new BBC fantasy show, which I'm watching on the BBC iPlayer. (I really didn't like the first episode, but every episode after that has been a lot better - genuinely fun, light YA fantasy.) And then I rented the first DVD of The Gilmore Girls, a show I'd always heard of but never seen - and guess what? I'm hooked on another show. (Not that I need to even say anything about it, since I'm probably the last person in England or America to actually watch it, but I thought it was smart and funny and totally charming.) Since the whole Season 1 boxset only cost £9.50, I've just ordered it from Amazon. Next up on my DVD rental list is Disc One of Mad Men, and I'm actually a little nervous. Is it a good idea to discover another great TV show right now? Or am I already in over my head? Oh well. The fact that Mad Men has been recommended to me separately by four different people (with very different tastes) in the last two weeks made it feel like an overwhelming vote. But I'm hoping, for the sake of my bank account, that I won't like it too much... ;p

In terms of things that are good for bank accounts, though, check out all the free books going around! Two of my agency-mates are giving copies of their YA books away right now. You can read Alan Gratz's first novel, Something Rotten: a Horatio Wilkes mystery, online right now as a promo for the second book in his Shakespearean mystery series, Something Wicked. (You can read more about his books on his website.) Another agency-mate, the very cool Sara Ryan, is giving away hardcover copies of her novel The Rules for Hearts to gay-straight alliances. Check out the rules here.

And lastly, I've been meaning for a long time to link to Girl eBooks: free ebooks by the gals, an online site that "aims to make classic and lesser-known works by female writers available to a large audience through the ebook medium". It's a small catalog, but growing fast. So far, I've downloaded some great 18th-century novels that I'd heard of but never read, like The Female Quixote, by Charlotte Lennox, but also some novels by much more famous authors like Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. Especially if you can't easily get to a library (like, say, hypothetically, because you have a newborn baby in the house...), it is a great resource to have.

And now it's time for a diaper change, so my one-handed typing has to end. But I also wanted to quickly say: if you want to see another Mr Darcy photo (a more recent one) and haven't seen this already, check out Patrick's latest entry.

Cheers!