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With summer on the horizon, it's time to prepare that poolside or beach reading list.

Two Web sites that can give you some suggestions are Goodreads and This One Next.

Goodreads.com has a social networking feature. It lets you know what your friends are reading, have read or would like to read. It also alerts you to what are the most popular books — at least among members of Goodreads.

Currently, President Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" is being read by 2,651 members, and it's No. 10 on the reading list.

But Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" is No. 2 on the reading list, and other books in the series are Nos. 4, Number6 and Number 7. "The Host," the first book of her newest series, is No. 11.

The site also includes videos of author interviews and a database of upcoming literary events. Enter your zip code and the type of event and the results pop up in a list and on a map.

Goodreads also maintains several user groups to discuss literature by genre, geography or common interest.

The name of This One Next says it all. Type in the title and author of book and ask for suggestions. However, just a cursory check of the site found that the less popular the title, the more likely it will return an error message.

The site also will recommend CDs and videos, although its choices can seem a little odd — "The Sound of Music" draws a recommendation of "The River Wild" with Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon.

Both sites will link you to Amazon, so you can order a book, CD, DVD or an electronic download if you have a Kindle.

NEW YORK ... End war, forever. Make the planet greener. Please help my dad find work. Make it rain candy!

Thousands of kids detailed their hopes and expectations for President Barack Obama in letters and drawings as part of a worldwide project, with 150 entries chosen for a free e-book released today, Presidents Day, at www.kidthing.com/dmp.

Most had tall orders for the new guy in the White House: Seven-year-old Aaron Van Blerkom's letter was simpler ... but no less problematic.

``Dear Mr. Obama,'' the Pasadena, first-grader began, ``Please Make it rain candy!''

The ``Dear Mr. President'' project was a joint effort between the National Education Association and kidthing.com. A special hardcopy edition of the book will be sent to the White House for Obama.

The letters were written in January at inauguration time. Kids ages 5 to 12 were eligible to participate. Submissions flooded kidthing, including some from other nations.

Lawrence Hitchcock, chief executive officer of the Web site, said more than 4,500 letters were considered for the book on a heart-wrenching range of topics that don't stop at an end to the war and climate change.

``We had, `My dad's out of work, fix the company, please get more jobs,''' Hitchcock said. ``There were Latino kids saying, `Please change the immigration laws so my dad can come back from Mexico.' This is a profound snapshot of a social narrative of young kids during an important moment in history. It really kind of stunned us what came in through the front door.''

Another of the winners, 12-year-old Destiny McLaurin, a sixth-grader from Medford, N.Y., had friendship on her mind.

``I hope Mr. Barack Obama will one day create a holiday for children from around the world'' she wrote.

In interviews, some of the letter-writers remained optimistic that ``Yes We Can'' was more than just a campaign slogan.

``I feel very proud because I know he'll be able to make a change in the country and we'll be a lot more happier,'' Destiny said. ``I think he should make people feel more welcome, people who don't really get along with other people.''

An 11-year-old boy from Ohio drew himself in tears at the side of a relative. His dream, he wrote, is that a ``cure for cancer will be found'' with Obama in the White House, ``Because it took my aunt to a better place on father's day.''

Another child drew Obama as the ``new sunrise of America.'' One made Earth and labeled it ``Obamaland,'' and still another created the president's face as half dark and half light skin tones with the words ``United We Are One.''

Sasha's drawing is an all-green globe. Her enthusiasm for Obama and his ability to get the job done speaks volumes: ``I just think he's really, really awesome.''

-- The Associated Press

Throwing a party for a crossword fanatic?
How about an invitation and guest list in crossword form?
Can't draw boxes or make all the words fit together? Then this easy crosswords site is perfect for you. It provides a free service that lets you create a variety of crosswords for every occasion. Just type in the answer and the clue and it will construct a puzzle in just a few seconds. It comes with a number of prepared puzzles, which can help children or adults study for upcoming tests or tasks.
While the site says for a small fee it will provide more decorative options, they aren't really necessary.
There are a number of crossword creator site on the Web: This site for educators has an annoying pop-up but is designed for teachers;
This site points out that newspaper crossword puzzles aren't easy to generate but boasts it can provide you with simple crosswords with just a push of the button;
This site offers already prepared educational crosswords for ages 4-18.
One article on the Web claims that creating crosswords is now easier than solving them. And these sites and few others on the Web bear out that statement.

Noah Galuten spent the past three months eating his way around the world -- all within a day's drive of his Santa Monica apartment.

The Associated Press reports:

The 25-year-old playwright was broke and unemployed when he decided to eat cuisine from a different country every day and write about it on his "Man Bites World" Web site.

Galuten figured he could stomach 60 traditional dishes from a different country on consecutive days until he ran out of options and was sated. But the project took him further than he ever imagined, stamping his culinary passport with food from 102 cultures by his final bite of Slovakian poppy seed cake more than three months later.

That he could cross so many borders so close to home is both a testament to Los Angeles' cultural melting pot and the help he got from strangers who invited him into their homes to share traditional meals. "If there's anywhere you should be more inclusive, it's eating," he said.

The final feast -- plum brandy, roasted chestnuts, sheep milk feta with paprika and caraway, homemade gnocchi, and a traditional Christmas soup -- was home-cooked by Peter Simon, a Slovakian immigrant who offered his homeland's best.

The end tasted bitter and sweet: The adventure was over, but he was relieved because it was exhausting -- and expensive.

The international noshing left Galuten with $4,000 in credit card debt, which he hopes to erase by writing a book about his experiences. His girlfriend, Jackie Honikman, 25, a Web designer who covered his rent and other costs, gained about 15 pounds.

When the experiment came to a close this month after he failed to find Somalian food, he returned to his own roots, where he was comforted by a childhood treat -- turkey Bolognese cooked by his mom.

After dozens of best-selling novels, Danielle Steel still has words to spare: She's starting a blog.

"It's like a letter to a friend, and fun to be able share something and say, 'Gee I did this,' " says Steel, 61, whose run of hits includes three this year alone: "Honor Thyself," "Rogue" and "A Good Woman."

"I've remained very remote and very private, partly because of all my kids (nine). They're bigger now and I would like to communicate with my readers in a more informal way, not just through the list of my accomplishments on my publisher's Web site.

In a recent interview from her home in San Francisco, Steel launched her blog Wednesday. She expects to post entries once a week, or more often "if I get excited about something."

An acknowledged technophobe who writes on a 1946 typewriter, Steel says her children dragged her into the computer age, inspiring her to take a closer look at what is written on the Internet.

She is not always impressed. "Some are very interesting, but some are so inane -- unknown people telling you what they do every day, which is even more boring than what I do every day."

But she will play nice on her blog.

"I want it to be friendly and positive," she says. "I have seen some of the blogs being highly critical about people and highly nasty. I don't like that in life; it's just not necessary. Life is hard enough without being sour on top of it."

And so far she's true to her word. On Friday she blogged about her "extremely silly sense of humor," which she says her children inherited:

April Fool('s Day) is a nightmare at our house. Every year, at least two of the unmarried ones call to tell me that they're pregnant, and three to say they're in jail. And I always fall for the first three calls until I realize what day it is.

Two weeks ago, George Orwell started blogging.

Yes, the man who gave voice to the barnyard in the anti-Stalinist "Animal Farm" and created the original Big Brother in "1984" has joined the blogosphere -- even though he died 58 years ago.

The group behind The Orwell Prize, which honors political writing in Great Britain, is resurrecting its namesake's writings in real time, publishing Orwell's domestic and political musings exactly 70 years after they were written.

The blog is a handful of posts into the four years' worth of diary entries. The publication mirror the composition dates; Orwell's Aug. 9, 1938, entry went up on Aug. 9.

Orwell continued the domestic and political journals through October 1942, meaning the blog entries will cease in October 2012.

So far, Orwell has spoken of the weather, catching snakes, picking barley, ripening blackberries and the growth of a Sardinian mouflon sheep and an ass-zebra hybrid. And that's just his domestic fare. The political stuff comes Sept. 7.

And if you see a typo, don't go after the site administrator. The diaries are published exactly as Orwell wrote them, errors and all.

"Oh, so THAT'S what he said!"

Everyone has had the moment where, after hearing a song on the radio a million times, you finally realize what the real lyric is.

A word or phrase misheard in this way is called a mondegreen, and that word was recently added to the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. More than 100 words were added to the dictionary, including the ones listed on the front page of yesterday's Daily Breeze. Many of them are a mouthful, but this one is an earful. Merriam-Webster defines it as "a word or phrase that results from a mishearing of something said or sung."

According to Merriam-Webster, the word traces its origin to the mishearing of the line "laid him on the green" in a Scottish ballad as "Lady Mondegreen."

You've likely never heard that song, but you can find a collection of more than 100,000 misheard lyrics on the Web at http://www.kissthisguy.com/.

If that phrase sounds familiar to you, you're one of people who have misheard the line "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky" in Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze," after which the site is named.

The site is searchable by both artist and song title. If that's not enough for you, there's even an RSS feed of the funniest additions of the week. Happy (mis)hearing!

You don¹t have to be a word geek to appreciate Take Our Word For It (TOWFI). TOWFI has an amazing archive of word histories and usage and is an interesting place to find out the why of word meanings. The site has also won several awards as an outstanding educational resource. Click here for fun reading.

It's been a while since we've done a roundup of blog posts written by South Bay residents, so some of these are from a couple of weeks ago, but they are still worth a link.

Easy Fiend blogger Denis Faye wrote a comic book with an artist he met at the comic shop he frequents in Manhattan Beach. It's called The Monocle and Jimmy Specs. Here's the synopsis from a new blog he set up to promote it:

The Monocle and Jimmy Specs is the story of an aloof crimefighter whose life takes a tragic turn when his prejudices prevent him from accepting the truth about his young sidekick. Inspired by the golden age of illustration and the pulp era of short fiction, The Monocle harkens back to a time when superheroes didn't wear spandex and life was much simpler -- or so they thought.

MaryRuth at Where's the Bubbler has found a little bit of the Midwest in the Sprouts grocery store in Torrance:

Usinger's is a old Milwaukee institution--started in 1880. The factory-store is something out of the Old World. On the walls inside the store are murals depicting the sausage-making elves. I actually toured the factory once. My sister's father-in-law worked there for many years, and when he retired, the company threw him a party and we all got to tour the plant. It was pretty interesting to see how it is done. And no...nothing scary either.

Manhattan Beach Confidential did an ode to a favorite walkstreet, complete with tons of photos that will make you daydream about living there:

Seventh Street in the South End is one of those fabled Manhattan Beach walkstreets. As much or more than others, this one is a kid's paradise.

7th is a flat stretch that goes all the way from Crest to Valley - no break at Ingleside. On a recent stroll we counted no fewer than 3 playhouses, 4 basketball hoops (of varying sizes) and a tetherball post in the walkstreet. It's a playground.

Westchester Parents blog posted an item about a series of exhibits exploring the history of Playa del Rey.

In a series of four exhibits portraying different time periods, Dukesherer will speak about about Playa del Rey (Beach of the King, in Spanish), Playa Vista and later Westchester. The first of four planned exhibits exhibits coincide with the launch of his book (pictured above) will run through March 2009. Each exhibit will consist of a collection of historical photos and memorabilia from various sources.

If you know of a South Bay blogger that we ought to know about, send us a note.

RELATED POSTS:
Girls' Guide to San Pedro
L.A. Farm Girl on where to get the best produce in the South Bay
Q&A with MaryRuth, a South Bay blogger and foodie
Meet Easy Fiend blogger Denis faye
Snail torture and secret MB streets

I discovered Easy Fiend through our courts reporter, Denise Nix. While checking back links to Denise's blog, I found one from the site. And so, I read it and I laughed. But not so much in a "funny ha-ha" way as a "funny, I-can't-believe-he-told-that," way. This guy has no internal filter.

The next day, I asked Denise about the blog. Turns out it's written by her friend Denis Faye, whom she met while her son was in preschool with his daughter. I asked her if she thought we should include him in our hub of South Bay blogs.

"I think he'd probably love that," Denise said. "But, um, have you read the stuff in the archives? He uses some language. And some of it made me blush." This is coming from a woman whose editors cringe when she covers a particularly heinous case because she writes with such lurid detail that very few people will want to read the stories with their morning lattes.

So I said, "Yeah, I wouldn't put it in the family paper, but this is a blog. That's what blogs are for."

So here you go, an introduction to Denis Faye and his blog full of writerly angst, South Bay oddballs and '80s coming of age stories. And kids, if you're not old enough to go to a PG-13 movie, you're not old enough to read his blog.

Here's the bio he sent me:

Denis Faye is a screenwriter and journalist who has lived in Redondo Beach for 5 years with his wife and daughter. He has written for The New York Times, Outside, Wired, Mens Journal, LA Times, Surfer, Los Angeles Magazine, Communication Arts, Written By and the WGA Web site. His script High Midnight is currently optioned to Treasure Entertainment with Mary Lambert attached to direct. A dual citizen of France and the United States, he received a Bachelors Degree in Film Studies from UCSB. He's an avid surfer and comic book fan.

Read on for the Q&A, in which Denis reveals he's not John Cusack.