Emily the Strange - the Lost Days

In this story we meet Earwig. She seems to have lost her memory. She is in a strange town. When she gets hungry, she goes to a diner and ends up doing odd jobs for food. She sleeps in a makeshift box behind the café.


Earwig gets evidence that her real name is Molly. She goes back home in the middle of the book to meet her two parents. They have lot of documentation, including pictures and video, of Molly growing up with them. Somehow all this sounds wrong to Earwig. Eventually she figures she cannot be Molly.


Later Earwig gets in touch with the real Molly. She also returned to the town she woke up in with her memory gone. She then finds out she is related to the original owner of the diner, who is deceased. Things heat up when we find out that owner and some rich kids in town were from two different fighting clans.


Earwig needs to find a way to protect the ownership of the diner. One of the rich kids is trying to take possession of it by any means necessary. And it seems in this town, bribes help get things done. I need to read some more books about this Earwig, or as she is properly known, Emily the Strange.

Can You Ever Forgive Me

I saw the movie first in this instance. It starred Melissa McCarthy. It was based on an autobiographical book by Lee Isreal. I just read the book. While the content of the book is producing and selling forged letters by celebrities, it feels like that is just a backdrop to give you a peek into Israel's life.

Israel started out good as a New York Times bestseller. But them she came upon hard times. She used her research skills to figure out what type of letters celebrities may have written. Then she wrote then and passed them off as originals. She made sure to use old paper to make them look authentic.

After a while, people began to catch onto the fakes. So Israel started stealing actual letters. She would leave fake copies behind in the libraries. She would sometimes add content to the originals to make them more interesting (and more valuable).

The collectors got wise again. So Israel used a co-conspirator to pawn off the forgeries. Even that was discovered. The FBI got involved. Israel feared jail time. She destroyed all evidence, and obtained help from a lawyer. She did plead guilty and only received house arrest.

After this debacle, Israel got a job as a copyeditor for children's books. Her co-conspirator died before being sent to jail.

Hatching Twitter

This book chronicles the early days of Twitter. There were many founder and CEOs that came and went. Most departures were not voluntary. One early employee was Noah Glass. Apparently he got a bit crazy and was fired early on. Then Jack Dorsey became CEO. He would later go on to found Square, a mobile payments company.

Jack was not prepared to be a CEO. It became obvious, and he was moved out to a non-voting board member. He ceased being a Twitter employee and lost all influence initially. He did continue to do interviews, and self proclaimed himself inventor of Twitter.

Evan Williams was the money behind Twitter. He owned the company that initially developed Twitter. He succeeded Jack as the CEO of Twitter. He had some shortcomings, such as not being able to make decisions quickly and hiring his friends for top positions in the company. He was essentially fired when Jack returned to the company.

The book chronicled the earlier days of Twitter, when they had problems keeping the site up. It also covered many attempts at people trying to purchase the company. Stories of original employees, especially those in high positions at the company were discussed. In the end, the assorted CEOs got rich (billionaires) from the company.