Tuesday April 29, 2008 "Why do we hanker for magic? That is a question that the large-C Catholic fantasy writer must squarely face, and the small-c catholic reader ought at any rate to find interesting....What I mean is that the same problem faces every fantasy writer in a more or less Christian or post-Christian society, regardless of denomination; it is only that Catholic writers, if they take either their writing or their religion seriously, have less room to shirk the issue."
http://superversive.livejournal.com/67317.html?view=474101

gutenbergupdate
A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire by Wadham Pigott Williams
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/25212

Thanks to http://imanotalone.livejournal.com/282486.html for this one:

Forget the Stairmaster in the basement. What if the house itself was your Stairmaster. Hungry? Climb the ladder to the kitchen. Want a shower? Use the two-story rock wall to get to the bathroom. There's no way around it. These houses were designed to be fat-free, to make you move even if it means having to strap on skis to get there. Author of High Fit Home, Joan Vos MacDonald, strongly advocates "designing the whole home so that people are encouraged and even enticed into walking or moving during the course of their regular activities." The house that inspires (or, in many cases, forces) you off the couch is the house that make you lose weight. Our only question: Where can we get one too?
http://www.pointclickhome.com/decorating_design/articles/21_list_waist_watcher_houses

From a letter of comment to Fred Lerner:
What I meant: I think that at least the first Harry Potter book is accessible for people not familiar with the reading protocols of written fiction -- ANY kind of written fiction.

Note: Any discussion of the reading protocols of written sf and written fantasy should take into account various hybrid forms: paranormal romances, paranormal mysteries, near-future thrillers, game tie-ins, visual-sf tie-ins and novelizations, and secret history fiction.

And I suspect some people who can't manage the protocols of written sf/fantasy can cope with them in stories labeled as magical realism.