not to post too often or anything, but:

After reading one of the books silkspinner's sister was kind enough to lend me, I read the biographical note on Patricia Wrede, and found this very amusing (it shows the kind of humor that makes her books so good):
"Though she is one of the few writers of fantasy who has no cat, she likes other people's pets, and they like her--without even knowing she's a vegetarian."

Also, random trivia from my father lecturing his parents (whom we are visiting) on the history of astronomy (much of which I already knew): Halley, who was president of the not-so-rich Royal Society but a gentleman who didn't need more money, paid himself a salary entirely in the form of surplus copies of a book on the history of fishes, which had been not-so-successfully published by the Royal Society earlier. (This came up because he paid for the publication of Newton's Principia, after convincing him to write it.)