My favourite present from the holidays (it missed Christmas due to still being knitted) was from my daughter Holly, who decided to learn to knit by knitting me a scarf. It's very black, and woolly, and extremely long and warm.
I've spent the last few days either writing or battling with ID3 tags (and I finally have 900 Jack Benny shows on my iPod the way that I wanted them) and trying to sort out the way that my ISP has been deciding that lots of legitimate mail from people was actually Spam and suchlike (which is a bit worrying -- I wonder about how long it was going on before I caught it, and how many e-mails were eaten).
The weather is midwestern chilly (in England weather like this would herald a new ice age).
I keep being sent things and thinking "I have to mention that on the blog" -- recent arrivals include the gorgeous Top Shelf hardback edition of Alan Moore's novel VOICE OF THE FIRE (which has lovely photographic illustrations by Jose Villaruba and an introduction written by me). The Jill Thompson Death Manga Statue arrived ("Did you check out the colour of her panties?" asked my editor, when I told her that Death had turned up. She was very proud of the colour of Death's panties) and so did the Sandman Morpheus Bust which looks lovely. (I was also sent an advance version of the Desire bust -- which actually looks like Desire, although its head fell off in transit and had to be glued back on.)
Other books that have arrived include the very impressive signed edition of LEGENDS II (which has my American Gods story "The Monarch of the Glen" in it), and from Telos Press some fine-looking signed editions of Paul Mcauley's "Eye of the Tyger", a Dr Who story for which I wrote the introduction.
Let's see...
If ever you've suffered from a typographical error which completely changed the meaning of what you've written, you may appreciate P.G. Wodehouse's poem Printer's Error which I found, after mentioning it to someone who wondered if it was online, by googling "Wodehouse" and "Gow", and have been sending to people who might appreciate it.
Cheryl Morgan's excellent Emerald City has just reached its hundredth issue (Hurrah!), and she gets in some guest talent to review, write essays and comment on stuff. Unfailingly interesting.
Was sorry to see in the Guardian last month that Marjane Satrapi's PERSEPOLIS was considered a publishing failure in the UK, selling 4,000 copies in the UK (and was reminded of it in the complete review blog). On the other hand, 4,000 hardback copies of a translated autobiographical comic about growing up in Iran isn't that abject a failure for the UK. And it might mean they'll try harder in paperback.
Mark Evanier's blog continues to be varied and fascinating.
There's an article -- a sort of thank you to the world -- by an uncharacteristically humble Dave Sim in Previews , and a rather depressing prose portrait of Dave Sim and Cerebus reproduced here. I'm looking forward to, in March, reading the last Cerebus of all, and then to settling down and reading the whole thing.
Where can I find Snow Glass Apple in English
Well, you can read it at The Dreaming at http://www.holycow.com/dreaming/stories/snow.html and you can listen to it at http://www.scifi.com/set/playhouse/snowglassapples/. It's also in my short story collection Smoke and Mirrors, and makes up half of the CDs in Two Plays For Voices.
Which reminds me -- I meant to mention A.S. Byatt's essay on Fairy Tales in the Guardian.http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1115048,00.html