Frankly, much too much stuff for one poor blog post to hold...

I meant to blog in Australia. I really did.

I also meant to get more sleep, jog, write and be a bit of a tourist. Almost none of these things happened.

Lots of other things happened, though.

I flew to Hobart, Tasmania. I have been saying for years that Hobart is one of the planet's secretly cool places, and people used to mock me for saying this. (Australian people would mock me. Other people would just stare at me blankly.) Over the last few years, however, the world has caught up a little with my opinions, and the MONA museum and the MONAFOMA (aka MOFO) Festival has a lot to do with it.

I rehearsed. I read a fairy story in the Theatre Royal Hobart. (I did other things there too: I sang "Psycho", and I did a reading of one of Amanda's songs, "The Bed Song", because she wasn't there.) Here's a video. Jherek Bischoff, Amanda's bass player and string arranger, made all the music happen. The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra provided the lovely string quartet.

Somewhere shortly after arrival in Hobart, I joined forces with Polly Adams.

I'm a patron of Tasmania's Bookend Trust, and Polly has inherited her father's conservation mantle, if not his Rhino suit, and is a patron of Save the Rhino. We got up early the next morning, and were taken off on a journey by Niall Doran of the Bookend Trust. We saw the devastation of the bushfires on the Tasman peninsula, learned the natural history behind the bushfires (basically, Eucalypts like fires - they clear the brush and help the seeds to germinate), saw an echidna by the side of the road, went on a wonderful boat ride (thanks to http://www.tasmancruises.com.au/) and saw awe-inspiring cliffs, seals and penguins (and a dead weedy seadragon), not to mention a place where the sea tips on its side...

...or it feels like it has. (Photo by Polly Adams.)

And then we were shows some of the fire devastation in Dunalley, and presented books to the primary school.

The primary school at Dunalley is not there any more. It burned down in the bushfires. They are putting up temporary buildings to house a temporary school while they build a new one. (We were joined by lots of nice people, including Robert Pennicott and Andrew Hughes, Tasmanians of the Year in 2012 and 2013.)

My publishers, Bloomsbury and Hachette, gave the school lots of my books, and lots of other books that they could use to auction or sell or include in the library. Here I am with Chair of the School Association Elizabeth Knox, Principal Matt Kenny, and various students and community members.

Frankly, I think Polly has a future in showing books to people.

(Photos taken from https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.10151236486214607&type=1 )

The school wrote about it at their blog entry at http://newdunalleyschool.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/a-visit-from-neil-gaiman/.  It's a really inspiring blog, as they chart their recovery from the fires and chart the plans for the new school...

Time was tight, so we flew by seaplane to Hobart so I could do an interview with ABC's Helen Shield (you can read about it and listen to it here: http://blogs.abc.net.au/tasmania/2013/01/neil-gaiman.html). (And Helen's interview with Polly is at http://blogs.abc.net.au/tasmania/2013/01/douglas-adams-little-rocket.html).

A mad dash to a quick rehearsal/soundcheck with Jherek and a string quartet, along with our special guests David Byrne and St Vincent, and an even madder dash back to the ABC studios to do another interview, this time with Triple J's The Doctor (You can read about it/listen to it at http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/thedoctor/blog/s3673304.htm). Then back to the Mona Festival. I got there at 7 minutes to 6. We were due on at 6, so I found a dressing room, changed clothes and went on stage to read "Click-Clack the Rattlebag", sing Psycho, and, my favourite moment of all, read my "Australia Day" poem with Brian Ritchie playing didgeridoo, and David Byrne making animal sounds on the guitar.

I listened to Kate Miller-Heidke singing wonderfully immediately after us (her cover of David Byrne's Psycho Killer was unbelievable. It was a bit like this:)

And then came the best bit of the whole night as Jherek and I had a close encounter with a guide dog puppy named Quinnell.

I nearly forgot to mention, a couple of days earlier Amanda had asked me on Twitter to recreate her famous Map of Tasmania photo from the last time she was there. So, with the aid of a Map of Tasmania apron and photographer Dianna Graf, I did. And then Polly did too.

and here is Quinnell the guide dog puppy in training with his coat on (he's not allowed to play and lick you when he has his coat on) along with Dianna Graf, who took many of the the above photos and, with Mark, her partner,  is training Quinnell. We're in Hobart harbour and it is very windy.

And then Polly and I were getting up at 6 am again and we headed to Melbourne, where we stayed with my friends Peter and Clare. They have the best house in the world.

I spent a day or so mostly being interviewed -- the photo is from the interview at http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/melbourne-in-authors-good-books-as-he-plans-next-fun-escapade-20130123-2d7e6.html.

I'd a talk at the Atheneum Theatre, under the auspices of the Wheeler Centre.  I signed lots of books for people, and then stumbled off for a late drink and dinner with lots of Melbournian friends, including Sxip Shirey, Meow Meow, and someone named Knibbs who can, like me, raise both eyebrows individually or set them scurrying across her forehead like startled caterpillars. ("Did you teach yourself in front of a mirror when you were a kid too?" "Yup.")

Four hours of sleep and I said goodbye to Peter and to Clare, and to Polly too (I'd pretty much adopted her by the time I left, so it was a sad goodbye made happier in the knowledge that I'd introduced her to lots of people who would be fun for her to know in Australia) and flew to Sydney, to the offices of Hachette, where I was interviewed, looked after by publicist Anna Hayward, had my photo taken by Tamara Dean (look at her beautiful photo art here and here) and then I had lunch with my Bloomsbury publishers and answered questions for them on video, and I ran to the Sydney Recital Hall where I met FourPlay String Quartet for a rehearsal.

I really love the guys from FourPlay -- it's such a delight doing stuff with them. We ran through the Fireball XL5 theme.  We took the first fifteen minutes of FORTUNATELY, THE MILK and they created music and sound effects on the fly. They made glorious bush sounds for the Australia Day poem.  Working with them now is so comfortable and easy.

Photo stolen from http://capriciousnerd.tumblr.com/post/41897844603/agaimanevening because she posted on Twitter that she had photos from the night at the exact moment I thought I ought to look for some.

During the evening I read the first 2 chapters of THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE. I did a Q&A and explained why secrets do not leak out of the Doctor Who office in Cardiff. I sang the Fireball XL5 theme because I had FourPlay with me and I wanted to hear what they did to it...

I read the first fifteen minutes of FORTUNATELY, THE MILK... (it is so silly. I love it so much).

And then I gave an acknowledgment of country, and read the Australia Day poem, and we were done. No signing -- it was a long event, there were about 1100 people there, and I was knackered, but I scribbled on things for the people at the stage door on the way out.

Production entity Jordan Verzar and Festival boss Ben Strout, Jemma Birrell (artistic director of the festival) and festival PR Ainslee Lenehan and I, along with my old Whitgift school friend James Croll, stumbled off for an exhausted drink and conversation after the show, winding up in the bar of the hotel I was staying in, the somewhat O.T.T. but beautiful "QT", where the people were so nice and helpful. And then I was sleepily packing and it was daylight again, and I went to see the people at Animal Logic, who had given up some of their Australia Day to show me the beautiful film work they had done...

I proofread the UK edition of OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE on the plane back to the US, and read Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor. I breakfasted with my son and daughter in law and daughter in San Francisco airport. I got home to Amanda...

I slept. I slept for three whole hours, and then the furnace in the basement belched out soot and smoke, the smoke alarms went off, the fire brigade arrived, and my hopes of catching up on my sleep were dashed. (Nothing was damaged. Nothing burned. And the Cambridge MA fire department are fast.)

The first of my episodes of SELECTED SHORTS went up on the radio. I got to select and introduce stories I loved -- in this case Ray Bradbury's chilling "The Veldt" read by Stephen Colbert, and James Thurber's "The Catbird Seat" hilariously read by Leonard Nimoy.

You can listen to it HERE.

(I'll be hosting for the next few weeks. Why don't you subscribe to the podcast? Information and links  at http://www.selectedshorts.org/podcast/. There are some great stories on the way.)

Then an interview with me went out on Morning Edition. You read about it and listen to it here: http://www.npr.org/2013/01/28/170085113/watch-this-neil-gaimans-imaginative-favorites It's about things I love, or things that influenced me.

No, I won't tell you what they are. Go and listen to it. It's fun.

(There were things on my list that we didn't have time to talk about: Doctor Who's Curse of the Fatal Death and the Magnetic Fields' Andrew In Drag video, for example...)

And I should stop writing this blog and go and write about weird stuff happening underneath London instead.

But if you've made it this far, the next week should be interesting. I'll be doing a really exciting (and quite goofy) Art Project, and you'll learn a bit about it in this film. (Along with seeing Cabal, alive and well and happy, three weeks ago.)

Labels: Amanda, David Byrne Yes Him, Dunalley, failing to sleep in on a Sunday morning, fourplay, Hobart, Is Tasmania Secretly Cool, kate Miller-heidke, Keep moving, melbourne, Mofo, Mona, Polly J Rocket Adams, Tasmania

Life Goes On, with additional Awesome, the aftereffects of a hurricane & a firestorm

I am typing this on a plane on my way to Australia. I had planned to go to Australia to keep Amanda company. Amanda is, however, now not going to Australia until Autumn. Life is odd, sometimes. She will be in Cambridge, dreaming of the warmth and missing Australia, and I'll be in Australia, performing on stages -- even doing something unlikely with David Byrne -- while being a bit wistful for home.

I was on the stage of the Carnegie Hall last night. It wasn't my show -- it was more fun that that. It was John and Hank Green's show, An Evening of Awesome, and I felt like I was going to their party (and boy, can they throw a party). I had quite possibly the best time that any author except John Green has ever had standing on the stage of the Carnegie Hall, and I hugged Kimya Dawson and hugged Hannah Hart, and the Mountain Goats played and...

...ah, just watch the video if you want to know what it was all about. It starts 35 minutes in. (And my first bit starts about 1:43).

I gave copies of Chu's Day to some of the people on the stage who had very small children.

Chu's Day went straight onto the New York Times list at #2 today, which is good.

But... there was a problem.  I had noticed on the Amazon page that people were reporting that they were getting copies with water-rippled interior pages. And some of them were sending them back and getting more water-warped copies to replace them with. This was odd. I asked on Twitter and discovered that, yes, this had happened to people who got their copies of Chu's Day in places other than Amazon. I let Harper Children's know, and they did some SherlockHolmesing around. My editor Rosemary told me what they discovered. She explained,

...we believe that when the copies left the bindery in China, they were fine, but they arrived in the U.S. during Hurricane Sandy. The cartons of books were stuck on the ship, as the ship was unable to come into port, and so the tremendous humidity in the air caused a ripple effect on the pages of some of the books. The ship was unable to dock until November 9. There is no actual water damage on the books, or water-to-paper contact, but we have seen some ripples in a few copies that would be caused by humid air. The copies that shipped to us by air from the bindery were all fine, so the problem must have occurred on the ship.

HarperChildren have already gone back to press on the book twice, with the first reprinting due in to the US this week, and they are shipping out pristine copies of Chu's Day to their accounts to replace any Sandy-damaged copies. As Rosemary continued,

[the new printing] will ship directly from the bindery to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and others. We are not wasting time by shipping to our warehouse and then to our accounts...

So if you got a hurricane-marked copy, you should be able to replace it very easily very soon. And we are very sorry.

...

Two Australian things: There are still tickets left for Sydney on the 25th. The first half of the evening will be all about Ocean at the End of the Lane. The second half will be stories and Q&A, and FourPlay and possibly even some songs. Tickets at this link.

More importantly, on the 21st, it's the Mona Bushfire Fundraiser Concert. The Tasmanian fires have been terrible things, and I've already been working with my publishers to get books to students at this school:

Probably you want to see me and Jherek Bischoff with special guest David Byrne doing some weird and wonderful stuff on stage. (We have over an hour to fill. We have plans. They will be weird. They will be wonderful.)  But we are only a very small part of the entertainment:

MONA is pleased to announce a Mona Bushfire Fundraiser Concert to raise funds for the Australian Red Cross Tasmanian Bushfires 2013 Appeal. http://www.mona.net.au/
Buy tickets: https://www.mona.net.au/shop/bushfirefundraiser.aspx

THE ARTISTS:
The Hoodoo Gurus
The Break
Kate Miller-Heidke
Evan Dando & Spencer P Jones
Neil Gaiman and Jherek Bischoff (special guest David Byrne)
Taiko Drum

WHEN & WHERE:
Monday January 21, 2013
Princes Wharf 1 (PW1), Hobart
Doors open 5.30pm for 6pm, until late
TICKETS:
$33
On sale now: https://www.mona.net.au/shop/bushfirefundraiser.aspx

All profits from the concert go to the Australian Red Cross Tasmanian Bushfires 2013 Appeal. Production costs kept low by the generous donation of time and services by dozens of companies and individuals. 

Mona and MONA FOMA staff are hosting the event. Suppliers will provide equipment and services, including artist accommodation; volunteers will staff the concert, and artists are performing for free. Mona has waived ticket booking fees and is giving all food and bar profits from the evening to the Red Cross.

Labels: Chu's Day, David Byrne Yes Him, firestorm, Hobart, hurricane, Is Tasmania Secretly Cool, Practice Practice Practice, sydney, Tasmania

Hat Chronicles...

I am not a very good hat person. My hair is wrong, and it defaults to Harpo Marx when a hat goes onto it -- and Harpo needed a wig to get that look. But I am determined not to lose this one.

Hence this twitter exchange from the other day.

...

Today William Morrow and Headline books will both announce that they are publishing THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE next year. 

It's also being published in other countries - I know because I've started getting notes from foreign translators saying it's their favourite of my books, and it made them cry. I have never got notes like this before. It is very nice, and very odd.

...

I'll be in Tasmania, at the Mona Foma festival, on January the 20th. I'm at the Theatre Royal in Hobart (which Tim Minchin assures me is a perfect theatre), and I'm doing an Evening With Neil Gaiman.  Stories and suchlike. Jherek Bischoff and I are planning the music to accompany at least one of the readings. 

This is how they describe it in their catalogue:

An evening with Neil Gaiman

All ages event
We love Neil, which is why we keep asking him back: to transfix us with his stories, which are spooky and funny, and have won shitloads of awards, too many to mention. There’ll be music, too, by Jherek Bischoff and local musicians, and a special guest…hint: Neil’s got the hots for her, massively, and she has a ukulele.

(There may be other surprise guests too.) (The Mona Foma Festival itself is a wonderful thing. One of the coolest in the world.)

Ticket details at http://mofo.net.au/shop/mofo.

I'm looking forward to going back to Tasmania for a lot of reasons, not least of which is I get to see the good people at the Book End Trust, and help with their educational mission. Also I may get to feed Tasmanian Devils again.

...

I'm waiting for someone to send me some photos before I put up my YouHaveNoIdeaHowProudAFatherIAm post about my son Michael's wedding to the very lovely Courtney. I put away my phone for the whole of it, and decided to just be there, and not record it, and I am glad that I did. Some moments you keep in your heart.

Labels: Is Tasmania Secretly Cool?, Michael Gaiman, my hat, Tasmania, The Ocean At The End of the Lane

I took my love to Hobart in the rain

Arrived in Hobart yesterday afternoon, and shortly after was reunited with Amanda.

We saw Amanda's Lexington friend (and, these days, my friend) Ron Nordin, and my Tasmanian friends (and, these days, Amanda's friends) Dianna and Mark for a drink.

They all drank wonderful things like honey martinis with honeycomb in them while I drank English Breakfast tea in the hope that it might keep me awake. Then Amanda and I went off and had the first meal together we'd had since we've been married, while I tried to stay awake and enjoy it all properly.

I woke at 6 am to the patter of rain on the hotel roof with a new wife fast asleep beside me, and I was amazingly happy. I let her sleep until I decided, a couple of hours later, that unless I had breakfast the world would end, and then I woke her.

Went for a walk together. I love Hobart. First came here in '98, for an Australian National Convention, and decided it was one of the fine, secret places of the Earth. And I'm still convinced that this is true. I came back in 2008, and loved it again. We got back to the hotel to hear Amanda being interviewed on Triple-J, and dedicating The Magnetic Fields song "The Book of Love" to me, because it was played, by Daniel Handler, at our wedding.

I know. It's all sort of sweet and a bit melty over here in my blog-land right now. It'll go back to normal soon enough, I expect.

Tonight Amanda plays a secret midnight practice gig as a rehearsal for her new Australian band (it's at the Brisbane Hotel. You didn't hear it from me), and she's invited me along to do something onstage, but I suspect that if I've been up since 6 am, I may not feel like performing or even feel like being awake at midnight. We'll see.

Tomorrow both Amanda and I play at the Mona Foma Main Stage (it's on the other side of the white building in the photo). I go on at 8 pm to read THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS, with FourPlay accompanying me, and Eddie Campbell paintings (and, I hope, Eddie Campbell there too, but am not yet certain about Eddie: he's coming from flooded Brisbane, after all).

Amanda goes on at 9:30pm.

We get to grab a couple of days of honeymoon, then to Melbourne for a couple of days to see friends, and then on to Sydney for a concert.

Amanda's playing Sydney Opera House Main Stage on the 26th of January, and she's decided she wants other people up on the stage, for guest spots, and, because I loved playing the Opera House last year, I've agreed to be one of them.

Not sure what I'll do yet -- either some "Best Of..." moments, or something completely new.

Either way, it's bound to be an extremely unlikely evening. Details and ticket info at http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/whatson/amanda_palmer_goes_down_under.aspx

Then I go home to the snow and to the dogs.

Amanda goes to work, once I've gone, and will play gigs in Brisbane, Melbourne, Byron Bay, Adelaide (at the Fringe, as herself and, with Jason Webley, an Evelyn Evelyn show), Perth, Canberra, Newcastle and, in New Zealand, Wellington, Christchurch, Auckland. http://www.amandapalmer.net/afp/upcoming-shows/

Hang on. I'll cut & Paste from an interview at The Vine.

01-26 Sydney, Australia - Sydney Opera House [w/Neil Gaiman]

02-01 Canberra, Australia - James O. Fairfax Theatre

02-04 Perth, Australia - Fly By Night

02-10 Byron Bay, Australia - Great Northern

02-12 Brisbane, Australia - The Old Museum

02-17-18 Wellington, New Zealand - Webstock

02-19 Wellington, New Zealand - Bodega

02-22 Christchurch, New Zealand - Al's Bar

02-23 Auckland, New Zealand - Kings Arms Tavern

02-26 Melbourne, Australia - The Forum Theatre

03-02-03 Adelaide, Australia - Adelaide Fringe Festival

(If you are in Australia and you are sad that I am not with her, your best bet is to make her feel very happy and loved. Then she will decide to come to Australia to live whenever it gets cold in the USA, and I'll come here with her.)

...

Interesting article over at Locus Online by Graham Sleight, and an extract from an interview they did with me about ebooks at http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2011/01/neil-gaiman-on-ebooks/

And there is a huge backlog of questions to answer on the FAQ line. I'll try and do some of them next blog.

Also, I'm writing a story about Lettie Hempstock. Who may be distantly related to Daisy Hempstock in Stardust and Liza Hempstock in The Graveyard Book.

Right. Off to rehearse with a string quartet. (You can buy their version of The Doctor Who theme over at http://shop.fourplay.com.au/Catgut.php)

Labels: amanda palmer, Is Tasmania Secretly Cool?, Sydney Opera House, Tasmania, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains

Without fireworks

Advanced Reading Copies of The Graveyard Book have started going out. This is the first review I've spotted.

"The Witch's Headstone", Chapter Four of The Graveyard Book, is nominated for a Locus Award. http://www.locusmag.com/2008/LocusAwardsFinalists.html for the full list -- It would be an excellent reading list, incidentally: I don't think there's a book or story on the list that isn't readable, cool, or doesn't deserve to win its category.

They'll be awarded next month, on Saturday, June 21, 2008 in Seattle WA, during the Science Fiction Hall of Fame Awards Weekend. I was toastmaster for this a few years ago, and it's a wonderful event. https://secure.locusmag.com/About/2008LocusAwardsAd.html (Note that The SF Hall of Fame ceremony, inducting William Gibson, Ian & Betty Ballantine, Rod Serling, and Richard Powers at the SF Museum Saturday evening, will be ticketed separately. Also that some members of the Hall of Fame are no longer with us.)

Rebecca Fitzgibbon interviewed me when I was in Hobart a few weeks ago, and sent me a link to the article at http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,23670222-5006544,00.html

Right. Back to signing Todd Klein's prints (in a purple ink called "Tanzanite") -- you can see what they look like, and learn about Todd's process -- at http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=1184.

Back to signing. I'll try and make the next blog post more exciting. Sorry.

Labels: I miss the days when I used to make sure that there would be at least one amusing or interesting label, Locus awards, Tasmania, The Graveyard Book, Todd Klein

What I did in Tasmania, with photos

Sarah Tran, Allen and Unwin publicity goddess, and I got to Hobart yesterday morning and were picked up at the airport by friends Dianna and Mark and their friend Wayne, who was driving something a bit like the original batmobile. This was a car called Darlene. I didn't ask why she was called Darlene.

(L to R, Mark, Dianna, Wayne, Me, Darlene. Publicist Sarah Tran is not in the photo as she is taking it.)

Beside the hotel, we saw this -- an icebreaker known as the Orange Roughy.

This was the view from my hotel window.

Here's Mark standing outside Ellison Hawker. After the ABC radio interview I went inside and signed lots of stock for them.

From there we went to eat, racing to be done in time for the event. We'd just finished eating when we got a call saying, "Everything's running late. Many people. Tickets. Argh. Don't come down yet." So we had dessert. Then I was introduced by Professor Jonathan Dawson (who I really wanted to chat to, but it was not to be) and I read a couple of new poems and a chapter from The Graveyard Book, one I'd never read aloud before, amswered some questions. It was fun. And then I signed. Lots of amazingly nice people, and at the end the people from Ellison Hawker presented me with a bottle of Tasmanian Single Malt as a thank you.

Then up betimes, and off to the airport, to Melbourne. Where it is raining and I have spent the day being interviewed.

I want to close some tabs -- so here are some depressing playgrounds, here's me being given my Weird Tales 85 Storytellers Certificate, a YouTube Arkham Asylum fanfilm, and a terrific interview with Charles Brownstein of the CBLDF about the Gordon Lee case, which will, I think, answer a lot of questions for people.

Also, Michael Moorcock, visionary, worldmaker, author, and editor, quite possibly also the man who inspired Alan Moore to grow a beard, was made Grand Master at the Nebulas. Here's John Picacio's speech -- containing interpolations by China Mieville, Jeff Vandermeer, Alan Moore and me myself, among others.

And from Eddie Campbell (who has posted a page of pencils), I learn that about half of the Campbell-Gaiman Spirit story is up online at Scans Daily. Honestly, I wish they'd post the whole thing.If anyone's going to cry foul for a copyright violation, they'll cry foul for six and a half pages as easily as they will all ten, and all the good jokes in the Tarantino parody have been left out...

Labels: beards, Eddie Campbell, melbourne, Moorcock, Tasmania

sunday morning

This just came in from my friend in Tasmania Dianna Graf (Clockwork Beehive is Dianna and Mark's company. Just in case you were wondering.)

Ooh.

I just got a message saying that tickets to your event in Hobart have completely sold out.

That was fast!

Could you perhaps mention this on your blog?

So many more people were planning to come. There are people flying in from other states and everything.

If enough people who missed out on tickets contact Ellison Hawker Bookshop quickly enough, they may be able to find you a bigger venue.

xx

Dianna

Consider it posted. I'd hate for someone to have go all the way to Tasmania for nothing (although if you did, you'd still be in Tasmania, which is pretty cool by itself. There's the museum, not to mention the extremely slim chance of seeing a thylacine...)

...

I normally avoid linking to favourite author surveys because it could skew them, but I don't think anything will affect the Tolkien and Pratchett lead over at SFX, and the results, as a snapshot of what people read and like, are fascinating.

http://www.sfx.co.uk/page/sfx?entry=vote_for_your_favourite_sf

...

When I read this book review's headline -- Nick Johnstone's Amy Amy Amy is the first assessment of the troubled rise of a remarkable talent, says Nick Johnstone I thought that The Guardian had taken book reviewing into new places by allowing the author (of an Amy Winehouse bio) to review his book himself, so lines like

He is scrupulous about acknowledging his sources as he goes along in the text, which contributes to an impression of the book being a compendium of other people's cuttings, rather than the product of his own legwork.

were as much confessional as they were descriptive. (I can't imagine I would have been as honest about my Duran Duran biography-from-cuttings.) I was enormously impressed with this new trend in reviewing, and really disappointed when I got to the bottom of the review and read "David Sinclair is the author of Wannabe: The Spice Girls Revisited (Omnibus)" and realised it was just another Guardian typo.
...

A few weeks ago I was interviewed about the Ramayana by animator and film-maker Ravi Swami for the British Library. It's up as a podcast now on their site as part of the upcoming Ramayana exhibit:

http://www.bl.uk/ramayana

I can't wait to see the exhibition.
....

And, for those of you who were wondering, there's a little film of a thylacine on YouTube. Possibly the last thylacine, filmed in 1933. Look at that jaw open...

Labels: a new trend in book reviewing that actually isn't, british library, ramayana, Tasmania, thylacines