Booksbooksbooks

Last night I stayed up past my "I should really go to sleep if I intend to get up at 8am" time to finish reading Interworld, a relatively brand new book co-written by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reeves. I had seen the title mentioned on Neil's blog, but hadn't really thought anything of it until I saw it in a book store a couple weeks ago. Turns out it's a young adult book. Also turns out that I enjoyed it quite a bit (what a shocker). It was clear as I was reading it that the target audience was younger than myself, but it was still intelligently written for intelligent readers. And there are some fantastic visual descriptions in the books, especially considering that the things being described are incapable of being seen, in this plane of existence.

In a nutshell, Interworld is the story of a boy who discovers that he has the ability to travel among multiple universes and finds himself battling the forces of the exetremities of Science and Magic (much more so the magic; the one thing that disappointed me with the book was that the Science bad guys really only made a cameo appearance...I kept waiting for them to come back... The problem with only showing on half of your dichotomy of evil-doers is that the reader is left with an impression of the absent party as being less malicious. At least, I was. I wanted to hear about how evil they were!). Anyway, fun book, and you should pick it up if you're like me and have already read all of the other wonderful things Neil Gaiman has had a hand in.

I think I will begin reading Dave McKean's beautiful, enormous graphic novel Cages when I get back from visiting the fam, despite the fact that I will surely not have finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Even though Cages would be great reading for once classes have started, I don't know how much longer I can let it stare at me from the shelf where it's been since I got home from Comic Con.

Finally, speaking of books, if you're in the Chicago area you should come check out one of the current exhibits at the Hyde Park Art Center, Another Story. The pieces consist largely of altered books; it's all various kinds of book and text art, and it's really awesome. (I'm not plugging this because I work at the HPAC but rather because it is just that cool.)