Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Wednesday, 3 July 2002

# 10 PM

Over at Nerve, there is a hilarious deconstruction of the Abercrombie & Fish catalog. Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg would be proud.

Then again, Abercrombie do a pretty good job of deconstructing themselves with their splash page.

[Caveat lector: All of Nerve contains nudity and/or discussion of sex.]

# 7:50 AM

book reviews

Two great books in a row this week: Patricia McKillip's Winter Rose, and Neil Gaiman's Coraline. I read the first, and had the second read to me and ~800 other people by the man himself. Yes, the entire book. It took more than three hours, from 7-11 last night, with a break for refreshments in the middle.

It's interesting to compare these two. They are quite different books, told in different styles and with different heroines, but you could make a strong case that they have the same antagonist. I wish I could expound further, but it would be too spoilerful.

A couple of observations on style, though. McKillip is wonderful at atmosphere, and it shows in Winter Rose: it is bitterly, bitterly cold inside that book. Just as it should be, given the plot. Gaiman, now, he's better at painting characters. There's a talking cat in Coraline and it's a cat, not a human wearing a cat's body.